There are a multitude of reasons why a rug’s dyes may run during cleaning. In fact, I wrote a post on several of those reasons behind how a rug’s dyes can bleed on you.

Blue dye migration on Wilton wool rug.

The careless cleaner approaches a rug as if they are all the same. “Wool is wool, what’s the big deal?”

Most don’t bother to do a dye test. Why? Honestly, I’m not sure why. It should be done on every rug, and it only takes a few minutes. This can be done with a high pH solution, or my personal preference of testing with hot water in a small area on the front AND the back.

Other careless cleaners do in fact do the dye test, but then they think if they use a dye stabilizing or dye locking solution that the rug becomes bulletproof to bleeding on them. That’s just not true, especially if the rug has colors that crock on a towel during a dry or damp towel.

The red dye crocks on to a damp towel.

When color crocks on to a cotton towel when it’s dry, or when it’s just damp, this is a serious problem. Especially if the color is a dark one.

In the case above, this is a tribal woven rug from Afghanistan. In some tribal areas, especially war-torn ones like in this weaving region, water is not always readily accessible to provide the thorough washing and scouring of the wool to remove the excess dyes and other impurities from the wool. So you have a rug that has some excess dye in the wool, that is going to move when it gets wet with a wash, so you better be seriously skilled to be able to handle that when it happens.

But sometimes the crocking is not from excess dye, but from color that has been added AFTER the rug was woven.

We call these rugs over-dyed rugs, and you will see these types of rugs come in two types:

1) TEA WASHED RUGS

A large number of rugs today, especially coming out of India, Pakistan, and China, are being given a tea wash treatment. This is a brown dye that is sometimes called henna wash, or also called having your rug “antiqued,” because it gives the rug a more muted look which makes it look older.

India tea washed rug

The tones vary from browns to golds to yellows. They make the rug darker, and also make the white cotton fringes beige or brown.

The better quality rugs are properly soaked in the dye to allow for even application, or are given multiple layers of application to ensure a good saturation and bonding of the tea wash dye to the rug fibers.

The lesser quality applications are sprayed on, usually on just one side, and it is often these lesser quality treatments that will crock on a dye test. This means that no matter how gentle you are with your cleaning process that over-dye is coming off. It’s like a spray-on fake tan… good until it’s time to take a shower.

Grin open the fibers and you see the bad tea wash job.

When you grin open the fibers you can see if there has been an over-dye treatment with tea wash. You can also see it on the fringe tassels by untwisting them to see if there is white under the beige tone.

Cleaning the fringe removes the tea wash dye on some.

And while you are closely inspecting the rug, look also for other pre-existing damage, because often a tea wash application is given to rugs to try to cover up damage such as pre-existing rug dye bleed or other stains.

It’s important to share with your client that the rug has been over-dyed with this tea wash treatment BEFORE you clean it, because likely some of it will come out no matter how gentle you are with your process. Especially if it crocks on you, that over-dye is coming off even if you choose a dry compound cleaning method.

But, at least it CAN be cleaned. You just need to share that this if it tests as a poorer quality application, that the rug has essentially been given a “spray-on tan” that needs to come off if they want it to be properly washed.

A much more perilous over-dye treatment isn’t dye at all… it’s ink.

2) INKED RUGS

Rug dealers for years have tried to hide small areas of damage on antique rugs with using India ink, or painting of worn areas to make them less noticeable.

Today this practice has unfortunately expanded to create some truly dangerous rugs.

New Hamadan rug bought on-line, and covered in INK.

The rug above is an example of one of the dangers of buying a rug on-line on one of these mass market retailers. When you buy rugs locally, at least you get the opportunity to “try it before you buy it” and take it out on approval. But more importantly you can do things like take a handkerchief and do a little dye test in the store just to make sure you are not buying inferior goods.

For a rug cleaner, this rug would be a nightmare. Every single color of this rug has been colored over with ink, which is why it has that blotchy, dark look to it. And when you grin the fibers open you can see that there is dark ink on the tips of the fibers.

Tips of the fibers are purple ink, base of the fibers are blue.

Taking a completely DRY towel to the face of this rug picked up every single color.

Dry towel picks up red from the rug easily.

Getting this rug even damp would make the inks pool together and make a mess not only of the rug, but of your wash floor.

So when you do your dye test on a rug, and it crocks, you want to investigate closely to see if it’s possibly ink applied to the fibers, because a dye stabilizing or locking solution is not going to do a thing for ink.

This rug, and others like it, is flawed product… and is not cleanable. And in the case of the rug being shown, the ink from the rug moved on to the underneath wall-to-wall carpeting which led to a much more expensive problem for the owner to handle.

Today more than ever, with the push to cut corners on production costs and get rugs to market faster and cheaper, there are more traps for rug cleaners today than ever before.

But if you are careful, and very thorough with your fiber and dye tests, and your pre-inspection checklists, then you can avoid the biggest rug disasters out there.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

I just had the privilege of speaking to a group of CFI members up in the Inland Empire. (That is the Carpet & Fabricare Institute, which is a professional trade association that covers cleaning and restoration professionals throughout California, Nevada, and Arizona.)

The topic was… I know you’re shocked… RUGS! =)

After several hours of non-stop teaching on my end, I promised the group I’d make a post to link to a number of posts here that covers some of the topics we talked about more in depth. So here’s the list!

CLICK HERE => Rug Shop Set-ups

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Pets

CLICK HERE => Rugs That Bleed

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Plants

CLICK HERE => Tea Wash Rugs

CLICK HERE => Why Some Rugs Buckle

CLICK HERE => Why Rugs Aren’t Cleaned In The Home

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Floods

CLICK HERE => Silk Rugs

CLICK HERE => Fake Silk (Viscose) Rugs

I’ve been a member of CFI for several decades, and I’ve met some of my closest industry friends – and best mentors – through this group. I served on their board for 11 years, a few of those as president, which was a highlight for me… even with all the “battles” we had in those good ol’ days – LOL!

It has been exciting to see the energy, creativity, and passion behind those on the board right now… and I’m looking forward to seeing what they have in store for the group and all of us members.

Thank you CFI – and thanks to Jason and Terrance for inviting me to come meet their members. I enjoyed it!

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional cleaner and do not have a trade association that you belong to, it’s worth taking a look at CFI. Their number is 1-800-CARPET-9 if you want to call to see about upcoming meetings and educational courses.

You’re in trouble indeed…

I know he chewed the rug... but he's so CUTE!

It’s all fun and games until the valuable oriental rug in the den gets a pet urine stain that’s not coming out.

Pet urine is at the top of the “uh oh” chart of rug disasters. The stains are usually permanent. But if the field has a busy design that might not be a big issue.

The odor though… well, that IS a lingering issue, and the longer that urine sits in those rug fibers, the worse of an issue it’s going to become to the rug and the floor.

The top topic this month from cleaners who wrote me “HELP ME!” emails was how to get pet urine odor out of rugs, so that’s my topic for this post.*

(*My disclaimer here for professional cleaners is, these are my opinions from our company’s experience and the experience of students I’ve trained. Please do NOT take my word as gospel here, they are simply educated recommendations because every rug and situation is different. My advice is not meant to be a substitute for your getting actual training in this craft, and seeking out additional real world experience to enhance your own skills. For goodness sakes TEST everything in small attempts first. Every rug must always be fiber tested, dye colorfast tested, and thoroughly pre-inspected before cleaning. Always. Okay… let’s go into some recommendations on pet puddles.)

If you happen to be a rug owner, and a pet owner, here is a post with some tips on what to do and why you need to jump on pet accidents right away => Pet Accidents Happen. Now What?

Otherwise, the rest of you professional cleaners, let’s talk about odor removal.

Pet Urine Odor Removal From Rugs

Remove The Source (Woven Rugs)

First things first… you need to remove the source of the odor, so the urine needs to come out of the middle of that rug.

Woven rugs are often constructed with wool knots wrapped around cotton warps and wefts (the foundation fibers).

Rug loom. Hand tying wool knots around cotton warps.

Cotton, as you know, is absorbent. This is why we use cotton towels to wipe things up – they pick up moisture.

So when warm pet urine hits a rug, it will be suspended for a short time (because wool has a natural repellency to moisture) and then it will penetrate the wool fibers and be pulled into those cotton fibers.

This is why when you see a urine stain on a rug, you know you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is a larger amount of urine inside that rug than you are seeing.

This is a much BIGGER accident than what you see...

With rugs, removing the odor source means you are going to have to wash it out. You cannot surface clean an oriental rug with a truck mount or portable and remove the odor causing elements from the inside foundation fibers. It just does not work that way. And trying to cover up your incomplete work with a heavy fragrance deodorizer is going to just make it worse. It’s like spraying Lysol in a Port-a-Potty… floral smelling sewage ain’t going to cut it on this one.

(By the way, woven oriental rugs should never be surface cleaned in the home with carpet cleaning equipment, for a variety of reasons I shared in a recent post on “Why Rugs Aren’t Cleaned In The Home.” If you are going to be a real rug cleaner, you are going to have to clean rugs properly in your facility.)

The most thorough way to get to the odor-causing contaminants out of woven rugs is to WASH the rugs.

Quick FYI: “woven” rugs are rugs where you can see the design on the back the same as on the front, like this:

Woven rug, you see the design on the back same as the front. This one is woven by hand.

Here’s another woven rug, but by machine:

Woven rug. Machine made.

Removing the source means washing it out. This is what full-service rug cleaning facilities do.

They may wash in a wash pit, or on a larger wash floor, but they WASH the rugs clean.

Rug wash pit.

Wash floor - high volume water.

If you are not experienced at washing rugs, you need to be particularly careful when pet urine is involved, because this creates a lot of dangers for rug cleaners.

Dangers From Pet Urine To Woven Rugs

It’s not just the odor that is a problem for rug cleaners, there are 3 other big dangers to be wary of:

1) STAINS

Pet urine stains are often permanent, especially if they have been there for awhile. Sometimes chemical stain removers can be used to try to strip out the yellow urea staining, but this will create damage to the fibers as a result (all bleaching and stripping agents cause fiber damage), so you need to be especially careful in any stain removal attempts or your client’s pet stain may become worse… and become YOUR stain instead of theirs.

Pet urine stain on a Tabriz rug. Haphazard stain removal could easily make this rug worse.

Often the best path to take is to state that the stain is likely permanent, and with that being the case, do they still want the rug washed and the urine removed so that the odor is gone.

If the stained area improves during the wash, then that’s great. It’s just not wise to guarantee anything besides that you will try your very best, especially if the rug’s owner already tried a bunch of over-the-counter “miracle” stain removers before they brought it to you. They likely have “set” the stain worse in their panic.

If you are truly skilled at wool stain removal, then you can of course guarantee whatever you want to. I’ve just found over the years that when we’ve said “no problem” – we’ve jinxed the job… and sometimes when we’ve said it won’t get better at all, and tried to turn the job away, it’s actually washed up great.

You just never know, so it’s best to keep expectations low in any case involving pet urine, vomit, or feces.

2) DYE BLEED and COLOR LOSS

Even very colorfast dyes on a wool or silk rug can bleed with longterm exposure to pet urine. I’ve seen rugs that would never “bleed” even if involved in a flood for days (like a 1920′s American Sarouk rug with iron-clad dyes) bleed when exposed to repeated pet urine stains.

Over time pet urine stains shift from acidic to alkaline. The problem with alkalinity is that it can cause serious damage to acid rug dyes, and those areas can release and bleed the color when wet despite using your rug dye stabilizing solutions.

Red dye bleed on a silk rug from pet urine.

This alkalinity problem is the same one that creates dye bleeding problems for on-location carpet cleaners who use their carpet cleaning machines and solutions (which tend to be alkaline because they are meant for synthetic wall-to-wall carpeting) on natural fiber rugs. This mix often creates disasters.

This Chinese rug has strong dyes, but the combination of pet urine AND an improper use of high-pH traffic lane cleaner by a carpet cleaner made the red and green dyes bleed badly.

The danger of old pet urine stains is that even if you test the rug’s dyes, and it tests colorfast, it is very likely those urine affected areas will still bleed on you. In fact, you should expect them to, and inform your client that though you are taking every necessary precaution, that is dye damage that is pre-existing from their pet.

You also may have situations where the wash takes the dye that has “dissolved” away from the fibers due to the long term urine exposure, and you end up with situations of rug dye loss, where the color just washes away and disappears, and only the yellow urea remains.

Light gray color is gone where the urine stain is.

Blue has bled on this Wilton rug. Washing will created faded away areas as a result.

3) DRY ROT

The worst danger from long-term, repeated exposure to pet urine is that the cotton foundation fibers start to mildew, and begin to become rotten from dry rot. Dry rot is not correctible. In worst case scenarios, usually seen from plants on top of rugs where moisture slowly rots the rug away, this creates large holes as a result. This rug had a pot sitting along the end, and the owner never knew she was harming her rug:

Potted plant on end of rug eventually rots a hole in it due to moisture and spills over time.

When pets repeatedly puddle in the same area of a rug over and over again, this type of dry rot risk is likely to happen. So it is important to inspect the areas of the rug where you see pet stains, and inspect the back of the rug to see if you see any signs of dry rot, such as dark mildew activity in the cotton fibers and a stiffness to the affected area.

Urine stain visible on front of this Azeri rug. We need to look at the back.

Top arrow shows dark mildew growth in foundation fibers that is the sign of dry rot, and lower arrow shows how repeated urine has bled a brown dye that is colorfast.

With dry rot you risk creating a hole during cleaning if you are not careful, especially if you use an extractor. Proceed at your own risk. When a pet stain becomes a big hole, that will become “your” problem to the owner… even though it was pre-existing damage from the pet.

Remove The Source (Tufted Rugs)

Tufted rugs present a real challenge with odor removal. Unlike woven rugs, with tufted rugs you do not see the design on the back side – you either see a material backing or a latex mesh backing:

Tufted rugs today often have material backing to cover up the ugly latex holding it together.

I refer to tufted rugs as “fake rugs” because they are a quick way to create the look of a woven rug without the quality or care. And I am not a fan of the fact that these rugs are often held together with heavy latex adhesive that can sometimes smell like an acrid rubber tire, and is next to impossible to remove that odor and any other odors that may be added to it.

The dangers for woven rugs from long term pet urine exposure apply to tufted rugs also, but you have some additional concerns as well. One is delamination which will likely get worse while you try to thoroughly wash the pet urine out of the rug. The rug may fall apart on you, or at the least need an additional application of latex to try to hold it back in shape again.

Latex is crumbling away from a combination of age, repeated pet urine stains, and repeated washings needed to remove the odor-causing contaminants.

You need to make sure the rug is sturdy enough to handle a wash. You also need to test the tuft strength, because if the latex is deteriorating, those fibers may pull right out if you try to scrub or extract water from the rug.

Recommended Cleaning Steps For Woven & Tufted Rugs Contaminated By Pet Urine:

1) Pre-Inspect and Protect

The more time you spend thoroughly pre-inspecting a rug BEFORE the wash, the less time you will spend trying to correct mistakes made by failing to fiber test, dye test, or truly look at BOTH sides of a rug for any warning signs.

One big rookie mistake is doing a quick dye test, seeing the dyes are colorfast, and being shocked when the pet urine stained areas all bleed on you DESPITE your use of dye stabilizing solutions.

Pet urine on a rug means it will have problems, so if it your responsibility to explain this to the owner BEFORE the wash, that the rug is damaged and that the thorough washing required to remove the odor causing contaminants increases risks of dye migration in these urine affected areas. You need to be released from liability on this point because the damage to the dyes (and to the value of the rug) is pre-existing.

If the rug’s owner does not want to release you from this liability, then you need to turn the job away.

2) Pre-Treat Visible Pet Urine Stains

On rugs that have a potential to “bleed” on you (obviously natural color rugs with urine stains are not a dye bleed risk, so any colorful rug IS a risk, even with colorfast dyes) – this is a strategy I recommend to those who attend my courses in order to minimize the dye migration impact on the rug.

Soaking a rug in an acidic bath helps remove the urine salts in the middle of the rug that are causing the odor.

Many professional rug plants will soak the rug in vinegar (acetic acid 6% diluted down to 3%) to flush out the urine in a wash pit or floor. For those who don’t like the odor of vinegar Sapphire Scientific’s new Dye Stabilizer & Rinse will do the same, without that odor.

But, especially with a wash pit, you risk dye migration throughout the entire rug by just having it soak in an acid bath for an extended period of time no matter what you use.

A better strategy is to flush out the urine in the specific stained area without creating risk for the rest of the rug. You can do this by pouring your chosen pre-treat solution on the stain directly, wet it down for a few minutes, and then use the Water Claw Spot Flasher to extract out the urine from the innermost fibers.

Water Claw Flash Spotter

On woven rugs, this is best done from the back side of the rug, and it helps to have a pad or other type of cushioned surface to help create the “compression” to help pull out more moisture.

With tufted rugs you will not be able to get through that latex, so you need to do it from the front side.

You want to pre-treat the area more than once if you still see yellow water (urine) coming out from the stained area.

Instead of releasing the urine – and the dye – from these areas into a wash pit, where it’s affecting the entire rug, you can control the removal of a lot of the “source” spot by spot. Dyes will bleed in these areas, but the Water Claw will remove most of it along with the urine. This means less migration risk to you during the wash process, and a better chance of success of getting the rug odor-free (if it is woven… tufted rug latex is VERY difficult to remove urine odor from because it gets inside that adhesive).

3) Wash & Deodorize/Enzyme If Needed

After pre-treating the urine stained areas to remove as much of the odor-causing source as you can, then you proceed to your normal wash process.

(I am assuming here that you know how to dye test and know how to adjust your cleaning times and strategies based on whether they dyes test as colorfast or fugitive, and what products you need to use to properly and safely clean natural fiber or synthetic rugs. If you do NOT know this, then get more education before you attempt to wash rugs… otherwise you will end up buying them when you ruin them.)

In a pet urine affected rug, even if the dyes test as colorfast, I personally would wash it like I would a “bleeder” – quick and using a Dye Stabilizer solution and a cleaning solution in the neutral pH range, or acidic.

Based on your experience and judgment, choose your wash process to proceed with, and if there remains an odor on the wash floor, you can choose to use your preferred deodorizer or enzyme treatment at this point.

Often I find that the pre-treat process with our regular wash process is all that is required to remove the odor. But on heavily contaminated rugs, or tufted rugs that have the latex holding onto the urine smell, we will use a Deodorizer.

Deodorizers that I’ve had personal experience – and success – with are Sapphire Scientific’s Area Rug Deodorizer, OdorX’s Un-Doz-It, Masterblend’s Anti-Allergen Deodorizer (I prefer this to Masterblend’s Skunk Odor Remover because it has no fragrance and the SOR has a heavy fragrance – but some rug cleaners like to use SOR), and Bridgepoint’s Hydrocide.

I am sure there are other good products out there, including some enzyme products, these are just the ones I’ve had some experience with.

Be sure to thoroughly rinse the rug. I like to use an acid rinse to remove residue as some of these products get a bit foamy on you.

4) Dry Thoroughly & Additional Work If Needed

Remove the water from the rug and drying it thoroughly. If you want ideas on different tools and equipment to use for this step, and others from the wash process, you can reference my post on Rug Shop Set-up’s. All the current options are up there, including some D-I-Y set-ups.

Many long time rug operations have a COOL old school roller wringer like mine here:

Rug through roller wringer. Safely and quickly removes the excess water and flattens out the rug for quick drying.

This is the quickest way to get most of the water out of the rug, plus there is the added advantage of it “ironing” out the rug so that it is very flat and even during the final drying process. (By the way, they do not build these wringers any more here in the US – so most of us have bought them second-hand. I have a friend here in CA who is looking to sell his large roller wringer, so if you are interested, send me an email at rugchick@gmail.com and I’ll connect you to him. It’s a screaming deal… and a great piece of machinery. We LOVE our wringer.)

Back to pets…

If despite your pre-treat, wash, and deodorizing attempts, you still have a noticeable urine odor to the rug, your last chance of success short of washing the rug completely all over again, is using the Odorox machine - which we’ve used a few times on rugs with chronic pet urine contamination (multiple dogs over multiple years).

Odorox treatment to remove odor. Rug is under the tarp.

Though we have NOT had any success removing the awful rubber odor from bad latex tufted rugs… we have had success removing urine odor from rugs where repeated washings could not get the job completely done. I’ve been really happy with this machine so far.

Those are my tips for you to help you have more success in tackling the biggest challenge we have in the rug cleaning field – handling pet damaged rugs.

If you happen to have your clients asking you for some recommendations on rugs, and they happen to have pets, here are a few tips I share with our pet-owning clients. Feel free to use them as well.

======================

Tips for Rug Owners who have accident-prone Pets…

=> You need to own rugs that can be WASHED, so look for woven rugs instead of tufted ones. If price is an issue, look for machine woven rugs, or perhaps synthetic rugs. Synthetic fibers tend to be less expensive than natural fibers (they also are not as nice, because the best fiber for rugs is wool… but if your pets will be puddling often, you might as well have them do it on an inexpensive machine made synthetic rug).

=> Pick a rug with a BUSY design so yellow stains will not be obvious. Rug Cleaners can wash the odor out of woven rugs, but stains will likely be permanent.

=> Use a pad under the rug even if it does not slide or buckle on you, because this will help create a barrier between your rug and your floor. If pet urine penetrates the rug and gets into your flooring, you will have a much larger odor removal problem on your hands, especially if you have specialty hardwood floors. It may not be possible to remove the odor short of replacing the floor, so a pad can help protect you from the worst case scenario… or at least delay the inevitable if your puppies aren’t trained quickly.

======================

I hope you found some value in this post on pet puddles. If you have any questions on this post, please post them in the COMMENTS section down below. I don’t have all the answers… but I do my best to share what I know.

Happy rug cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Next week the announcement for my upcoming training program for professional cleaners is being released. To receive that information, just make sure you are on my Rug Chick list. You do that by going to the top right corner of this blog, and putting your name and email into the Rug Disasters Report request box. This not only gets you my report on the most common rug disasters by cleaners, but officially puts you on “my list.” (Don’t worry, I’m not one of those “rug people” that writes you every other day with the next huge “big easy money” deal… I hate that. I just write once or twice a month with some additional *free* rug information, and I will announce my training program to these loyal readers first.)

Watering a potted plant near a rug can lead to a big ugly dry rot hole in a rug if it’s left undisturbed for too long.

If you want to know why this happens, please read this => Don’t Water The Rugs!

That’s what happened to this runner. The moisture from a potted plant was absorbed by the cotton foundation of this rug, all underneath the pot, and it began to mildew and then rotted from the inside out until it crumbled into a big hole:

Hole created from a house plant.

This damage is not reversible, or correctible. If you’ve ever seen drapes that have been so exposed to sun for so many years that they just begin to fray in your hands like paper, then you can recognize how deterioration like that is not correctible.

If the rug is an investment textile, you might consider paying thousands to send the rug to a company – perhaps in the country of origin – to reweave the area… but it will never be the same. You cannot truly “restore” a rug back to its original condition when it’s had this type of structural damage.

What you may consider doing is to have the damaged area patched. This would entail removing all of the damaged and mildew affected areas completely, and securing a patch into the hole to allow the rug to be strong and useable again. This is typically the repair choice for rug owners who uncover significant dry rot in their rug.

Another option is to do what was done to the runner shown above with the big hole, which was to shorten it in a way that made it look as if it were meant to be the size it ended up being.

Runner was taken from 6 medallions down to 5 - but it looks like it was meant to be 5 in this photo after the repair.

To see the steps taken to shorten this plant-damaged rug, visit this post => Runner Repair Post

If you are a cleaner picking up rugs to take to your facility, pay special attention to the rugs near plants. You want to look for signs of dye bleed, the sign or odor of mildew, or any stiffness to the area that you feel. These are all warning signs of water damage.

If you are an owner of rugs, you want to take care to keep the plants OFF your rugs, or at the very least elevated, and that the rugs are folded away from the plants during watering time.

As you are inspecting the rugs for any planter water damage, take a look also for any bug activity, especially with rugs that have been undisturbed for months. For tips on how to spot bug activity, and how to keep the moths and carpet beetles away, read this post => Bugs Don’t Eat My Rugs!

The damage – whether it’s from plants or bugs – only gets severe when it’s left unattended for months. If you make it a habit to check your rugs regularly, you can catch it before it becomes too expensive to repair.

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional rug cleaner looking for second-hand large rug cleaning equipment, I’ve been asked to locate interested cleaners for a 16-ft roller wringer ($13,500 – or best offer) and a 24-pole electric wrench dry pole system ($11,500 – or best offer). These machines are located in southern California. Wringers are hard to find second-hand these days, and to get a new centrifugal spinning wringers instead, only up to 14 ft. long, will run you around $50,000 from U.S. suppliers. A bit less from the European suppliers. The dry racks are selling for around $10,000 new for only a dozen poles. If you are seriously interested (i.e. you have the funds to purchase and ship to your location), then send me an email at rugchick@gmail.com. These will go fast, so if it’s sold by the time you write me, I apologize in advance.

“I know better.”

That is EXACTLY what I said in my head as I was looking at a cute shiny, smooth blue top at Nordstrom…

…and saw the label said “60% rayon.”

You see, I know that rayon (also sold as viscose) is one of the weakest fibers out there. It’s one of the fibers that is used to create artificial silk.

But it’s weak, it yellows, it loses color, and it ages and gets ugly FAST. It may look like silk to an inexperienced eye in the beginning, but it does not have the strength, vibrancy, and feel of real cultivated silk. Side by side silk will look great after years, and rayon will not.

I knew better… but I was rationalizing the purchase. My head said that I could hand wash it gently. That I could avoid wringing it, or using any high steam or heat when ironing it. That I am a fiber and fabric care expert, so I could handle this.

But alas, I’ve worn the top once, and washed it once, and the fabric is no longer smooth – there are breaks in it already, and a little less sheen. And no one to blame but myself.  That makes me mad. Almost as mad as the fact that even though rayon is “fake silk” to help designers get product made cheaper – that they don’t bother to make the tops any cheaper. Rayon is all over the place in clothes today. And not cheap to buy clothes.

LAME.

And we are seeing it in RUGS. The bigger issue here being that rayon and viscose cannot stand up to the foot traffic or soil in a typical home.

Double LAME.

So – if you are a buyer beware. And if you are a rug cleaner, here are some tips and facts about artificial silk rugs for you.

How to identify “Artificial Silk” rugs? What to look for.

As I mentioned in the previous post on Real Silk rugs – high quality silk rugs are not only very thin and pliable, but also incredibly detailed due to some very high knot counts per square inch.

Take a look at this corner again, of a real silk rug – it’s thin, and detailed design.

Real silk rug. Hand woven.

Then take a look at a typical Art Silk rug, this one from China, and it’s thick, the pile color is flat looking, no sheen of a true silk rug.

Art (artificial) Silk rug. Folded over corner, and thicker pile.

The Art Silk category is sometimes also referred to as Faux Silk (that’s the fancy sounding French word for FAKE). =)

The most problematic of this category are the ones made of rayon (also known as viscose) – which as I mentioned is an incredibly weak fiber. I’ve mentioned in the past that viscose is the sausage of the fiber world, as it’s chemically reprocessed cotton by-products lumped together and spun into a fiber for the weaving process.

You will find these rugs today coming out of China, Europe (Belgian machine woven product), and in the US (as highlights in some machine woven wool rug products).

You will also find it in product from China where it is blended with real silk by-products. Not blended with quality cultivated silk, but poor quality wild silk.

Cultivated silk is product from silk worms with a mulberry or otherwise controlled diet, where the cocoons are boiled and unraveled into ONE single continuous filament that is incredibly strong and with intense sheen. (Sorry but yes the worms die in this process.)

Wild silk is product from silk worms with no controlled diet, and where the worms bust through their cocoons, so the fibers are broken. Instead of one single filament, it is broken pieces that are spun together into a thicker, but weaker, thread for weaving.

Wild silk is similar to rayon in that it is broken staple fibers spun to create something that can be used for weaving. They will blend this “reject” quality silk with rayon so that they can get away with technically calling the rug “silk.” They also will sometimes use the excess silk waste from a real silk rug weaving to spin into these Art Silk knock-off’s.

Think about it – that is like taking the lint from your lint filter in your clothes dryer and trying to spin that waste into some fiber to create a new top for yourself. It’s meant to be thrown away, and not reused like rayon is.

And so with these rugs you will see shedding that looks almost like a cat has clawed the face of the rug, like this:

Artificial Silk rayon rug with shedding of fibers.

Your fiber test on these rugs will give you mixed results. The chemical test will show some dissolving (from the crappy but technically “real” silk) but also a lack of dissolving from the rayon. And the burn test will give you mixed up ash and smell because you have a blend of protein and cellulose fibers.

You will get frustrated trying to give a definitive answer.

Though many of these “problem” Artificial Silk rugs are coming from China, it does not mean that all Chinese rugs are not quality rugs. There is actually some excellent quality rugs coming out of China. In fact, EVERY country that has weaving will have the extreme examples of mediocre and magnificent rugs coming out of it.

Here’s a mediocre Artificial Silk rug from China. Note the flat color, and the shaggy looking pile.

Artificial Silk blend from China - rayon and crummy silk blend.

Now here is a magnificent piece from China – true cultivated silk:

Cultivated high quality silk hand woven rug from China

If you want to see other beautiful silk rugs from China, a great website to visit is the China Silk Carpet site.

Even in the photos you can see the difference in the fiber sheen, and absolutely the level of detail of one versus the other. This is why experienced rug cleaners can immediately identify a fake from a real one, because it’s obvious. Even when dirty, you can tell the difference.

Here is a dirty Artificial Silk rug from China:

Artificial Silk rug needs to be cleaned. Blend of rayon and wild silk. Folded over ends with fringe tassels strung into the folded edges.

Here is a real silk rug from Iran, and note how the back of the rug shines.

Real silk rug from Iran - note the detail of the design.

You will also see Artificial Silk rugs coming from Turkey, though these rugs are mercerized cotton rather than rayon, and they are much sturdier construction. Generally you will see these as Artificial Silk prayer rugs, like this rug:

Turkish mercerized cotton Art Silk rug.

This is not a bad looking piece at all, and will last the owner decades. The mercerized cotton fibers do not shed like rayon, and the rugs wash up well and last well under foot traffic. So you get the general “look” of real silk without having to pay thousands of dollars for the rug. But alas, it is not a REAL silk prayer rug like this one:

Real silk prayer rug.

Here is a caption from the China Silk Carpet site regarding silk rug weaving:

It will take one girl about half a year to make a 2×3 ft carpet of 300 lines (90,000 knots per square foot), 1.5 years to weave a 2×3 ft silk carpet of 500 lines (250,000 knots per square foot), two years to knot a 2×1.5 feet silk carpet with 800 lines (640,000 knots per square foot) and 3 years to make a 1.2×1.5 feet silk carpet with 1000 lines(1000,000 knots per square foot). The silk thread used to knot top quality carpet is as thin as a hair. When knotting, weavers even need to use magnifier. The work is so harmful to weavers’ eyes that they seldom can make the second same piece. So this kind of silk carpet is named “soft gold”.

In today’s commodity market of making rugs cheap to sell more of them, there is more demand for the Artificial Silk rugs than the real deal. This is why cleaners see more and more of them to clean today.

The “problem” Artificial Rugs will be the ones made of rayon/viscose, or blends of bad wild silk and rayon spun together coming from China, the cheap viscose Belgian machine made rugs, as well as some American Karastan rugs that are using viscose as “silk highlights” in some of their machine woven rugs.

The mercerized cotton rugs from Turkey are (in our experience) not a problem at all to clean. They wash up great:

Turkish Art Silk (before wash)

Turkish Art Silk (after wash)

These are the problems cleaners will see with these rayon/viscose rugs Art Silk rugs, and solutions to help minimize the rug disasters that often come with these inferior grade rugs.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Dyes that bleed and fade.

These viscose rugs like to bleed.

Bled corner of a Belgian machine made viscose Art Silk rug.

As part of your pre-inspection process, a fiber and dye stability test should be done. Your dye stabilizing solution should be tested to see if it will in fact stabilize the dyes during your cleaning process.

Sometimes, when the dyes are too inferior to be “cleanable” – you may need to clean the rug as you would tricky fine fabric, so literally cleaning it with an upholstery hand tool that has excellent moisture control and will not “mark up” the fibers. I like the Upholstery Pro for this type of work.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Fibers that yellow.

Rayon likes to yellow.

Here is a rayon blend rug that was cleaned in the home improperly. (Rugs should NEVER be cleaned on location in the home.)  Look at how badly the rug yellowed. A piece of white paper is placed in the middle to show the difference before the cleaning of how bad the yellowing/browning occurred. (The rug cleaner thought he would have to buy this rug because of his cleaning errors.)

Inexperienced rug cleaner browns out a rayon Art Silk rug.

Notice how bad the cellulose browning is. You really cannot see the colors in the flowers in the field of this rug.

Once the rug was properly washed – TWICE – and given an acid rinse to help reverse the browning and remove the heavy application of the alkaline cleaning solutions used in the improper cleaning – the colors and the white of the rug came back to life.

Several washes helped to reverse the damage.

Professionally trained cleaners understand that cotton by-products have a tendency to brown/yellow under certain circumstances. To help minimize yellowing of rayon rugs:

- Wash thoroughly. (If you are able to safely clean – i.e. the dyes are colorfast – then wash so that you can remove the soil. Wicked up soil from a surface cleaning by on-location equipment can sometimes be mistaken for “browning” when it’s just simply still dirty. Wash rugs in plant whenever possible.)

- Use a pure acidic rinse. (This helps to remove cleaning residue and helps to minimize browning or yellowing of rayon.)

- If possible, dry the rug face down. (This will concentrate any browning or yellowing of the rayon to the BACK of the rug instead of the front. Make sure the rug is properly groomed prior to being placed face down on a CLEAN drying surface. Use air movers to speed up the drying process. My favorite quick drying air movers are the Drieaz Studebaker Airpaths.)

ART SILK PROBLEM: Fibers that shed and break.

With rayon (viscose) Artificial Silk rugs, there is no way to stop the shedding. These are loose fibers spun together. You can vacuum up the loose pieces, but the shedding will always be a problem exaggerated by any type of regular foot traffic on these rugs.

Washing will wash away some of the fiber pulls. You will want to use a soft brush for the agitation during the cleaning process so that you can minimize the shedding. If your cleaning process incorporates a wand or hand tool, it would be important to have a teflon glide so that you do not leave marks in the fibers during any extraction strokes.

If you are the type of cleaner who likes to use bonnets on rugs, it will be too aggressive for this rug – so be warned.

For regular maintenance, a beater bar upright vacuum will be too aggressive for a fiber as weak as rayon is. Recommend that they use a canister vacuum, or the upholstery vacuum attachment on their machine to regularly “dust” the rug. And let your client know that it IS okay to clip the pulls off, or pull them off. (Sometimes a big lint roller can pull away more of them quicker.) These fibers are already ready to leave the rug, so the client is not going to harm their rug.

It is already a damaged product by the nature of how and what it’s made of. It’s what happens when you cut corners to create a cheap rug, so they need to become accustomed to having a rug that sheds.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Fibers that get stiff.

Artificial silk fibers may have a tendency of getting stiff after a cleaning. This can be groomed out with a brush, by slowly brushing against the grain, and then with it. (This brushing backwards and then with the fibers helps release the stiffness and helps it to lay soft again.)

A good rinse in the wash process usually alleviates this stiffness problem, as most matting and stiffness with rayon comes from the rug still having some soil and residue still in its fibers.

Some cleaners will lightly mist a fabric softener mixed with warm water onto the damp surface of these rugs (and some silk rugs) to help soften the fibers stiffness. Just take care to not leave too much of this residue behind. Tacky residue on a rug can lead to resoiling problems.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Ink stenciling that bleeds out.

This is not a common problem, but I’ve seen more than a few incidents with Artificial Silk rugs having stenciling problems. In this case, ink is used to cartoon the design element placement for the weavers and when the rug is washed the ink can bleed out. Because these stencil marks are often in a color like bright pink or blue, they can suddenly wick up and shock an unwary rug cleaner.

Since most rugs are quickly washed before they are sent off to sell, you should be able to see warning signs of stenciling that have already bled onto the back side. Note the pink ink lines on the back of this rayon Art Silk rug:

Artificial Silk - stencil ink noticeable on back.

If the rug was not washed before going to market, or if your client has not spilled on the rug enough to give you some pink or blue ink clues, then you may not discover the problem until it’s too late. You can try to grin open the fibers from the front to see if you can locate any ink on the foundation fibers. (Stenciling is a common problem in hooked rugs, and you can see how to grin those rugs to find this problem in a post I did on this exact problem.)

Your dye stabilizing solution will not work to stabilize ink, so this becomes a dangerous cleaning scenario.

Sometimes washing the rug quickly and drying the rug face down can concentrate the ink to the back side of the rug, but there are no guarantees. If the rug owner will not release you from liability on this rug cleaning, then you may have to turn the rug away… or opt for a less-than-thorough cleaning with a dry compound cleaning method, or other low-moisture cleaning method.

Rugs really should be washed, but in this situation where the inferior construction presents dangers of ruining the rug with a proper wash, you may have to choose an improper surface cleaning method because it is your only choice other than simply leaving the rug filthy.

However, because Artificial Silk rugs should be inexpensive you might recommend to the owner of a rug that cannot be safely and thoroughly cleaned to simply buy a new one. That would be better than never cleaning the stenciled one they have. And then you can give them recommendations on choosing a better quality rug – such as a wool rug if they want a sturdy rug on their floor that will last them forever… or a real silk rug to mount on the wall as a beautiful piece of weaving art for their home.

Hope this post helps keep those of you who clean Art Silk rugs out of trouble. Happy rug washing!

- Lisa

Silk is known as a fabric, and fiber, of luxury.

Silk strands.

People think you need to baby silk items, but silk is actually a very strong – and beautiful – fiber. (Unlike rayon and viscose, both names for artificial silk rug fibers, which are incredibly weak, yellow, lose color, and break at an alarming rate under foot traffic.)

Silk has strong tensile strength, and apparently has unique properties that beyond making fabulous looking fabrics and textiles, may become known for many other things. This short video on TED shares some of the magic of silk in other uses (this was amazing to watch):

If silk was not strong, weavers would not be able to weave these intricate designs, at a knot count that can exceed 1500 knots per square inch for the finest of weaves.

Silk rug loom. Knots tied by hand.

If it was not strong, those strands would break – which is why real silk rugs will be thinner, more pliable, and much more detailed designs than any of the “fake” knock-off’s.

Here’s a real silk Qum rug (hand woven in Persia):

Silk Qum rug.

(If you want to learn more about Qum rugs specifically, here is a great page from Barry O’Connell’s site Oriental Rug Notes on these textiles.)

Silk rugs are woven in many countries besides the Middle East, you see many from China, India, and Turkey as well. And their construction, as you can see is fine, thin, and very colorful:

Turkish Hereke silk rug, very fine weave as seen on back side.

Compare the last photo with this rayon (viscose) rug from China, which is thicker, cruder, shaggier, and overall obviously *not* the real deal:

Fake silk rug (rayon) from China

Rug cleaners – especially new ones – are frightened of handling silk rugs.

And they should be.

Not because silk is not strong enough to be washed. It most certainly is. The problem is not with the fiber strength, but with the dyes…

…and the fact that silk rugs, especially finely woven ones, are VERY expensive to replace if you happen to bleed them. (And your insurance may not cover this – you have to check with your agent.)

It’s not unusual for a small silk rug to have been purchased for thousands of dollars, especially if it is a fine quality Qum or Hereke.

So if you are a rug cleaner, and have a silk rug on your hands, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:

1) Is this real silk or artificial silk?

You will not necessarily clean it differently, because due to rayon/viscose being horribly weak you have to treat that inferior fiber very gently so you may follow the same steps as with real silk. But what matters is the VALUE of the piece, and whether you are insured if a lack of experience on your part results in ruining the rug during cleaning. That is why you want to know if it is the real thing.

A rough rule of thumb, obviously with exceptions (there are ALWAYS exceptions in the rug world), the thinner the nap of the pile and the higher the knot count per square inch, the more valuable the piece. That is for silk, not for wool. Wool rugs and value are another ball game entirely.

2) Do you have experience and the facility to clean silk?

If you have a full rug cleaning facility, with a roller wringer to feed the rug through, then it is possible to quickly wash a silk rug. And that is what is needed for a silk rug, a quick overall wash process. Using the right dye stabilizing solution, keeping the cleaning solution on the acidic side, and removing the excess water as soon as humanly possible.

You have to be a MASTER at fiber and dye testing, and pre-inspection, so that you know exactly what needs to be done with the textile to clean it – or to know if you cannot clean it safely.

If you have dry cleaning capabilities, some rug plants will dry clean silk rugs.

We personally like to wash rugs. I don’t like to leave residue in fibers. I like them truly clean. And I am sensitive to dry cleaning solvents, so I’m not a fan of them. That said, we have a roller wringer that allows us to remove the moisture in under a minute to that the rug can then lay out flat to dry very quickly. If you do not have a wringer, you will not want to tackle handling any silk – or fake silk – rugs for washing. Subcontract them to a full service rug cleaning facility with experience with silk.

Another tool I have found that works extremely well for cleaning silk fabric furnishings, and silk rugs which may be too risky to fully soak in a wash due to dye migration risks, and rayon/viscose rugs that can’t take much agitation at all, is the new Upholstery Pro by Sapphire Scientific.

The advantages this tool has in regards to riskier fibers/fabrics is that it has two vacuums surrounding the moisture delivery, so it is thorough, controlled, and immediate wash and extraction:

Two vacuums and a smooth head makes no marks.

My friend and peer Jim Pemberton, who is an expert in fine fabric care, has used this tool successfully on both microfiber upholstery, rayon, and aged (i.e. fragile) upholstery with no marking, excellent cleaning, and complete control of the moisture delivery and removal.

I’ve used the tool on rugs that normally I would turn away due to the risks of proper cleaning. Real silk rugs that due to age were too fragile to put through a proper wash, as well as rayon rugs that were too crummy that even brushing them was causing fibers to break off.

It also is excellent for any spot work you need to do on a rug, where you would like to work a bit more on a specific area without keeping the entire rug under water during that extra specialty servicing.

This is absolutely a tool that every professional rug cleaner, or fine fabric specialist, needs in their facility.

That said, even the best tool in an untrained hand, will lead to a disaster. So if you are just getting into the professional rug cleaning field, plan to get your rug cleaning education through courses and real-world training on rugs that you own first. Thrift stores and garage sales offer a myriad of cheap and filthy rugs of all shapes, sizes, and qualities – so if you are serious about getting into rugs, don’t practice on rugs owned by others, that’s tempting fate. Even eBay has lots of cheap rugs to invest in to get some practice.

And while you are doing this, find a local long-time rug cleaning plant to subcontract the valuable textiles that your clients send to you. Sometimes the best (and easiest) thing to do is to put your client’s valued textiles into more experienced hands.

Now, if you are the owner of an investment silk rug reading this post, I personally feel that the last place a silk rug belongs is on the floor. Why? Again, not because it is not strong. It is.

The nature of the silk fiber, being a smooth single filament, means it does not have “pockets” to hide soil in it like wool does. This means silk rugs (and cotton and rayon as well) look soiled quicker than wool rugs when exposed to the same amount of foot traffic and dust settling on them. It’s just in the nature of the fiber.

Silk also reflects light brilliantly, and when you walk around the rug it has a very distinct bright “light” direction, and a deeper dark direction. Wool does the same thing, which I’ve written about in a wool rug post, but with silk this difference is much more stark. You can literally change the look and colors of the same rug by walking from one end to the other. (Go ahead, walk around your silk rug and see what I’m talking about.)

This means any foot traffic on a silk rug that distorts the fibers will make it reflect light differently in those spots, giving you a mix of dark and light areas that might give you the illusion it is dirty… when it’s just got “messed up” pile.

The finer silk rugs are intricate pieces of art, and many of our clients prefer to mount them on the wall as textile art, rather than having their silk rugs on the floor, and worrying about feet, paws, or spills.

We use velcro to hang silk rugs flat against the wall:

Velcro along the top of silk rug for hanging.

Here’s why rugs are generally hung with velcro => Hanging Rugs

Some of the most magnificent rugs I’ve seen in my life have been finely woven silk textiles. Hopefully these tips will help cleaners stay out of trouble when handling these pieces of textile art, and help those who own them to better showcase, and care, for them.

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional cleaner and missed our “Rugs and Fine Fabric Webinar” – do not worry your little head off… the replay is up! You can join Jim Pemberton and myself for an educational session on textiles! (Don’t worry, we’ve gotten great reviews – you won’t be bored… and you won’t be “sold” anything like the other industry webinars you’ve been on, it’s just solid education! Hope you enjoy it.)

CLICK HERE to get access => Rugs & Fine Fabric Webinar

True or false - A colorfast wool rug can bleed?

=> TRUE.

The rug may be colorfast in CERTAIN situations. For example, with a regular cleaning or wash, with a neutral or acid side cleaning solution, the rug could be perfectly fine. No dye migration (aka “bleeding”).

But, under different circumstances, it could absolutely have dyes migrate and bleed out.  Some possible culprits – using high heat, using high pH solutions, keeping the rug wet too long (or in a flood), or exposure to pet urine stains.

True or false – A dye fix/lock/stabilizing solution used by cleaners “sets” a wool rug’s dyes?

=> FALSE.

The solutions available in our industry for professionally cleaning rugs do not “set” the dyes. They STABILIZE them. This means with wool or silk rugs that are NOT colorfast, but test “stable” with the intended stabilizing solution, that you have a WINDOW OF TIME to clean them. (FYI – with silk rugs that window is MUCH shorter than with wool rugs. You better know what you are doing if you are handling silk, or subcontract the work to a rug plant with silk rug expertise.)

I hear many “salespeople” sharing that you “set” the dyes with this or that.

That is not only inaccurate…

…it is downright DANGEROUS.

A cleaner sent me photos from a job where he applied dye fix on two identical rugs for cleaning. He no problem with the first rug cleaning, using his truck mount. (Which, by the way, you should not use truck mounts to clean oriental rugs period… but I’m not going to get into that right now.)

The heat began kicking in after the first rug was done, and so the matching rug with the same dye fix and the same rug cleaning solution EXCEPT now with added much warmer water – you got this…

Heat is bad for natural fiber rugs.

…red dye bleed.

The danger with well-trained professional carpet cleaners deciding to add “rugs” to their services is that their experience with installed carpeting does not transfer to natural fiber oriental and specialty area rug cleaning.

And the solutions, tools, and techniques they own don’t transfer well either.

In the home, heat, alkaline solutions, and the best tools for getting the installed synthetic carpet the cleanest possible, can absolutely ruin natural fiber rugs.

The most common rug problems I’m asked for help with from professional carpet cleaners are 90% due to applying the wrong cleaning techniques to rugs that they do not have the right knowledge about.

And one of the most common results are, dye migration or dye loss or discoloration.

A rug’s value can vary from a cheap $100 Pottery Barn rug to a rug worth millions of dollars.

If you are not sure what you are working on, you might take a little time to find out the basics. And certainly determine the fiber type, and especially the dye stability.

Here are some helpful posts to educate you on dyes:

Click here for video => How To Do A Dye Test

Click here for post => Why Some Rugs Bleed

Click here for post => Watch Out For Bleeding Wefts

Click here for post => Watch Out For Tea-Washed Rugs

Click here for post => Pet Puddles. What To Do To Avoid Damage

I hope you found these reference items helpful. When you know what to look for, and really get the basics of rug cleaning down pat, you can avoid most of the pitfalls that result from the lack of good information (or misinformation) about properly cleaning rugs.

- Lisa

P.S. If you want to learn some of the most common mistakes made by carpet cleaners when cleaning rugs, in the right column of this blog you can opt in for my Rug Disasters Report. I lay out the top 10 most common mistakes I see when handling all of the “help me!” emails that come my way week after week. This is also the way to be on my list for announcements of my upcoming training programs and workshops. (Don’t worry, I HATE SPAM… so you will not hear from me very often, your email will never be rented or shared with anyone else, and it’s super easy to opt-out.)

With the number of home floods escalating due to severe weather, a number of rugs will be exposed to flood water.

The longer a rug remains wet the more likely it is to have dye migration that is not correctible.

Rug dyes have bleed.

Rugs that are not washed properly, and not dried thoroughly, can end up with mildew and dry rot problems.

Mildew eating away the cotton foundation.

Rugs left wet too long can lead to dry rot - it just crumbles apart. This was wet too long in a storage unit.

Here are tips to minimize the damage to oriental rugs involved in floods:

-       Extract the water as soon as possible using a wet vacuum or having your water damage restoration company extract with their professional water removal equipment.

Water claw

DriEaz Rover

(Professional equipment like the Water Claw and the Rover are the quickest way to remove water in the home from wet rugs. The Water Claw should be used on the BACK side of the rug. The Rover can be ridden and pulls much more moisture out quicker, and with the smooth lip on the extraction points, it can be used on the front or back of the rug.)

-       Make sure you wand extract WITH the direction of the rug’s fiber nap, instead of against it (this minimizes fiber damage). If you “pet” the rug, it’s like petting your animals, you can feel which direction is *with* the grain, and which is against it.

Extract quickly. Best if done with professional equipment.

-       If you are unable to have the rugs thoroughly washed right away, then it’s important to get the rugs as dry as possible as quickly as possible to lessen the risks of permanent damage. Dry them fast and wash/sanitize them later.

-       When transporting to a rug cleaning facility to be washed, wrap in towels or sheets to prevent dry from migration from one rug to another. It is very difficult to remove dye migration.

-       Do NOT hang up wet rugs. Extract and dry out flat. Hanging wet puts too much weight on the foundation of the rugs, and will pull the migrating dye throughout the face of the rug and into it’s fringe tassels.

Dry rugs flat after extraction.

Use axial fans like Airpath to speed up drying. Dehumidifiers also as needed in contained areas.

-       Do NOT dry in direct sunlight. Most contemporary rugs are sensitive to sunlight fading. If you must dry in sunlight, lay the rugs face down so fading occurs on the back side only until the rugs are taken to a rug washing facility.

Powder blue color is faded to tan when this rug was placed face up in direct sunlight to dry.

Wool and silk oriental rugs can take months, sometimes years, to weave by hand. If you have investment textiles you want to protect from a flood that has affected your home, simply follow these guidelines and you can lessen the risk of permanent damage to your rugs due to extended exposure to water.

Once you have done your best to minimize the damage, the rugs then need to be thoroughly washed and sanitized before being returned to the home. This is done in professional rug washing facilities.

Rugs in floods need to be fully washed to remove contaminants from the innermost foundation fibers.

Rugs from floods need to be soaked in a sanitizing solution and then washed and rinsed thoroughly.

Even the filthiest rugs can come out looking fantastic with a good bath.

Silk rug (before). © RugChick.com

Silk rug (after) © RugChick.com

When it comes to something as messy and dangerous as floods, it’s best to leave it to the professionals.

Print and keep these tips handy in case you have the unfortunate experience of having your home flooded. And you will know what to do in order to help protect your favorite rugs, and to make sure they are clean and safe when they are returned to your “fixed up” home.

- Lisa

P.S. If you like this post, then please *share* it so that others who might have floods will know what to do too. Thank you!

There are a variety of reasons a rug might “bleed” on you. Let’s go through different scenarios for a wool rug like this one, where the red dyes have migrated into the neighboring off-white areas:

The red has bled. Why?

What could create this type of dye migration? Several things.

FUGITIVE DYES – if the red is shown to not be colorfast during your dye test, it could bleed from improper exposure to water from a flood or a poor cleaning attempt. Your dye testing process will show you this potential risk, and you can determine what dye stabilizing solution to use and which shampoo.

EXCESS DYE or OVER-DYED APPLICATIONS – if the rug has never been cleaned before, there might be a bit of “excess” dye in the fibers that may wash out on the 1st cleaning, just as with a new colorful shirt in the laundry. Or, if additional color has been ADDED after the rug was woven to make it brighter (or to make it look older, such as with a tea-wash antiquing application) this additional dye or ink could bleed during a cleaning.

With excess dye, using the proper dye stabilizing solution you can protect the neighboring areas to keep the transfer of the “extra” dye from landing on the wrong areas – it just washes away in the bath.

With over-dye applications, especially inks like India Ink, you cannot protect the neighboring areas so you need to identify these rugs before cleaning to avert a disaster. Often these rugs crock color with a dry towel alone, and transfer a sizable amount of color with the dye test itself, so know when you need to turn down cleaning. Dye stabilizers work on DYES not inks.

HIGH HEAT or HIGH ALKALINITY – a colorfast dye may bleed even with the proper application of a dye stabilizing solution IF it is improperly combined with high temperature during cleaning or high alkaline cleaning solutions (such as traffic lane cleaners). If you plan to clean the rug outside of recommended pH and temperature ranges, then always test the dye with that temperature/alkalinity to make sure you do not create dye damage.

PAST IN-HOME CLEANING OF RUGS – the biggest problem with having a rug cleaned in your home using wall-to-wall carpet cleaning equipment and solutions (or a home-owner Bissell or Rug Doctor) is the amount of residue left behind in the fibers after the “cleaning.” This chemical residue buildup tends to be on the alkaline side, and over time can affect the acid dyes of especially wool rugs and can create a “bleeder” out of these rugs. It might clean up fine one or two times in the home, and on the third the dyes may bleed all over and you have no idea why. It’s because of the extended build-up of all of the residue NOT removed in the past.

If you have a rug of any value at all – never clean it in the home. Natural fiber rugs are meant to be washed.

REPEAT PET STAINS - pet urine starts off as an acidic stain, and then turns alkaline over weeks and months. If it is not cleaned up right away off of a rug this will create long term permanent dye damage that devalues your rug. A rug may have colorfast dyes, but all of the areas with urine exposure will bleed no matter what steps are taken to stop that. This is why pet urine is the most dangerous “spill” on rugs, and why you need to jump on cleaning it up as soon as you see the puddles especially if you have valuable rugs.

The more time you take to inspect the rug before the cleaning begins, the more problems you can avoid.

Happy cleaning!

- Lisa

If you have plants anywhere near your rugs in your home – or if you are a rug cleaner and see plants near rugs you are picking up to clean – you want to watch out for this particular problem that often is not discovered until it’s too late.

Water the plants NOT the rugs.

Even the most careful person spills at times. Either spraying the leaves, or putting water in the planter, there are spills. Small ones over time.

There is also condensation around the bottom of the planter, especially if it’s heavy and is not moved often.

The rugs may feel dry to the touch…

…but you don’t know what’s happening INSIDE the rug.

Those fringe tassels you see on your woven rug are the foundation warps of that piece. One strand runs all the way through the middle to the opposite side of the rug, and the wool (or silk) fuzzy knots are wrapped around those warps.

Here’s a rug cut open to show you the white warps inside – which on most woven rugs today the warps and wefts are COTTON.

Thick cotton warps with wool fibers twisted around them.

Cotton is absorbant.

This means with a spill on a wool rug (or silk), you can blot the area with a towel to “wipe up the spill” and a little moisture has already likely seeped down into those inside cotton fibers, and have made them damp.

You won’t be able to “feel” if the inside of the rug is dry. Only a moisture probe can poke inside and tell you that.

Every rug cleaning professional has moisture probes handy to make sure every rug is 100% dry before it is put on the “ready” shelf or placed in storage, because moisture can lead to mildew growth like this:

Mold damage on rug corner under a potted plant.

Mildew damage more visible on back side of rug near planter.

The problem with long-term moisture on cotton foundation fibers is that they begin to rot. And when dry rot sets in, the fibers literally fall apart.

If you are not careful when you move a rug that has water damage from a planter, you could literally create a hole in the damaged area. It will fall apart in your hands.

Rotten fringe tears away from a tufted rug.

Corner of Spanish rug shows mildew growth.

Closer look shows dry rot in the foundation fibers.

With a rotten corner the rug now needs to be rewoven or patched.

Potted plants are not the only source of moisture that can create damage secretly to your rugs. Other sources are water coolers, condensation from HVAC units, any leaks from a home that may affect walls or floors, and of course – pets. (Though pets have the added damage-causing element of creating stains that cannot be removed, added odors, and contamination from the waste – that’s why you need to clean up pet puddles right away.)

Help reduce the risks by keeping the house plants away from the rugs. When spills do happen, clean them up right away AND elevate the rug longer than you feel you should, just to make sure the INSIDE of the rug is truly dry. (I’ve used a hair dryer on warm to dry a spill from the back side of the rug just to make sure it was completely dry. Warm air helps the evaporation process.)

You may be super careful with your plant watering process, but not everyone in your home may have your same care. And you cannot keep the condensation from having a long term risk to your oriental rugs.

If you are worried about possible moisture risks, then flip your rugs over and see if you have any areas of concern. Cotton fibers experiencing mildew activity and dry rot will feel stiffer than the rest of the rug when you handle it. And because the foundation fibers are often white cotton, unless there are other colors being used in the wefts, you can often see when there is mildew activity due to discoloration visible on close inspection.

You also will often see dye migration visible from the back side as well, because even colorfast rugs when exposed over a long period to moisture, can bleed in those affected areas. You will see the signs if there is a problem – and if there IS a problem, make sure to stop the source of the water exposure, and handle that rug with extra care.

Dry rot damage is not reversible. Take care to make sure your rugs do not experience it.

- Lisa

P.S. Thank you Rug Chick readers for another wonderful year! I hope you and your families have an amazing 2011. =)