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Pottery Barn rugs to run from…

December 17, 2011 — Rug Chick

I like Pottery Barn. They have some cool household items and furnishings, some of which are good quality at a good price.

Their rug department however, is a different story… and in the rug cleaning world the term “POTTERY BARN RUG” is becoming synonymous with “PROBLEM RUGS.”

First of all, Pottery Barn does carry some VERY nice woven rugs coming from Afghanistan in particular. They have some very decorative wool hand woven rugs in their Arzu line. I like that they are funding a craft that is allowing women in Afghanistan to make a living for themselves and helps support education in the region. The ARZU project is a production line to absolutely support.

As you recall, you determine if a rug is “woven” by whether you can see the design on the back of the rug exactly as you see it on the front, like this:

Woven wool rug.

So the WOVEN rugs that Pottery Barn is selling are very good rugs. But that is just a fraction of what they sell today.

The problems are coming from their “other” rugs, in particular their TUFTED rugs and other specialty pieces using “natural” fibers.

Tufted rugs have a material on the back, like this:

Tufted rugs have canvas material on the back.

Whoever is running their TUFTED rug department (including their Pottery Barn Kids rugs), and their “earth friendly” rug department are choosing some of the most difficult, if not impossible, rugs to live with and maintain.

As a professional cleaner (or a consumer shopping for rugs), these are the ones to keep an eye out for to avoid… or be very careful with:

RUG TO RUN FROM => TUFTED RUGS FROM INDIA

We wash hundreds of rugs a week, so we see “flawed” product relatively quickly because we wash a whole host of natural and synthetic woven and tufted rugs.

Without a doubt, there is something seriously wrong with the tufted rugs coming out of India today, and in particular the lines being sold at Pottery Barn. These are the problems we are seeing on a consistent basis from TUFTED rugs from India:

1) “Burnt Rubber” Odor from the Latex

I’ve discussed this problem on this blog before, the strong pungent odor that comes from these India tufted rugs. The latex is either mixed with filler that has contaminants that off-gas over time, or the latex itself has soured before application. Both lead to a smell that is similar to a mix between burnt rubber or asphalt and stinky dirty socks.

It is AWFUL. And it is NOT correctible to my knowledge.

And if you don’t want to just take my word for it, here is just one post where SCORES of people post their smelly horror stories with these problem India tufted rugs from Pottery Barn.

To Pottery Barn’s credit, as you can see in the thread over several years of posts, you see that there is an “easy” exchange process for those who want to replace their rugs for ones that do not smell (i.e. the rugs WITHOUT latex used in the construction).

What I do not understand is why with such a high volume of documented complaints on-line, why they would insist on carrying so many TUFTED rugs in their Kids selections. When you have kids crawling and playing on rugs, why would you let them breathe in those *bad* odors?

I keep seeing statements that the odors are not “harmful” – but isn’t the fact that something smells bad enough to get away from it mean your body’s warning system is telling you it’s *bad*?

The problem seems to get worse over time, and becomes more noticeable when rolled up for a time, or closed up in a room with no air circulation. It also becomes more apparent when it gets wet – which means if you ever spill on it, or need to have it cleaned, there will be an issue.

So, in the worst case situations, these rugs are not cleanable. (Why would you own a rug you cannot clean?)

Here’s an example of a backing of one of these types of problem tufted rugs:

Tufted rug. The material is covering up latex, and it smells.

Here’s the labels on the back:

Labels. "Natural rubber latex" tends to be the smelly culprit.

2) Delamination of the Latex

In the India Tufted rugs, we are also seeing today a lot of “filler” being used with the latex mixture that simply cannot hold up to age, being walked on, or moisture. The latex delaminates and crumbles and cracks. One of the reasons they cover it up with that material is because without it you would have a HORRIBLE mess on your floor.

Here’s an India Tufted rug that is delaminating:

Latex is crumbling.

Here’s another one:

Backing has fallen off and latex is crumbling away.

The problem with these inferior grade India Tufted rugs, besides the mess, is that when this latex crumbles away the rug loses both its shape and the fibers themselves. This means that if the owner wants to continue using this rug, the professional rug cleaners needs to wash the piece very carefully, remove as much *bad* latex and filler as possible from the back side, and then apply a new latex coating (without the filler powder) and a new material backing.

This type of repair is NOT inexpensive. So people who choose to buy a TUFTED rug because it’s a bit cheap than a WOVEN rug, will end up having to pay for a wash and a repair – so it ends up costing them more to care for that rug.

Tufted rugs also only last years, whereas woven rugs last for decades, if not a century or more (if woven well and properly cared for). So as with all things, if you pay a cheaper price for it… there is probably a reason why…

…and you will find out soon enough.

3) Discoloration and “Uglying” of the Backing Material

The canvas or linen or jute backing material is covering up ugly latex. When the rugs are spilled on, or when they are washed, this backing gets water marks, latex discoloration, and browning as a result. This is a common sight on the back of TUFTED rugs:

India Tufted rug. Backing gets discolored.

Sometimes the discolorations are some “yellowing” from the cotton/linen/jute used, and can be improved with some additional cleaning of the back:

Tufted rug from China - light yellowing.

But on the whole, if you own a TUFTED rug, and particularly the ones from India with the added filler in it, you will be getting a rug with a blotchy and marked backing after it is cleaned. The material can be replaced, but I find that most people when given a substantial repair estimate do not really care what the back of the rug looks like as long as it is clean and the front looks good. They understand that washing a rug like this, that cotton backing acts as a “filter” as latex, filler, soil, and water all flows through it.

4) Buckling of the Top Side and Shedding of Fibers

With TUFTED rugs, how “square” it is or isn’t is based on that latex and the material backing. So when it begins to delaminate, the shape of the rug gets lost. The top side get waves in it, Sometimes a few:

Waves on top side.

Sometimes A LOT:

Bad latex leads to lots of buckling in the rug.

Coinciding with the deterioration of the latex, as mentioned before, the tufts of wool can pull loose when there is no strong latex holding it in place. You might find full strands pulling away from the rug, or if the rug is made of inferior grade wool (sometimes in India this can come from being sheared from dead sheep), then it will break off and shed.

You will notice when you are on the Pottery Barn website they mention that “some” shedding is expected from wool rugs. This is true. Wool is spun with many short strands together, and then the rug is shaved after being crafted to have an even pile on the front, so yes, there will be some shedding.

However, better quality production will WASH a rug after it is woven to remove many of these loose short clippings. So “some” shedding should be very little. If you have a rug that is consistently shedding, and when you run your fingers across the face it breaks away with pressure or light pulling, then that is a PROBLEM rug. That is a sign of bad wool. which you often will find in TUFTED rugs that are at cheaper prices.

Wool is strong. It is literally the best fiber for use in rugs.

If you ever have a wool rug that feels brittle, or breaks easily, that is a bad sign. Either it was bad quality wool to begin with, or it has been so heavily chemically processed, that it has become weak. You want to run from rugs like these.

RUG TO RUN FROM => CHUNKY WOOL SHAG RUGS

I’m not sure why these rugs were created. Our nickname for these rugs are noodle rugs, because they look like big noodles:

Noodle shag rug.

They are big chunks of wool strung into a material backing. Sometimes they have latex on the backing, and sometimes they are just loosely strung in, which makes them state that the rug is “woven” when I would not of course ever call these “hand woven” or “hand knotted” rugs.

Here’s the label:

Label says keep in a "well-ventilated area" ... which means it STINKS too!

If you see these rugs at first you might look kind of cool, especially in their variety of colors…

…but if you have ever owned a shaggy dog, then you will understand why these rugs are super tough to maintain and care for. The problem is, getting soil, lint, and general “fuzziness” out of these fibers is as tough to do as combing out those spurs and knots are from your shaggy dog’s fur.

These rugs often require a great deal of extra hand work after cleaning to literally comb through row by row to try to “pull up” anything that was tangled up too much in that felted type of wool to wash away.

This means cleaning these rugs, even though they are not super expensive to buy, will often cost you more to do than if you had gotten that higher price woven rug.

This is one of those rugs that when you first see them, you think they are cool, and then you realize that it was a completely impractical choice for a floor covering and that you should have run from it.

RUG TO RUN FROM => “EARTH-FRIENDLY” PLANT FIBER RUGS

First of all, the MOST earth friendly rug you can own is a woven wool rug. Wool is a completely sustainable and renewable resource that grows back year after year.

But several stores are crafting rugs they deem as “earth friendly” from plant fibers and attempting to imply that these are also good rug choices. These rugs are made from SISAL, JUTE, and RAYON.

The problem with sisal and jute, besides the fact that they feel like wicker furniture instead of a soft rug fiber like wool, is that they both release oil when wet, yellow, and get brittle with age.

What is interesting is that on their website they state that sisal is “stain-resistant” when actually stains are quite difficult to remove from sisal. When a spill gets on it, and oils from the plant fibers release, it makes darker areas that can be tough to even out. And if the owner of the sisal rug has pets, and the spill is pet urine, the rug cannot be soaked to remove the contaminants because the cloth border binding may shrink, or the rubber/latex backing may have structural problems.

To be safe with sisal, you need to use it in areas where you don’t feel there will ever be any spills, and no pets. And you just need to know that if you have a spill disaster on the rug, that you may have to replace the rug.

With jute, when it gets wet it likes to yellow and brown badly. For some strange reason, jute is being used as a foundation fiber on many of today’s lesser quality rugs. (I guess I answered the “strange reason” – it’s used because it’s cheap! LOL.)

Here’s a cotton rug with jute foundation warps that are creating yellowing in this rug:

: Jute on the inside of this rug is creating yellowing in the cotton rug.

When you wash these rugs, a cotton shampoo with an acid rinse can help lessen the browning of both the jute and the cotton, but over time this will become a more noticeable problem (especially if spills occur on the rug).

The problems with rayon/viscose rugs, which is used as artificial silk, are many that I’ve covered in depth on this blog. It bleeds and fades, it breaks, and it yellows.

These rugs all look great when they are brand new, and then they proceed on getting “less pretty” with time. I know I keep hammering how woven rugs are the better choice, but that’s because after DECADES a good quality woven rug will still look like it did when new…

… but these plant fiber rugs begin to look worse in just a year. And if you spill on them, they look worse even faster.

Here is a Pottery Barn rug that has the TRIFECTA of tricky components: RAYON face fibers, JUTE foundation, and LATEX backing:

When this rug was new, it looked more like “silk” and was whiter. The fibers of rayon and jute, both of which yellow with moisture and age, are giving this rug a yellower look over time.

The label indicated the “fragile” strength of this rug in that it warns against many things: spills, sunlight, heavy furniture, and spot removers:

Warnings, warnings, warnings...

The owner did use some household spot removers on this rug, which due to the rayon did in fact make it lose what color it had in the fibers to begin with:

Sensible spotting led to bad results.

The fact is, if this rug had been wool this result would not have happened. It’s because the fibers are weak and sensitive that there was a problem.

(By the way – for safe spotting tips for spills on wool rugs, here are some safe rug care tips.)

You can see with this rug also, we have the LATEX factor, where a rug with any type of furniture on it is creating creasing problems in the backing construction itself.

Backing is not strong on plant fiber rugs.

Now, the person who bought this rug did so because she liked the look of it, and she believed that it was a quality piece because of the price she paid. She was not aware that the cloth binding material used would begin to buckle, that the backing latex would lose its flat shape, that the jute and rayon would begin to yellow, and that she would never be able to spill anything on the rug without it being a disaster to the way the rug looked.

With plant fibers it is sometimes possible to bleach out some problems, but this is extra work above and beyond regular cleaning, so it makes it more money to maintain this type of rug.

And that is what this all comes down to…

…EDUCATION.

The fact is, when consumers realize the differences between woven rugs and tufted rugs, or wool rugs and plant fiber rugs, and they are given the pros and cons of each, then they feel they can make educated buying decisions.

It’s when they buy a rug they like, and discover problems they were unaware of – strong odor, weak fibers, bad latex – that is when they feel they were sold bad goods. That’s when consumer feel ripped off…

…even if it was not a very expensive rug to begin with.

So now you know some of the common problem rugs being sold at Pottery Barn, and can choose whether to buy them or not – and if you are a cleaner, whether you want to clean them (or CAN clean them…) or not.

My hope is that there are enough complaints coming in about these specific rugs, that they are changing the rugs they carry. I don’t think any company likes to be knows for selling “rugs to run from.” And I know us rug cleaners don’t enjoy cleaning them. =)

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Just a heads-up that we are currently accepting applications for the 2012 Textile Pro Program, which is an advanced rug and fine fabric care training program by Jim Pemberton and myself. We are currently choosing the companies that we will be working with throughout 2012. If you think you might have what it takes to be a Textile Pro, then send an email with the subject RUG TRAINING to textilepros@gmail.com. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Posted in Professional Rug Cleaners, Rug cleaning, Rugs. Tags: Area rugs, Buckling rugs, Hand woven rugs, India rugs, Oriental rugs, Pet urine damage, Rayon rugs, Rug buying, Rug cleaning, Rug washing, Rug weaving, Rugs, Tufted rugs, Wool rugs. 16 Comments »

Buying rugs. (Tips for the nervous rug shopper.)

November 25, 2011 — Rug Chick

Rug dealers as a “group” get a bad rap.

Everyone has heard a story, or seen an exposé, on someone being ripped off on a rug purchase. They were sold an “antique”…when it wasn’t. Or they were sold a silk rug…when it was actually viscose or mercerized cotton.

It’s an industry that is similar to the “carpet cleaning” industry in that it’s a small percentage of unethical bad apples that ruins the reputation of the group at large. And just as not every cleaner is a bait-and-switch operation, neither is every rug dealer a bait-and-switch retailer. There are great retailers selling great textiles out there.

Beautiful Persian rugs for sale.

When I hear a “horror” story on a rug it usually comes down to this one factor – that the buyer did not get any education on what they were buying beforehand. So they were at the mercy of the rug villain.

Whose fault is that exactly? Yes the scheming dealer saw the person as a mark…

…but the buyer should not have been a “mark” in the first place.

So this is a post to help educate rug buyers out there in some of the basics of a “good” rug. This is based on my experience of growing up with parents in the rug business (selling antique rugs) and with my mother and brothers and team running a rug washing and repairing facility today in San Diego.

Me and my mom Kate.

This gives me the retailer perspective (and it is hard work to run a retail shop today…especially in California) and also gives me the perspective of the caretaker of these textiles, so I know the bad fibers and dyes and manufacturers to avoid.

So if you are looking to buy a rug, and truly are starting from ground zero and are nervous about it, here are some guidelines that I hope will help you feel like a more confident consumer.

Rug Buying Tips For Nervous Rug Shoppers:

1) Find the right COMPANY.

Just over a decade ago you found woven rugs only in galleries. Today you find them all over the place, and all different qualities. Especially now that synthetic rugs and inferior goods have moved into our market, and they are getting good at making a lot of low quality area rugs, it’s getting tough to know what’s worth paying for and what is a complete waste of money.

A mass market budget store is not going to be selling high quality merchandise in rugs. If you are looking to buy a quality rug for your home, and you are looking in Home Depot or Lowes or Costco, you are not going to find them there.

But you knew that already. =)

They may have some good commodity rugs to use in places you need a rug to get beat up in. I have a couple wool tufted rugs that I use as entry mats because wool is great at grabbing and hiding soil, and lasts longer than synthetic fibers. I like my woven wool rugs too much to make them my entry rugs. They are my rug friends, much older than I am, and I just respect and enjoy them too much for putting them at the front door.

So, if you are looking for rugs of quality, with great colors and character, you are going to find these in several places:

=> Rug Galleries: Yes there are still galleries that sell only hand woven oriental rugs around. New and antique textiles. The stores who are perpetually running “going out of business sales” need to be avoided. This is where flawed merchandise is trucked in for a “tent sale” to move items that were not good enough to sell to begin with. This is absolutely an area to ask around for who others refer to you as a good company.

A good place to ask who to buy from is your local rug cleaners. We cleaners see new and old rugs, hundreds and hundreds a week, and we absolutely know what the good rugs are and what the garbage is. So ask your trusted cleaner who they think is good to buy from.

A peer of mine, Barry O’Connell, has a list of some of the rug dealers he knows and trusts across the US. If you are in the San Diego area (my town!), a great gallery to visit is Prospect Rug Gallery in La Jolla for “real” investment grade oriental rugs. And if you ever find yourself in Jacksonville, Florida, the most amazing gallery of rugs and art I’ve ever been to is Mussallem Galleries. You must add it to your trip, it’s worth the visit, trust me.

My niece Katie (when she was little) with a little Navajo weaving.

=> Furniture & Flooring Stores: Rugs “finish” or can “make” a room, so you will see with stores that specialize in furnishings, or specialty hard floors, that they also carry rugs. These stores do not have the staff research that 100% rug stores have, so they may have rugs that look good but are not high quality. With tips later in this post on determining quality you will be able to make a good choice, but you can often find good rugs in some of these better quality furniture and flooring stores. You just need to know what you are looking at.

=> Antique Stores & Consignment Stores: You will often come across some real treasures in some of the hole-in-the-wall antique shops and consignment stores in your town. Often the owners are not knowledgable on rug quality, or pricing, and you can sometimes get great rugs here at good prices as well. But I personally just love to find new places to go “discover” hidden rugs that are beat up, dirty, and that I know I can bring back to life back at our shop.

1930's Fette Chinese rug and hand crank antique washtub wringer I found at a local antique shop.

2) Find the right RUG.

A rug is only as good as the ingredients and skill that went into making it, so if you are looking for a quality rug you want to see good fibers, good dyes, and good construction.

FIBERS: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The best fiber for rugs is by far wool. It is the strongest, most vibrant, and most resilient fiber to be walking on. A low quality wool rug will outlast the best synthetic fiber (nylon, acrylic, polyester, olefin) all day long. Plus wool is fantastic at hiding dust and soil, so it also looks cleaners and better longer than other fibers.

Wool is the best fiber for rugs.

Wool is also the only true “green” choice if you are trying to save the world =), because it is a truly sustainable resource (sheep replenish the supply annually!). All of the synthetic options are made from petroleum by-products (i.e. they are plastic).

That said, there are some inferior qualities of wool. The lesser quality wool feels more brittle, and it breaks and sheds. Rub your thumb over the wool and see if it has a smooth but firm feel, or if instead it feels more like “straw.” Brittle wool can be due to inferior breeding in the sheep, or wool that was sheared from ill or dead sheep. It can also be due to heavy chemical processing that has made it “lifeless.” But on the whole, there is a lot of really good quality wool rugs out there.

Silk is also an excellent – but pricy – fiber for weaving some amazing rugs. This is an area where I will see the most “rip-off’s” of people trying to pass off inferior “wild” silk blended with rayon/viscose as the real deal.

Quality silk rugs have a high knot count, vibrant colors, and a thin pile.

Silk fibers are strong (not as strong as wool fibers are in terms of being walked on), but I have always had a problem with silk rugs being used on the floor. With silk textiles sometimes having as many as 1500 knots per square inch, truly incredible detail, I like to see them mounted on the walls as tapestries rather than having feet, shoes, and paws all over them. But that’s me. =) Since many silk rugs will bleed when spilled on, we take the risk?

Reference past posts on real silk rugs and also fake silk rugs, for more tips on identifying the quality silk merchandise and the lemons that are “rugs to run from.” Viscose rugs are truly the worst rug choices out there right now, you can read why on my past post: “Viscose rugs are garbage.”

There are trade-offs depending on what you are after. If you want cheap rugs to put on the floor, you are going to be buying synthetic fibers. The trade off is they are not as nice looking, and they “ugly” faster because they do not hide soil as well as natural fibers do so you will be cleaning them more often.

Here is an acrylic (synthetic) Tabriz design rug:

Acrylic machine made Tabriz design rug.

Now… this acrylic rug was made in Iran. Machine made, and synthetic fiber, but given the “Tabriz” design I can guarantee that the person who purchased it was told “this rug was made in Iran, it’s a Tabriz” and technically that rug dealer would not be lying. And the owner may have paid believing they purchased a Tabriz (a well known hand weaving city) that would have resale value down the road. But this one is not worth much at all. Synthetic fiber rugs never are.

Here’s a “real” Tabriz corner, a wool rug that is hand woven in Iran. (Note the rich colors and sheen, you do NOT get those colors in synthetic plastic fibers.)

Tabriz hand woven wool rug.

I lump FIBERS into 3 broad categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

GOOD = natural fibers (wool, silk, cotton).

These are the strongest, best to dye, and best to walk on fibers. They will also be what is used in hand woven rugs, which will tend to be your more valuable rugs to own. You will also see wool used in the higher quality machine woven rugs like Karastan.

BAD = synthetic fibers (nylon, olefin/polypropylene, acrylic, polyester).

These are the “fake” rugs that are trying to look like wool but are a poor substitute. You should buy these only if you know they are cheap product and you need a rug that you consider “disposable” after a few years.

UGLY = crummy rug fibers (rayon/viscose, sisal, jute).

These are fibers that really are a horrible choice to use as a rug. Rayon and viscose fibers are weak, they yellow, they bleed, and they shed. Sisal and jute you can’t have spills on because they release oils and discolor in a way that is truly tough to correct without using some bleaching agents. We often turn away sisal rugs as “un-cleanable” because the rubber they like to glue on the back, and the fabric binding they like to border the rugs with, are all cleaning headaches.

DYES: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

With dyes in terms of what is “good” and what is “bad” besides whether they are visually appealing to you is whether or not they are colorfast.

I lump DYES into 3 categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

GOOD = colorfast dyes.

These can be natural or synthetic dyes. It’s tough to “test” dye stability in a store. You can take a close look at the back and look for any visible dye migration already there as many rugs have been chemically washed before going to market. You can also take a handkerchief and get it damp to test for any “easy” migration. Ideally, if you can take the rug out on consignment, you can do a proper dye test. If the transfer in the “test” is very slight (just a hue of color), then this is a strong dye, especially if the test was done with hot water as the video shows.

BAD = fugitive dyes.

These are the dyes that are not colorfast. So if you spill on them, they will bleed. It may be that the dyes are not strong quality, or it may be that the fibers have “excess” dye in them due to not being thoroughly rinsed before the weaving process. We see this sometimes in tribal rugs (like American Indian weavings or rugs from war-torn Afghanistan where water resources may be scarce). If the issue is “excess” dyes, then the first thorough washing will help remove this extra dye.

Testing the dye of an Afghan tribal wool rug.

When I say the dyes are “bad” this means either the original dye processing was not exceptional, or there were steps skipped during the production (like the lack of thorough rinsing away of excess dye). It is my experience that rug makers do not cut corners in just one area. Usually poor quality fibers are matched with poor quality dyes and poor quality construction. So a warning sign in this area of dyes is a trigger to look at the rug even closer before you buy it.

UGLY = over-dye treatments.

Some rugs are “colored” after they are woven. One popular treatment is “tea wash” over-dyeing. This is similar to a wash-in dye for your hair. It gives you color that washes out over time. You often see a sign of this treatment on the fringe, that instead of being white it’s beige.

Tea washed rug has beige fringe that is "blotchy."

Some tea wash treatments are better than others, just like some hair dyes are stronger than others. It’s important to do a dye test to see what the quality of the rug is you are looking at. If the test shows little or no transfer, then yours will last years and through several washings. But some others are obviously bad jobs:

Bad tea wash treatment.

Sometimes tea wash treatments are used to hide past damage or flaws, especially past dye bleeding or stains, so carefully inspect the back of the rug to look for any flaws.

The other UGLY dye is the practice of some unscrupulous rug merchants to sell rugs that have been colored with ink. Some use India Ink to darken areas of wear to disguise them, or to blend away past stain damage (like pet urine stains).

The problem with ink is that it cannot be stabilized when cleaning, and so this will bleed all over the rug when washed. When purchasing an older rug, ask the rug dealer if there are any areas that have been dyed or colored. If he does not point any out to you, then have it written on the invoice as well, just to reinforce his commitment to you on that point. Then if anything ugly happens, you have a course of action to get your money back if you were lied to.

But even skilled rug eyes can sometimes miss the work being done by someone to intentionally hide damaged areas. Being able to take the rug on consignment and do a dye test (or have the rug dealer do a test in front of you at his shop) can show you any areas that may be painted.

One more point on this. This is “ugly” when it is not revealed to you in advance. Then it is meant to hide something that has devalued the rug you are looking at. However, with older rugs with worn areas, it may not be possible or financially feasible to reweave those areas and so repairs involving some dyeing and repiling is not unethical – it’s a way to support and protect those worn areas, while also making it look better.

What is unethical is NOT disclosing that work to you and implying that the rug is all original.

When you have a rug that is a hundred years old, it is expected to have wear and some “signs of age” (we all do!). But if a rug has been heavily painted, it will be a problem to have on the floor and used. If you are not sure of the condition of the rug you want to purchase, always consider getting an opinion from your trusted rug cleaner.

He/she will not be able to tell you value of the rug (that is the appraiser’s job), but cleaners can absolutely point out any problems with fibers and dyes in regard to it being used on the floor, and eventually being cleaned. It’s our job as cleaners to protect and maintain textiles, so we know what to look for as hidden dangers.

Patchwork rug, with pieces over-dyed in ink that comes off with spills and with cleaning.

Ink is a problem. In this rug above small squares of hand woven flatweaves are made into a patchwork rug, which is a really cool idea (we often make remnants of rugs into pillows) – but what is NOT cool is the excessive ink being used to color some of the squares. You can see spills on this rug where the ink has been wiped away and off. This will be a nightmare of ink if gotten wet by an untrained rug cleaner, and these rugs are selling for a lot of money likely without letting the buyer know that the ink can bleed as easily as it can (even underneath on to the floor under it).

It’s a situation where designers like the “look”…but have no idea of the dangers they are giving to their clients who buy the rugs they recommend.

I find that rug owners who are told that their rug is not cleanable get a bit upset that they were not told of this problem when they purchased their rug. So let’s talk about rug construction types, because I find that today rug owners are not being informed on the different types of rug constructions and why some are better than other – that they are only focusing on the “look” of the rug.

RUG CONSTRUCTION: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

When you are purchasing a rug, I think it’s important that you know everything up front so that you can make an educated buying decision. Let’s keep with the same three categories, these are general groupings, obviously there are more detailed choices within each of these groups.

GOOD = woven rugs.

When I get a call about a rug to clean, I ask them if the rug is woven. If they say they do not know, then I ask them to flip over the corner of the rug. If they can see the design on the back the same as the front, it is woven. It may be hand woven, or machine woven, but it is woven nevertheless. And woven rugs, especially wool ones, should be washed professionally.

Flip the corner. If you see the design on the back - it is a woven rug.

To determine if the rug is hand woven or machine woven, takes a bit more skill (and determining what country it was woven in takes a great deal more skill…), but the basic rule of thumb is hand woven rugs have the “knots” tied around the warp threads – and those warps make up the fringe tassels.

Hand woven rug - wool fibers are wrapped around the warps. Those cotton strands running vertically make up the fringe tassels.

With machine woven rugs the tufted are wrapped around thick weft strands, and the fringe is typically sewn on afterwards with a sewing machine, and the sides are machine surged as well.

Machine woven rugs have the wool wrapped around the wefts (wefts run "weft" to right). Fringe is sewed on by machine and sides sewn on too.

From a construction standpoint, both hand woven and machine woven rugs, with good fibers (wool!) and good dyes, are going to be good rugs. The hand woven will obviously be a higher price, which we will address in the next section, purely due to the labor involved. But if you are looking for a sturdy good rug that is going to last you, you want to look for a woven rug.

BAD = tufted and tufted-hooked rugs.

If you flip the corner of your wool pile rug and see a material backing, then you have a tufted rug.

Tufted wool rug from India. The material hides latex holding it together.

Tufted rugs are what I call “fake” rugs, because they are constructed to create the look of a woven rug from the top, but they are actually made using a lot of shortcuts. The reason there is a material back is because the wool tufted are punched into a canvas with a tufting gun, and latex is poured all over the back to hold it together. There are a host of issues that can come up with tufted rugs related to their construction, the most important being they do not last anywhere near as long as woven rugs do under normal use.

Tufted rug with the backing material removed.

Tufted rugs can be quite decorative. And some do in fact use good quality wool and dyes. The issue is with that latex, which besides being ugly (that is why it’s covered up with material), can have a tendency to delaminate, crumble, and powder.

Tufts are simple loops so when the latex crumbles the tufts fall away easily.

Tufted rugs are to real woven rugs as particle board furniture is to real wood furniture.

IKEA sells a ton of particle board furniture. It’s nice looking, it’s easy to put together, and it’s cheap to buy. But no one is thinking about passing on those pieces to their children down the road, because they know they will not last, and will not have any resale value.

Likewise, many stores are selling tufted rugs. The problem is, many buyers are not aware that they are buying “particle board” quality merchandise, and they are not aware of the challenges that come up with these rugs.

Tufted rugs MUST be placed on a hard floor, because if it is placed over a soft floor (carpet) and furniture is placed on top of it, that latex will crack and break at those points of furniture. Sometimes a heavy pad will help avert this problem, otherwise the rug will get buckling and fiber loss over time.

Tufted rugs are VERY tough to remove pet urine and odor out of it. Once the urine penetrates the glue, your chances of getting the odor out is low. Full washing is the only way to get the contamination out, but tufted rugs by their very construction do not hold up well to long soaking to remove odor causing contaminants.

Tufted rugs with STRONG odors when they are new are flawed, contaminated merchandise. Sometimes lower quality tufted rugs from India have a bad odor that is like a mix of strong rubber and smelly socks. This is a sign of the latex souring before it was applied, or being mixed with bad contaminated filler, and this odor is NOT removable. Take the rug back for another one.

When people ask me what kind of rug they should buy, and they have pets or children who will be rolling on the rugs, I always direct them to getting woven rugs. No matter how much the makers of tufted rugs tell me the odors are “safe,” I know that when my nose tells me “YUCK” that something is not good. I would not let my kids roll around on tufted rugs.

And with pets, any accidents on that glue will lead to you likely having to buy a new rug, so unless the tufted rug is really cheap, I’d get a woven rug you can wash fully when you need to. (Or give your pets a nice backyard instead.) =)

That said, if you like the tufted rug you are looking at, and it’s the price you want to pay, and you don’t have pets, then go ahead and buy it…especially if it is wool. Like I mentioned before, I have some tufted wool rugs that I use as entry rugs, and they take the abuse well and I don’t have to feel guilty about having my hand woven nice rugs taking that beating. Tufted rugs absolutely serve a purpose in some cases. (Just don’t let anyone sell you a new tufted rug at a woven rug price, because that is wrong.)

UGLY = custom and crazy rugs.

Decorators and designers like to come up with great “unique” custom creations for rugs involving all fibers and fabrics imaginable. We are seeing today lots of “shag” rugs made of acrylic, polyester, wool, and leather.

Leather strip shag rug. Very tough to clean.

The toughest pieces are the “frankenstein’ed” custom rugs where a maker pieces together incompatible fibers or fabrics that each require different cleaning chemistry and methods.

Natural and synthetic fiber mix, and a poor backing construction.

Often these rugs need to be cleaned section by section to not create any disasters, and this often takes more time and will cost the owner more money. We charge extra to clean shag rugs like this one:

Shag rugs are tough to clean, and cost extra.

If any of you own shaggy hair dogs, you know how tough it is to both clean and brush that fur. It’s no different with rugs, except that while you may be cleaning your dog monthly, you usually only clean your rug once a year, so that shag gets super dirty…

…and tangly. These rugs need to be cleaned row by row, and with the new synthetic polyester shag rugs, you literally have to “pick” the lint and grime off the tufts because it gets caught up in the plastic weave.

Many of these new pieces being sold today we are turning away because it’s easier to have them buy a new rug when it gets super soiled versus them paying for our labor hours to clean the rug for them.

It may have looked like a cool design to begin with, but if you can’t easily clean it, it can become a costly “cool” purchase. If you are planning on making a designer rug purchase, you might take a quick photo and send it to your cleaner and just make sure it is cleanable first. Just to be safe.

So again, I’m partial to woven rugs, because they are the easiest to care for, and they last the longest.

And the question comes to this… you are looking at a rug, and you know it’s woven (because you see the design on the back same as the front), so is it a good price?

3) Find the right PRICE.

”What should I pay for an oriental rug?” is a question I get a lot. Especially from my clients getting ready to travel overseas on a trip to weaving countries.

The prices of rugs are all over the place. Over the past few months I’ve seen in our rug shop a rug that a client paid $200 for, and another who paid $200,000 for hers.

Rugs are like real estate, and the prices are based on location, quality, age, and how badly others want it too.

Photo by Temple Rugs & Cultural Tours, used with permission. 3 DOBAG weavers crafting a Turkish rug by hand. www.templerugs.com.au

This hand woven rug will take 3 Turkish weavers approximately a year to weave a 9×12 rug. When people ask me why some new rugs are “so much” I ask them how much they would charge me to craft something 6 days a week for 12-14 months. Hand woven rugs are a piece of someone’s life, and to those of us who appreciate that type of artistry, we do not see the prices as “so much.”

When someone is traveling and asks me what to spend what I tell them is if the rug is wool, and they look at the back and see that it IS indeed woven, then if the price is $10 per sq. ft. – buy it.

A woven wool rug, even if it is not high quality, will be worth at least $10 per square foot. You will either be getting a fair price on new merchandise if the quality is “average” and a great price if the quality is great.

Without me seeing the rug, it’s hard to give a blanket price, but you are always safe at that $10 mark.

Now, there are MANY rugs selling for hundreds per square foot, including the rugs woven by the Turkish weavers you saw above, and these will be the rugs being sold in the higher-end quality rug galleries. But if you are traveling to random “rug sales” or searching antique stores for hidden treasures or want to buy a rug when you are traveling abroad, that is a good price to hold in your head if you are scared about getting “ripped off.” You can’t get ripped off at ten bucks a square foot.

That said, value will always be in the eye of the beholder.

We often get rugs in that “appraisers” would place no value on because it’s not “collectible” or has no real “market value” in today’s market.

But when I look at a rug, I can see the workmanship that goes into these creations, and I always see value where others may not.

I have an old Peking rug (circa 1915) on my wall at home. I know an appraiser would not place much value on it because it has some significant areas of wear. Heck, it’s a century old!

Peking rug. I like it... and that's all that matters. =)

But what I love about “my” piece is that it’s from a period in Chinese weaving before they began creating a lot of commodity rugs that were heavily chemically washed. Back then they used the best indigo dyed wool, and I am a huge fan of indigo.

So when I see the rug, it makes me smile. It’s about a hundred years old, and it still shines like it always has, and I love to look at it.

And that’s what you are looking for when you buy a rug, that type of connection. It means something to me that this rug was crafted entirely by hand. All of the rugs I have in my home I have because they have “character” – they are my woven friends. Some have some wear, some damage, and some flaws…

…but so do I, so it’s okay. I don’t need perfect rugs, I just want “real” rugs that have lived a “real” life that I can surround myself with and appreciate.

Having hand crafted items, whether textiles or art or fabric or pottery or furniture, that’s just part of what I appreciate. It reflects on what I admire and appreciate in the artisans of this world, and their past work.

If you don’t really “like” rugs, and could care less what is on your floor, then you have a whole host of places to find inexpensive, and lesser quality rugs – Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Home Depot, Lowes, lots of places.

Just keep an eye out on the fiber, dye, and latex problems I noted before to keep yourself from buying a rug that may end up costing you more down the road in cleaning or repairs than you planned for. It’s not uncommon for us to have to completely relatex some tufted rugs from India within a few years after their purchase because they are crumbling, and this is a repair that costs a few hundred dollars.

India tufted rug. It is delaminating and putting powder on the floor. These get messy over time.

If you do “like” rugs, then focus on the different woven rugs you come across to discover what types appeal to you the most. If the rug you are looking at is more than the $10 mark I’ve given you (and if you are in a quality store with true quality goods you absolutely will be paying more than $10), then you want to learn more about the rug.

- How does the wool feel? Is it smooth but strong? (Brush over it with your thumb to see if it is brittle or sheds.)

- How do the dyes look? Are they vivid? Is there a big difference in the colors from the front to the back (sun fade may be a sign of inferior dyes)? Do the colors test as colorfast?

- How is the shape of the rug? No rugs are perfectly rectangular, but make sure the rug does not have any glaring weaving flaws that are causing buckling.

- How does the rug look when you walk around to both ends? Every rug has a “light” and “dark” direction, so take a look from all angles to truly get the richness of its look.

- How does the back of the rug look? Do you see any flaws in the weaving tension that are creating creases? Do you see any areas of discoloration or past dye bleed? Are the sides or ends unraveling?

- How old is the retailer telling you the rug is? Take a photo so you can research the rug’s origin on-line, or take the rug out on approval so you can hire an appraiser to verify the rug if it is being sold to you as an “antique” if the price is significant and to verify you are buying an investment grade rug.

- Are there any “care” conditions you need to be aware of? Take the rug out on approval to show your trusted cleaner to see if they see any issues with the fibers, dyes, or construction. (When clients bring us rugs we ask them to NOT tell us who the rug dealer is so that we can give our feedback without getting involved in the middle of a potential sale. Do not get your cleaner in the middle either because if the sale does not happen this may lead to bad blood and the cleaner may stop offering his two cents to help.)

Beautiful old Kuba Kilim with a great Navajo under it.

It comes down to whether you feel good about the price you are paying, whether it is $200 or the $200,000. You want to be able to walk into your room, see that rug, and just feel really good about it. And if you know it’s good wool (or silk), good dyes, and good woven construction, and it was in the budget you had for the piece, and you like the person who sold it to you…

…then it’s worth what you paid for. Even if others would not pay that for it.

Hope this gives you some things to look for when you are rug shopping so that you don’t have to feel nervous about going into a rug store.

Happy Rug Shopping!

- Lisa

P.S. If you want to expand your education on oriental rugs, some great websites to visit are Emmett Eiland’s Oriental Rug Blog, Barry O’Connell’s resource website, Hali Magazine’s website (awesome magazine to subscribe to – BEAUTIFUL rugs in every issue), the Rug Rag, great site on tribal rugs Nomad Rugs, and a fantastically written historical rug blog Tea and Carpets.

(WARNING: Once you get the “rug bug” you will not be the same. =) And once you get to recognizing rugs you enjoy, you may become a collector with a hobby that may get expensive. But, I can tell you as someone who truly loves textiles and the creation of them, it’s a fun world to be a part of. And thankfully I have appreciation for the hand crafted rugs with character that don’t cost me $200,000 to have. LOL.)

Pet puddles on rugs. (Uh oh, urine trouble!)

July 11, 2011 — Rug Chick

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.)

Why some rugs buckle.

July 1, 2011 — Rug Chick

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! =)

FAKE silk rugs. What you need to know.

May 29, 2011 — Rug Chick

“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

Hidden danger – bleeding rug wefts.

December 27, 2010 — Rug Chick

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!

Afghan rugs, the trade-off for new tribal rugs.

December 14, 2010 — Rug Chick

Rugs are loosely lumped into two general categories – “tribal” rugs or “city” rugs.

City rugs come from “bigger” weaving operations that tend to produce rugs with more intricate designs, higher knot counts, and tighter quality control. This is a broad generalization of course.

Tribal rugs come from smaller operations, or nomadic weavers who weave as they travel. They tend to have designs that are a bit cruder, with sharper edges instead of curvilinear designs. (FYI – in a future post I will explain why you see this curvilinear versus geometric difference, it’s related to the warp and weft construction and knot type.)

I’ve seen many beautiful “city” rugs in my lifetime…

Beautiful silk "city" production rug.

…elaborate designs, vivid colors, and a fine weave that makes them almost perfectly symmetrical.

Very finely woven Turkish Hereke silk rug.

Though I have a real appreciation for the “city design” pieces…

…when it comes right down to it, I like the tribal pieces more!

They are cruder at times, usually utilizing weaving techniques that make them have more of an “etch-a-sketch” type design than the beautiful floral illustrations shown up above…

…but I like the more geometric – and strong – style.

Great old Kazak (woven in Caucasus Mountain region)

I just love the tribal design pieces. To me they have more “character” and personality. If they are made with natural (“vegetal”) dyes they are very vibrant, with a lot of texture and depth to their look. And the older ones have such a fantastic luster to them.

I mean, just LOOK at this incredible piece here:

Gorgeous old Afshar rug.

Whether they are rugs from the Caucasus region, the Persian tribal weaving regions, the Baluchi tribal pieces, the Tibetan and Nepalese pieces, or even American Indian weavings – I am drawn to these typically smaller, cruder, but much more “energetic and alive” (to me) textiles.

I really feel like these are a piece of someone’s life – and heart – that now has become part of my life. Old textiles become new friends of those who love rugs.

That said – just like with “real” friends – there are some “personality quirks” that can come along for the ride.

“Oh your rug has a GREAT personality!” (aka the “quirks” are charming…)

Quirks, which in newer rugs – in particular coming from Afghanistan – can result in some trade-off’s that might unsettle those who are looking for a perfectly designed rug.

This is especially due to two factors in that region, one being the war’s impact on resources and consistent commerce, and another being their “tradition” of weaving wool on wool rugs (versus wool woven on a cotton foundation).

Of course, before cotton became “king” wool rugs were all woven on wool warps and wefts. The use of cotton allowed for the creation of larger, flatter, more symmetrical rugs because the cotton can be spun into smoother stronger strands for use as warps and wefts versus wool which when spun has more variation in thick and thin areas.

Hand spun Merino wool varies in thickness.

Wool is an exceptional fiber, in fact, the best rugs to buy today are wool rugs, in my opinion. They are super durable, can be vibrantly dyed, are naturally fire-resistant, and are the truly renewable resource (grows back year after year on sheep).

Where the wool face fibers can be sheared to create an evenly piled rug, when you are using wool as the warps and wefts of a rug – the “skeleton” of the rug – there are “quirks” that come about in the form of unevenness, buckling, creases, and sometimes shrinking if the wool had not been thoroughly washed and scoured before being spun.

In the industrialized countries wool processing and scouring is a serious operation, which cannot be duplicated as consistently and “aggressively” in tribal areas…

…especially war-torn tribal areas like Afghanistan.

So the trade-off for an authentic tribal piece from this region will be some quirks like these:

An uneven shape. Perfectly symmetrical is NOT an option.

On smaller rugs, the tribal characteristics are “cute.” If the rug is a few inches wider along one end than the other, it’s not a big deal. But when LARGER rugs are woven with that same varying tension and technique, the “quirks” can become more of a distraction than charming.

Creases in the weave seen on the back. This can make the top side have small "waves."

Uneven tension along the end created a big buckling problem.

Also due to the lack of the aggressive rinsing/scouring you can see an additional “quirk” of excess dye in the wool that can migrate (“bleed”) when the rug gets wet.

Afghan rug in a flood - red bled into the fringe.

Dye test shows this rug is not colorfast. A tricky wash that requires a rug pro.

Some buyers of tribal rugs want to make them “perfect” – but that is not unlike being born with one foot a bit bigger than the other (we all have one!) and expecting someone to “fix” that for you.

The variations with your friends, from size to freckles to goofy smile, is what give them their unique – and PERFECT – personality.

It’s not different with rugs. The tribal ones have more “character.” And just as with people, it is REALLY hard to “change” who you are. It’s equally very difficult to undo the natural characteristics of rugs.

An attempt to STRETCH an uneven Afghan rug more flat.

Aggressively trying to "undo" weaving flaws that made the rug buckle.

Afghan Tribal Rugs: What to remember.

When looking at Afghan rugs, whether to inspect for cleaning, or to inspect for buying, just a few things to remember.

- Any visible “quirks” – such as buckling, creasing, curling – will become more prominent with its first cleaning. (If the rug has been washed in the past, then this will not be a problem if the rug cleaner is properly trained.)

- Any strong dye migration that transfers with the dye test means that the wool used in the production was not thoroughly washed prior to production, so if the rug is woven on wool warps and wefts, you need to expect more unevenness due to stretching or shrinking over time. If it’s a small rug you may not notice, because the tension will be fairly even. But larger pieces, having used multiple weavers over a much longer time, may result in a rug that is not as smooth to the floor as you’d like (if you are purchasing).

Afghan rug weaving project for women.

There are some beautiful rugs coming out of Afghanistan today. A few are highlighted on Emmett Eiland’s website on contemporary rugs. There are also several important weaving projects in the region empowering locals with a livelihood that I personally like to support.

But just as when a friend gives you some pottery she has made for you, and it’s not perfect, but you love it anyway – I look past any of the quirks in anything hand crafted that I get to have come into my life.

I’m not suggesting that all Afghan tribal rugs have some of these extreme “quirks” I have shown in this post’s photos. What I am saying is that ALL OF THEM will have variations in shape and size. Without a doubt, none will be perfectly rectangular, and none will lay perfectly flat on the floor.

The weaving of wool on wool will make these particular pieces prone to buckling, creasing, and more so when initially cleaned. Most times this will be very slight. The severe times will be evident at the time of purchase. You will see warning signs beforehand. None of these examples I shared here were “problems” that creeped up over time. The flaws were evident to begin with to a trained eye.

If you have a keen eye – as a buyer or a cleaner – you can avoid being surprised by inspecting the front and back sides carefully.

And if you are an owner of an Afghan rug, make sure you use a professional for the cleaning, because a D-I-Y cleaning on new tribal rugs might make your new purchase a ruined one if you are not careful.

I do not expect tribal rugs to be perfect. That’s what makes them “perfect” to me. I like quirks!

- Lisa

P.S. With the holidays coming, make sure you know what to do when an unexpected spill happens. Print out the Holiday Rug Care Tips to have handy! (Merry Christmas!)

Posted in Rug cleaning, Rugs. Tags: Afghan rugs, Area rugs, Buckling rugs, Hand woven rugs, Oriental rugs, Rug bleeding, Rug buying, Rug cleaning, Rug dye migration, Rug dye test, Rug Dyes, Rug fringe, Rug pre-inspection, Rug washing, Rug weaving, Rugs, Shrinking rugs, Silk rugs, Wool rugs. 1 Comment »

Make rugs not war. =)

November 17, 2010 — Rug Chick

I know… it’s supposed to be love…

…but it made me chuckle anyway.

I was behind a car of a rug dealer in La Jolla once, and he had a bumper sticker that read…

“Rugs, not drugs.”

I thought that was cute.

But sometimes “war” and rugs cross paths, like in Afghanistan weavings.

Make rugs not war...or at least "war rugs."

In tribal weavings you often see the pieces of everyday life woven into the textile. Animals, plants, and people.

In Afghanistan, where “war” has been a part of life for as long as today’s Afghanis can remember – from the Soviets, to the Taliban, to now our troops over there – it is a fact that “war” is in fact a part of everyday life.

There are not too many industries that can operate in that type of hostile and unpredictable environment. But weaving has persisted, with a wide range of textiles coming out of Afghanistan today – from poor quality to high quality.

This “war rug” is one of the novelty lines coming from the country, and there are some who specifically collect Afghan War Rugs.

This particular piece is a nicely woven rug (I know because I bought it as a gift for my friend Joe Polish… I knew the man with everything would NOT have one of these.) =)

It is hand woven wool rug with natural vegetal (plant + mineral) dyes. Sometimes people mistakenly say “vegetable” dyes.

Hand grenade border design.

This rug had motifs of hand grenades around the border, an AK-47 in the field, a rifle, planes and tanks.

Planes and tanks in the field.

A woven rifle.

Now, I don’t want to make light of war in another country. I just want to highlight something that is actually being created – and created well – in a country that has been exposed to hardships that many of us will never have to grow up in.

I am always amazed at any beauty that can come out of a place with a lot of “ugly” going on.

One of the books I read last year about Afghanistan, that made a mark on my heart, was “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson - who made it a mission to risk his life and livelihood to work to build schools and educate girls in Afghanistan. It came from an experience he had in the country when mountain climbing, and made his life a sign of gratitude to that country.

Powerful book…and makes a great gift.

If you want to help some girls and women in Afghanistan to get educated, and get trained in a craft like carpet weaving, to build better lives from the inside out – there are sites like Kiva.org and Global Giving to make small donations that create a big difference for individuals there. You can choose where your dollars go, and can see the difference it makes. Those are the two groups out of many who are trying to empower the powerless in these countries with skills to earn a living.

And for our troops who risk everything for our security and freedom we have in this blessed country of ours, a foundation I like to help is the Wounded Warrior Project. There are other great foundations as well, that’s just the one I chose to support.

I’m glad that the weaving tradition still exists today in Afghanistan. And I liked the rug. It was well made by someone who cared about the product they were creating.

Maybe in the not so distant future we can see plants and animals replace the tanks.

I’d like to see that in my lifetime.

- Lisa

Posted in Rugs. Tags: Afghan rugs, Afghan war rugs, Hand woven rugs, Oriental rugs, Rug buying, Rug Dyes, Rug weaving, Rugs, Wool rugs. 2 Comments »

The dark side of the rug.

October 28, 2010 — Rug Chick

Pet your rug. Go ahead – pet it!

All pile rugs, just like your pet pooch or kitty or gorilla (hey – we have ALL kinds on this blog!) – the fur has a direction to it. You can tell when you are petting with the grain…

…or against it.

The grain points toward the bottom end of the rug. This is the end where the weaving process began, so as those knots are twisted around two warp threads, they end up pointing downward.

Weaving a rug on a loom.

This means that when the rug is on the floor, its wool (or silk) pile is pointing toward one fringed end, and pointing away from the other.

Because the pile reflects light differently, you end up with some very distinct LIGHT and DARK “looks” to every pile rug. Take a look:

View from bottom end, looking INTO the pile.

View from top end, looking WITH the pile.

Now…if you happen to take a rug out for its regular washing, and you were to lay the rug down in the opposite direction, with it suddenly looking quite different to its owner…

…could you understand how there might be a problem?

Technically, no problem at all. No damage per se. But, the “look” of the rug they live with day in and day out would suddenly be different.

It’s important to note which end (top or bottom) is where in the room before you remove it, and to open it in the same direction again when you return it so you can avoid any comments like “what happened to my rug?!?”

Especially if you are dealing with SILK rugs, which reflect light much more dramatically than wool does, you can have a very vibrant difference in the look of the rug.

This is why when you spill anything on a silk rug and try to dry it, and the pile gets tussled or matted, it can look like soil because it can appear very dark afterwards. (By the way silk is a horrible choice for a floor rug, because foot traffic will always make it look blotchy. Though silk is a strong fiber, I recommend hanging and enjoying the pieces rather than stomping on them and having them always look “a little dirty” even when they are not. Plus, with any spills silk is a dangerous beast to try to correct spill damage, many tend to have dyes that will bleed with spills.)

So, remember to PET the rug and determine the direction of the rug pile before you remove it from the home. I like to roll the rugs from the bottom end, which makes for a tighter roll.

And after they are thrilled with your cleaning then you can recommend that they rotate the rug for the upcoming year to help even out any traffic wear and sun light exposure.

Happy rug cleaning!

- Lisa

Posted in Rug cleaning, Rugs. Tags: Area rugs, Hand woven rugs, Oriental rugs, Rug Fading, Rug washing, Rug weaving, Rugs, Silk rugs. 1 Comment »

Rug embargo does nothing but harm.

October 2, 2010 — Rug Chick

World politicians – ours and others – are idiots.

Those of us who run small businesses know we need to create real VALUE in the world…or we do not get paid, and it makes our month much harder when we don’t get paid.

But in other countries not as strong financially as ours, not getting paid means not eating.

The president of Iran and the president of the US do not get along. I get that. The first is a tyrant, and the second is still trying to figure out how to be effective domestically and abroad. The first is mentally unstable, the second is politically unstable.

So now a “political move” ends up causing direct harm to the families who have NO political voice, power, or relevancy in their own country. The embargo of rugs began a few days ago, and it will impact millions of men, women, and children in Iran who make a living by spending months to craft a single hand woven rug they hope to sell.

I have never been a fan of embargoes, because the “spin” is that it harms the dictators into changing their policy – but by the very nature of being a “dictator” means that EVERYONE suffers except for you. Unrest is killed off – sometimes literally. Shortages mean the tyrant takes more from his citizens. So it causes more physical, emotional, and financial harm to innocents whose only crime was being born into the wrong country at the wrong time and in the wrong class of citizens.

The last embargo in Iran led to an incredible dip in the quality of weaving of “Persian” rugs, as whoever had the financial means to do so, left their country. Dye masters, weaving masters, those who had been in the business for many generations, escaped the political strife and bloodshed.

Recently there has been a resurgence of quality coming back to this historic weaving area.

And it’s a shame that in a quest to try to score some political points back home in the US that an action like this, which will affect millions, is taken so lightly.

The Iranian leadership may be rotten…but the citizens are not. And it’s sad to see that while D.C. cannot even pass a budget, they can pass an action to financial destroy countless families. Way to go US Politicians… I’ll remember how effective and value-producing you were when I go to vote you all out.

Iranian family weavers are not the enemy. And this art is art for the entire world.

- Lisa

Posted in Rug cleaning, Rugs. Tags: Hand woven rugs, Iran, Oriental rugs, Persian rugs, Rug weaving, Rugs, Wool rugs. 4 Comments »

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Make rugs not war. =)

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Rug embargo does nothing but harm.

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