Posted on October 17, 2020 by Behnam Rugs

How to Clean Modern and Decorative Rugs

Every so often, a customer brings an unusual rug for cleaning and repairs that has a story to be told. This month, we were brought a modern rug that was quite dirty, so dirty in fact that the rug was all one color- a grayish beige, except for the areas that were under furniture. Upon washing, we found that the rug actually features two colors- beige and white.

This rug was a flat weave modern rug, with small pom poms covering the surface. After washing, it was quite apparent that the pom-poms were a much lighter color than the rug itself. Often, when you own a rug for a long time, you forget what it originally looked like- before the traffic, wear, pet accidents, dirt, and dust.

The pom-poms were listless before washing but still held their round shape. After washing, the pom-poms laid flat against the body of the rug. A bit of work by hand opened the pom-poms back up, giving them more body and life than they had before washing. Sometimes cleaning can affect the unique features of a handicraft rug, but these changes are not permanent, they just require extra care and attention to detail during final inspection before they are returned to the customer’s home.

More About Modern and Decorative Rugs

In general, rugs are made of natural fibers like wool, silk, cotton, jute, animal hair or skin, or manmade fibers such as rayon, nylon, polyester which may go by other names including art silk, bamboo silk, or viscose. 

These arts and crafts types of rugs usually feature multiple fiber materials, which means that they handle wear, traffic, dirt, and any other factors that affect the rug’s presentation, differently. This rug was a flat-weave from Nepal with a wool pile and mercerized cotton pom-poms. These fibers’ textures are not the same and require different types of care, cleaning, and attention.

Traffic grinds dirt into the body of your rug, and when your rug features different materials, this traffic pushes more dirt into the material that is less dense. That is why the white pom poms on the customer’s rug became the same color as the darker body of the rug- they had absorbed much more dirt due to their porous nature.

The pom-poms attracted more dirt because the fibers were not tightly woven like the pile of the rug and they were cotton. The pom-poms were composed of a collection of 1.5 inch-long fibers tied together to make a circular shape. While cotton is denser than wool because it is a plant fiber, the construction method of the rug had much more weight in determining the density of each material. Since the wool was tightly woven, and the cotton was essentially threads of yarn bunched together, the cotton was less dense.

Different materials wash differently too. Cotton creases and wrinkles more easily than wool, it also holds more water. The weight of the water kept the yarns from springing back up into their pom shape. On top of this, the tightness of the weave affects the way the rug lays after washing. That is another reason why the body of the rug looked mostly unchanged, although clean and refreshed, while the pom poms laid flat. Luckily, a bit of extra attention was all that was needed to make them perkier than ever!

If you have any questions about how your unique rug will handle professional hand washing and sanitization, give us a call at 972-733-0400 for a free quote.