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.

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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.

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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.)

I receive a lot of “help me” calls from rug cleaners and rug owners on rugs that are buckling. They want to know what to do.

And my answer is usually… it depends.

That’s because there are a number of reasons why a rug is buckling on someone. Some of these reasons are correctable. Others are not.

Here is the list of different causes of buckling:

Weaving Characteristics

No hand woven rug is perfectly symmetrical. There will always be a little bit of variance in the width and length, and some fluctuation in the weaving tension throughout the rug itself.

A city rug (woven in rug factories in weaving cities) will of course have more quality control than rugs woven by tribal weavers. I personally prefer the tribal rugs because they have more character and personality.

Weaver using a horizontal loom.

That said, in some tribal weaving centers, especially in areas that are war-torn like Afghanistan, the consistency can vary beyond being an interesting weaving characteristic to being seen as a weaving flaw in some extreme cases:

Tension along end of this Afghan rug causes buckling.

Buckling from weaving tension changes, or width or length variations, are not unique to Afghanistan. You see examples of this in all weaving countries. And in most cases they are seen as unique characteristics of a rug’s personality. Like a few great laugh lines on a smiling face, or dimples, they are what make the rug have character.

And as with those lines or dimples, you can’t just take a steam iron and make those go away. There is no “Rug Botox” to use.

Sometimes a weaver – especially if the loom is a nomadic one – will not know the rug has a “buckling” problem until after it is completed and cut off the loom. In some cases a rug manufacturer will apply a sizing to the rug (similar to starch) to try to make the rug stiffer than it would naturally be.

The problem with sizing is that it will wash out, and it may be difficult to have it re-applied. So if you are buying a rug, or you are getting ready to clean a rug, you want to look closely at the shape of the rug and if you see any evidence of problems on the BACK side.

Creases can be clearly seen on the back of this Afghan rug. These are causing buckling on the front.

Sometimes a rug can be stretched to help it lay flatter, but this is a strenuous process that may damage the rug.

Stretching an Afghan rug to help it lay flatter.

In these cases you need to think about weaving variations as no different than one of your feet being a bit larger than the other. Think of what you would need to do to try to make them perfectly equal, and then apply that though to a rug, on the work that would be needed to make a side that may be an inch longer than the opposite one even.

It is often impossible to do. So your expectations need to be realistic, and if the variations are too much, then pass on purchasing the rug.

Material Backings

With embroidery, needlepoint, and hooked rugs, the buckling is often due to the construction especially if that construction includes a heavy material backing.

Embroidery needlepoint rug with a heavy cotton backing.

This type of weaving, though often very elegant, can also often not be perfectly symmetrical. And when you have two independent pieces – the hand crafted needlework and the material backing – that are loosely stitch to one another, this can create some buckling and waves.

Crewel stitch (aka chainstitch) needlepoint with material backing.

Hand crafted custom rugs using different fabrics and fibers can also lead to buckling, especially along the seams of there the pieces are put together.

Seam tape can split and buckle.

Seam tape can split under foot traffic, or with age, or from cleaning (especially if the individual piece are made of different fibers and may react differently during the cleaning process. Some fibers swell when wet, others condense. Some are stronger when wet, others are weaker. Some absorb more moisture and dry slowly, others dry quick. And these variances can split a seam if you are not careful.

Tufted Rugs (Latexed Material Backing)

Tufted rugs are the rugs you see with latex holding it together. Latex over time deteriorates and crumbles away, so often it is covered up with material to hide this kind of ugliness:

Old latex delaminating on a tufted rug.

Rugs are meant to be on a HARD floor, and not over soft wall-to-wall carpet. But, sometimes a soft floor is your only option.

While woven rugs (rugs you can see the design on the back of the rug same as the front) have some “give” to flex when over a soft floor, a tufted rug is not so forgiving.

Heavy furniture on top of a rug that is over a carpeted floor can stretch the fibers of a woven rug, and in worst cases create tears and holes. And with tufted rugs, which have a latex backing holding them together, they can create waves in the rug you won’t be able to get out.

Buckling in a tufted rug from furniture.

With these rugs, once they have been stretched from heavy furniture, and the latex backing cracks and bends, it’s damaged and will be very difficult to make flat again. It’s like when an elastic band gets over stretched, you can’t get it back to its original shape.

With woven rugs, you have a better chance of washing and reshaping a rug that has gotten buckles from furniture. And to protect BOTH types of rugs, short of putting them on top of a hard floor instead, you can seek out a stiff pad to place between the rug and the carpeted floor.

If your rug is tending to want to move and buckle even when it’s on a hard floor, then often a good rug pad will keep you from having any safety risks of people tripping on it. (Plus pads are “shock absorbers” for rugs and keep them from wearing from foot traffic as fast, and they also tend to deter bugs from wanting to find a home under your wool rugs. I personally love Durahold pad for rugs on hard floors.)

Edge Finishes (By Machine or By Hand)

Sometimes the ends or sides of a rug are finished a bit too tightly, or overdone, and this can create curling of a rug.

Heavy side cord wrap by hand on this dhurrie rug makes the corners curl up.

Machine serging of edges created curling of this rug.

The curling may be immediate, or only evident when the rug gets wet or damp. The level of buckling depends on how the fibers react to water. Some fibers get tighter when wet, and loosen when dry. This is especially evident on oriental rugs that are tightly woven, and the cotton foundation fibers tighten up when wet. (Think about your clothes when you take them out of the washer. Your cotton items are smaller and tighter, and your wool items are looser and stretchy. Most woven rugs are wool face fibers twisted around cotton foundation warps and wefts, so “wet” they can create some buckling that will go away when dry.)

Side curls on this damp Sarouk rug that is drying face down.

Leather or vinyl strips are sometimes sewn along the sides to help keep them flat on the floor.

If a hand woven wool rug is perfectly flat when dry, but curls when it is wet, then it will regain it’s proper shape when dry. Don’t panic.

An exception is Navajo and other American Indian weavings. Often the outside wrapping threads are not pre-washed before being used in the final weaving, and these strands may shrink a bit during cleaning, which can give the illusion that the overall rug has shrunk, when it is in reality just the outside cords.

Navajo rug from a flood, the outside cords have shrunk creating a buckling of the rug.

On the very first cleaning of a Navajo rug, the outside cord will need to be adjusted to make up for the shrinking of the cords, and future washes will not be a problem as far as buckling. (There are other concerns when handling American Indian textiles, from potential dye migration to wool fuzzing, that require an expert’s touch when cleaning. These rugs can be quite valuable, so always seek out someone with expertise in handling these pieces, as well as any investment textile or rug.)

Floods and Extraction Equipment

When rugs are exposed to flood water for extended periods of time, buckling can result from the absorption of the water in the cotton foundation fibers. In most cases, this buckling will be correctable. Though you need to follow the right steps to make sure you thoroughly clean and decontaminate any rugs exposed to flood waters.  Click here => for tips on handling rugs from floods.

Heavy extraction equipment (Rover and Xtreme Extractor) though excellent at pulling out the water, can sometimes create some buckling on looser woven rugs that may or may not be correctable. Whether it’s this type of equipment, or other extracting wands, it is better on the rug to extract from the BACK of the rug to try to avoid any marks or buckles from equipment. When using a wand it can help to have someone stand on the edge you are extracting to help hold the rug flat while doing the work.

Most rug cleaning facilities have roller or spinner wringers to remove water, which removes the buckling risk. Especially with the rollers, which tend to flatten out the rug smoothly for the drying process. But if extraction is your water removal method, you just want to make sure you are not too aggressive in this step.

Buckling in field of a rug from extracting.

Hanging Rugs To Dry

There are a couple negatives to hanging rugs up to dry if you do not have a professional climate controlled drying tower like the large rug washing plants have.

Hanging up a rather wet rug can bleed the dyes into the fringe. It can also create browning and discoloring of the fringe.

It can also, from the weight of the water, create a creasing of the rug that is difficult to remove, especially if the rug is tufted.

Some ways to lessen the risks are to try to get as much water out of the rug before hanging. If you do not have large water removal equipment, you can use a Water Claw in addition to your portable or truck mount wand to boost your extracting. The Rover, with its teflon head is excellent at removing water from heftier rugs without leaving any marks (even if you have to extract from the front side). Just make sure the rug is not too fragile.

Instead of hanging rugs on narrow planks, you can place a PVC pipe around the planks so that you can have it curved enough to help prevent creasing. You can also hang the rugs at at angle so there will not be a clean line of where the rug was bent to hang, like this:

Hang rugs at an angel to lessen potential creasing.

We dry our rugs out flat to avoid these risks, but most rug cleaning companies do not have the space to do this. So this helps if you have a mini-rack system that you are using.

* * *

These are the most common reasons behind rug buckling, and the situations where something can be done about it… or can’t.

Happy rug cleaning!

Lisa

P.S. I’m super excited because I’m finally ready to announce my return to the “rug training circuit” with a program that will be the best educational experience in our industry for crafting experts in the field of rug care. If you love rugs, and want to learn directly from me, then make sure I have your name on my Rug Chick list by entering your name and email in the “Rug Disasters Report Request” box up in the top right corner of this website. I’ll be picking a small number of companies in the coming weeks from my list to work with this year, so if you are interested in getting serious about rug cleaning, plug your name in up top! =)

Every professional rug cleaner knows how to test a rug to see if the dyes are colorfast or not. At least they should know how to. =) Especially since a good percentage of new rugs today have dye colorfastness “issues.”

I walk through the steps in my post on dye testing, and the video on how to do it is down below.

Click here ==> How To: Dye Test

I mention in the video to dye test the front AND the back – why?

Because you are not just testing the fuzzy face fibers to see if they may bleed during cleaning, you also want to see what the INSIDE foundation fibers may do when wet.

You remember the loom of a hand woven rug, and how every knot is twisted around two warps threads, with weft threads used to hold the rows of face fiber knots in place? Here’s a loom photo to remind you:

It can take months, even years, to weave a large rug.

The construction basics come down to this (NOT to scale here):

Diagram of cotton warps and wefts with wool symmetrical knots.

With many rugs the warps (which end up being the fringe tassels on rugs) and the wefts are cotton, often white cotton – which you can see peeking out of rugs from the backside.

See white horizontal wefts peeking through the back.

When the warps and wefts are white, or a very light color, there are no worries. But sometimes the wefts are NOT white. They might be blue, gray, black, red, purple – and they may bleed on you.

Here’s a hand woven rug with light gray wefts (will not bleed) next to a machine-made rug, which has knots wrapped around the wefts so you do not see them at all. (By the way, this is how you identify the difference between hand woven and machine woven rugs – knots wrapped around the warps are hand woven, around the wefts are machine – we will touch on that another time in more depth.)

Hand woven next to machine woven.

Here’s a photo of a Pakistan rug that was recently sent to me, and the side had torn away a bit to expose its pink weft threads. In fact, some long time pet urine exposure had caused the rug to bleed pink into the edges of the rug.

Loose weft threads have pulled away from this rug.

You can see where is has bled pink into the usually white edge design of this rug.

Pink line where it should be white.

Normally these pink wefts are not a problem with washing. In fact most rugs are not a problem under regular circumstances. These conditions though of long term wet exposure from pets made them bleed. If this had been a rug with no pets around, and washed regularly, that pink would never be visible on this rug from the front.

But some rugs are in fact a problem even under normal circumstances. They have DARK wefts. Here’s a potential problem:

Red wefts on a new Gabbeh.

So you make sure to test the BACK of the rug for colorfastness. If it tests fine – you can clean stress-free.

You also need to pay special attention to any existing spills (especially pet accidents) to identify existing dye migration that might wick up and be visible in the cleaning. The dye may test strong, but in these damaged areas (by the pets) the dye will release and bleed out – that is what happens when pet urine damages rugs over time.

Many rugs are washed before being exported for sale. It’s the ones with cut corners that present the problems today… problems that can averted through thorough inspection of the front and back of each rug, and dye testing both sides, BEFORE the cleaning begins.

Simply making your wash quicker, and using the proper dye stabilizing solution will keep the lurking danger from rearing its ugly head. But the worst thing to happen will be when you test the top side for colorfastness, it tests fine, and then you wash as normal and some UNEXPECTED color rises up from the base of the rug to scare the heck out of you because you did not test the back.

Seeing rising lines of red, blue, or black dye in stripes all over a rug appear as you clean is a frightening experience. One that is entirely avoidable with the right pre-wash inspection skills.

Happy cleaning – and HAPPY New Year!

- Lisa

P.S. Those of you who are professional cleaners, my training schedule is coming out soon, so if you are interested in working with me this year be sure to opt in to the Rug Disasters Report in the right column of this blog. Then you will get notified as soon as openings are available. Looking forward to working with you!

I use the term “oriental rug” to mean a hand-woven rug (as opposed to an “area rug” which is a machine made rug).

Technically “oriental” refers to “the East” (the Orient) and rugs woven over on the other side of this great planet of ours. Academics use “occidental rug” to refer to those rugs woven in the western hemisphere, such as Navajo rugs.

I know that technically I should distinguish between oriental and occidental – but I don’t. I’ve never used the term occidental with a client, ever. They think I’m saying accidental rug with a pompous “oh” instead of the “ax” – so I keep it simple. Hand woven is “oriental rug” to me – and this is what I see in my head:

Loom from Castle Cleaning in Colorado.

I see the hand work that has twisted every single knot around those warp threads. I see the sheared wool, the dyeing process, the spinning process, the months (and sometimes years) of creation time.

I see a piece of someone’s life in front of me. A part of someone’s soul in a piece of art now place in your home for you to enjoy.

A hand woven rug makes me smile.

Machine woven rugs? Tufted rugs with material backing? They just have no heart to me. No soul. No love.

I have loved many, many wonderful rugs, brand new and some centuries old. None have been machine made. It’s like really loving GOOD food, and having to go to McDonald’s – there is just no pleasure in a knock off. At least not for me. It’s one of the joys – and curses – of knowing so much about a craft … when you really appreciate the art, you are drawn to the well-made pieces.

And I appreciate those who in a world full of commodity, cheap, machine-made product, will choose to buy a hand crafted rug. I appreciate those who value and buy a REAL rug. (I am still very nice to everyone who buys area rugs also – I just enjoy the hand woven rugs more.)

I received an email today from a peer who received a brand new hand woven rug from a client. She has had the rug a few days, and noticed that a damp cloth makes the red dye transfer to it. The peer was asking me for some advice – here is the rug from Iran:

Wool hand woven rug.

With brand new rugs, it is possible that they have a certain amount of “excess dye” in the fibers. This washes away in the first cleaning (some rugs are washed thoroughly before being sold and these do not have this situation).

If the rug is in an area where there may be spills, then they might pose a problem, because the dye may move and migrate to other areas. So this is what I suggested to my peer. Not to wash it fully, but to rinse the tips of the fibers.

Rugs, especially oriental rugs, should be given a bath when cleaned. This is the recommended thorough way of cleaning rugs. This should be done in a rug plant, because thorough dusting, the wash, and complete drying are required. Many rugs have dyes that are not colorfast, so these professionals are trained to stabilize the dyes during the cleaning process.

But with this rug, a bath is not needed. The issue is not soil, but excess dye. If you are a professional rug cleaner, these are the steps I’d recommend:

1) Use your Drimaster tool. This is the PERFECT tool because you want to be able to rinse the fibers thoroughly and IMMEDIATELY extract without the water moving to other areas and potentially making the red dye move to neighboring areas. (If you do not own a Drimaster tool you can find it on the Hydramaster site.)

2) You can adjust the amount of water flow, and you can see the water through the viewer to see if it is red or simply clear. Make short strokes WITH the grain of the wool fibers several times, and then turn off the water flow and follow up with a dry stroke to pick up any remaining moisture.

(To determine the GRAIN of the fibers, pet the rug as you would your dog. You will know when you are going WITH the grain or AGAINST it – and you always want your tool strokes or brushing strokes to be WITH the grain.)

3) Keep the rug out flat, and dry it quickly. If you use a Dri-Eaz AirPath, it will dry in minutes.  Set it beside the rug rather than over it so as not to leave any impressions from the airmover legs.

4) Take a damp towel to verify that no more dye transfers as before.

It is not unusual to have “excess dye” in the fibers of a new rug. This wool is very thoroughly dyed those beautiful colors, and just as with new sweaters in the laundry, some dye comes off in the first cleaning. (Just as your grandmother used to add vinegar to her wash to help stabilize and protect neighboring fabrics from absorbing this migrated dye – many rug plants use vinegar also as a rug dye stabilizing agent in their facilities. Old world ways in new world operations.)

The reason I like this “surface rinse” of a brand new rug is because it takes away that excess dye (which might give a rug owner problems if there is a spill), but also because even though the rug is “new” it is not necessarily clean. Dust settles in the store, some have people who walk on them in the store, and the shipping and transport from overseas is not necessarily the cleanest experience. The thorough rinse can remove surface contaminants as well as that excess dye.

If you are a proud owner of a brand new wonderfully hand woven rug, and you find a little dye coming off on a damp towel and you are concerned – now you know what to do.  A surface rinse with a new piece of technology that keeps the rug from having to be given a bath just to remove a little bit of extra dye.

Some rugs last for centuries – so they are not a part of our lives; we are a part of theirs. I hope you enjoy your new (or old) woven rug for many years to come.

- Lisa

There is a drive in every aspect of our lives to make things better.  Quicker, stronger, cheaper.

This Macbook I’m typing on right now, wirelessly at an airport – is a prime example. Ten years ago… even five years ago, I wouldn’t be able to do this post right now.

It’s part of what makes the world – and life – amazing right now. But also makes us impatient. My flight is delayed, and people here are grumbling, not I guess too impressed that we’re about to fly through the air to magically appear in another city.

Here’s a VERY funny video about this topic – funny but sad I guess.  Life is amazing and nobody is happy.

It makes me wonder sometimes about “progress” actually progressing us as a “people.”  I know at least in the rug world, as the craft of hand weaving a rug slowly dies away, we are losing something important.

Many rugs are becoming commodities – made by machine, quicker, and cheaper.  Absolutely not better. Inferior fibers, dyes, and construction. I see more disposable rugs today than ever before. Ones that will be replaced in a few years instead of in a hundred years.

A hand woven rug can take months, sometimes years, to create. It is a piece of someone’s life. The dye masters are experts in just that - dyeing. The results of a dye master family, skills passed down from generation to generation, makes our new products pale in comparison.

Here is a photo of a rug loom – just look at the detail required to create a textile:

A rug is a piece of a weaver's life.

As there is “progress” in the rug weaving world, we are losing the culture and connection and tradition that made these textiles “magical” in the first place. There are places where the handcraft and tradition still exist, it’s just slowly getting harder to find.

But this is the same with all traditions, as they are engulfed by “progress.”

I just read a book this weekend – “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superatheletes, and the Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen” 

Absolutely a book worth reading, even if you are not a runner. It brings to light a lot of wisdom from a isolated culture not just about running, but about life, and living it to enjoy it rather than simply to “get something done.”

It’s amazing how as we get more and more connected to one another electronically, that we become more and more disconnected with life, with tradition, and with doing something just for the pure enjoyment of it. 

What I love about rugs – REAL rugs – is that story behind them. That a shephard raised the sheep that gave the wool. That a dye master scoured the wool, and dyed it a myriad of colors. That a weaver had a picture in her mind, and spun the wool to create that textile. That the rug before me will outlast me several times over.

Progress is awesome. I love my Mac, I love my iPhone, I love my blog.

But tradition is very cool too. Let’s try to hold on to a little bit of both.  Now I’m off to go fly through the air like a superhero!

- Lisa