Oriental Rug Cleaning Service in North Andover, MA

In just a couple of minutes, you’ll know more than most carpet cleaners do about the damage that can be done to area rugs by uninformed but well-meaning carpet cleaners.

Here’s the difference:

Although area rugs may look a lot like carpet from the top, the two are actually very different in construction. Carpet is constructed with a backing that’s plastic, and it’s designed to be vacuumed from the top. Foundations in the area rugs are made of tiny woven and wrapped fibers that trap and hold dirt. This means vacuuming alone won’t remove the soil. With an area rug, the soil must be removed using special soil dusting equipment, and that can’t be done in the home.

Carpet cleaning equipment isn’t designed to clean the foundation of an area rug. It’s designed to clean the tips of the face yarns of wall to wall carpeting, but the real damage from dirt occurs deep in the foundation layers of area rugs.If an area rug is cleaned in the home, the dirt that is deep in the foundation of the rug simply isn’t removed, and any moisture that is added as a part of the cleaning process mixes with the dirt and the cleaning agents and hardens into a plaster-like substance in the base of the rug.

This cuts the fibers accelerates wear and can cause the foundation fibers to become brittle and crack, running the rug. Once the deposits have been left in the rug, they can’t always be completely removed, and even if they can, the only way to remove these deposits is to use aggressive cleaning techniques with harsher chemicals.

This can often clean the deposits from the rug but sometimes does some damage to the fibers of the rug. Proper area rug cleaning should include full dusting and immersion washing. immersion washing is when the rug is actually submerged in a pool or stream of water during the wash process.

This type of washing thoroughly removes all the dirt and safely rinses away all of the shampoo residues from the rug and leaves the foundation and the face yarns clean and supple. Carpet cleaning equipment can only clean the tips of the face yarns in an area rug. In addition, the high heat from the hot-water extraction or steam cleaning can damage the dyes in the rug and cause color bleeding. For this reason, wall area rug should only be washed in cold water.

Dedicated rug cleaning facilities also have specialized equipment to safely and quickly get the rugs dry. Because of the tightly wrapped fibers in the foundation of the rug which are often made of very absorbent cotton. It’s easy for the outside fibers of the rug to become completely dry while the inside of the foundation is still really wet. If the inner part of the dry isn’t dried quickly and thoroughly, it can lead to mold and mildew and other problems like browning and wicking.

As good as modern carpet cleaning equipment is, it can leave residue behind, especially in the tightly-woven foundation of the rug. This residue attracts soil, and it can cause your rug to become dirty very quickly. Nothing can rinse the shampoos and detergents from your rug better than immersion washing which is another reason that true rug washing should be your only choice when cleaning your area rugs.

Finally, the proper cleaning chemistry is very different for wool than for nylon. Most carpets are made of nylon which is a type of plastic. The nylon fibers respond well and can be cleaned with very fairly detergents while wool is essentially hair, and is much more delicate, similar to the hair on your head.

If you washed your hair with something that was designed to clean plastic bathroom surfaces, it will dry out and become very brittle and damaged. The same thing happens to your rugs when carpet cleaners use detergents that are designed for plastic carpet fibers on your delicate wool rug fibers.

Because of these facts, it’s important to never let your rugs be cleaned in your home, with regular carpet cleaning equipment. It’s also important to have your rugs washed every 2-3 years