The biggest fear most rug cleaners have regarding rugs is that the rug might bleed while in their care.

Bled Afghan rug.

The fact is, with proper training and the right tools and solutions, even the most fugitive dyes in a rug can be successfully cleaned…

…you just need to know what you are doing.

And interestingly enough, the biggest bled rug disasters I’ve seen in my career have been when cleaners have brought me rugs that they should have not cleaned in the first place, and they could have avoided their disaster through the simple step of doing a proper dye test.

If you do not know know how to do a proper dye test, here is how I do one.

Lisa’s Dye Test Video Clip

I use hot water for my test, but you can also use a high pH spotter. And if the dye bleeds when you test with either of those items, you need to test with your DYE STABILIZER solution to make sure you can safely clean the rug. If it bleeds with your stabilizer, you are in trouble.

My latest article in Cleanfax Magazine on Why Dyes Bleed is down below. I’ve linked to the entire PDF article so that you can print it out to reference. All of the photos of bled rugs are real rug disasters from cleaners who did not know that the way they were cleaning the rugs was going to ruin them. Unfortunately they were all very expensive mistakes… much more expensive than paying for proper rug training would have been.

Hopefully this helps explain any past dye migration challenges you have had, and gives you some insight to avoid disasters in your rug cleaning business.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Looking for more rug care training? Jim Pemberton and I have the most comprehensive real-world textile program in the industry for oriental rug and fine fabric care. If you want to be a Textile Pro, take a look at the details on our Textile Pro page.
Cleanfax – Why Dyes Bleed

It used to be, about a decade ago, that if you wanted to buy a rug you went to a rug store. And odds are, you’d walk away with a wool rug.

Wool is the best fiber on the planet for rugs. It’s strong, dyes up vividly, always washes up beautifully, and lasts and last and lasts.

Persian hand woven wool rug from mid-1800's, and still looks fantastic!

Even the lesser quality wool rugs from a decade ago, perhaps the ones more heavily chemically processed from China, still would last you decades. So your choice back then was great investment wool rugs (sold at Rug Galleries) and not-so-great commodity wool rugs (perhaps the ones being sold at Home Depot Expo).

But still, if it was wool, it was worth owning back then.

Today it’s a whole different ballgame. And the market is flooded with SYNTHETIC area rugs.

The synthetic fibers, olefin (aka polypropylene), polyester, and acrylic, are being used to create “FAKE” wool rugs… but as you can see side by side, it’s like putting particle board next to real wood:

FAKE on left (acrylic), REAL on right (wool).

Now, some might think it is great that we now have a lot of inexpensive synthetic area rugs on the market. These people would be wrong, because the low cost rugs end up having a high cost that the buyers need to be aware of…

…because the sales people are not going to tell you this.

Pros and Cons of Today’s SYNTHETIC Fiber Area Rugs

PROS:

1) They are cheap.

If you pay more than $5 per sq ft for a synthetic olefin (polypropylene) or polyester or acrylic rug, you are being RIPPED OFF. You should truly pay next to nothing for these rugs because there is no labor cost in their production (all are machine made) and the fibers are essentially poor quality plastic.

This is basically the big “pro” of these rugs, that they are cheap.

The back of olefin rugs are hard to the touch - they feel like plastic because they are plastic.

CONS:

1) They require MORE cleaning.

The great thing about wool is that those fibers have lots of “pockets” in its construction to hide dust and grit, so they look good even when they are dirty.

That is NOT the case with olefin, polyester, and acrylic, which are plastic fibers and solid and smooth strands. This means there is no place to “hide” soil so it simply sticks to the outside of the fibers, and these rugs get duller, and uglier faster as a result. This means you will want to clean your synthetic rugs after months on the floor rather than after a year or two with your wool rugs. Synthetic rugs get ugly faster.

Because they are synthetic, if there are no issues like pet urine or flood exposure contamination, they can be surface cleaned with Hot Water Extraction (aka “steam cleaning”) and can be cleaned using more aggressive cleaning solutions than can be used on wool.

"Blah" looking acrylic rug. Flat colors. Texture looks like a sponge.

2) They wear and yellow faster.

Because they are plastic, they do not have longevity, and do not wear well with abrasion. In fact, most wall-to-wall carpet in commercial buildings is installed olefin carpet (because it’s CHEAP!). So the next time you are in a commercial building take a look at the entryways and high traffic areas of their carpet, and you will see how worn down that carpet gets after only a few years.

By the way, home improvement stores often carry olefin (polypropylene) carpet for homes (because it’s CHEAP!), but this is the absolute worst fiber to have for residential homes because it simply does not hold up to foot traffic. Look for nylon instead if you want synthetic fibers for your wall-to-wall carpeting.

Olefin, polyester, and acrylic can get worn after just a few years on the floor.

3) They are STICKY and SCRATCHY. (Regular vacuums will not help you.)

The most maddening thing about these cheaper synthetic rugs for their owners, and for the professional cleaners who are asked to clean them, is that they grab everything and are tough to get to release lint, hair, and grime.

These new synthetic shag rugs being sold by stores like Pottery Barn, are next to impossible to get looking super clean because professional cleaners need to literally try to “pull away” what washing does not release row by row. This construction type also cannot be surface cleaned with today’s tools, so sometimes you get rugs that require much more labor to clean, sometimes exceeding what was paid for the rug in the first place. to buy it

With shorter pile synthetic fiber area rugs, you will be tempted if you own one to just get a lint roller to try to roll up the stuff sticking to the fibers that your vacuum cleaner cannot pick up. It’ll use a lot of lint roller sheets though. =)

The only vacuum cleaners I’ve seen effective at getting lint and pet hair off of these types of rugs are the Sebo vacuum cleaners, which are fantastic, and powerful, German made machines, but also not a cheap machine in order to vacuum up a cheap rug.

They also, because they are plastic, are not super soft to the touch. They aren’t rugs that feel great when you walk on them barefoot, and kids certainly are not going to want to roll around on them.

4) They often have JUTE foundations. (If you have PETS, you will hate this fact.)

If you have pets that are not properly trained, you will have a problem with synthetic rugs not because of the plastic fibers.  Actually, olefin fibers though they ugly with grime, they are pretty much stain proof. But these plastic fibers are often wrapped  around jute.

Jute is an absorbent plant fiber that looks like straw:

Front corner of synthetic rug.

Back corner of synthetic rug, see the thick beige jute wefts.

Because nothing can penetrate the olefin fibers themselves (they have no “pockets”), there would technically be nothing to “hold” the odor in them…

…but the jute is another story entirely. And being thick compacted jute fibers, they hold odor like no other fiber can. They are the king of odor-holding fibers!

This means if you have any odor issues with synthetic rugs, you have two choices: one, to know that you will have to likely pay quite a bit more to clean and deodorize your rug by having it thoroughly washed than you paid for the rug to buy it; or, two, go buy another one and hope your pet does not repeat the problem.

Again, if the synthetic rug just is “dirty” and dull looking, it can be surface cleaned with hot water carpet cleaning equipment and chemicals. But if there are ODOR issues, or exposure from a FLOOD, the rugs need to be fully washed and deodorized – or simply replaced if that is the cheaper and easier option.

(FYI: With hand woven rugs, removing odors is not a problem. A proper wash process thoroughly removes the contaminants from urine exposure or flood exposure from wool and cotton fiber rugs.)

5) They are petroleum products, so they are not sustainable resources.

These plastic fibers are made from petroleum. There are some people who are not aware that synthetic fibers are plastic. They may not want to own them due to political, or environmental, or perhaps health reasons.

What’s nice about wool is that it’s a renewable resource…

…it grows back year after year to be sheared.

6) You will never say “WOW” after these synthetic rugs are cleaned.

What’s great about being a cleaner of wool rugs is that there is always a “wow” between when a client brings it in dirty, to when it is clean again.

One of the drags about having more synthetic rugs on the market today is that often the buyers of these rugs are not aware they are synthetic, and after they pay good money for a good cleaning, the “after” look of the rug is better but never a “wow.”

Olefin (synthetic) area rug. It's never going to look great.

DISPOSABLE rugs vs. ENJOYABLE rugs

When I was growing up in our rug gallery business, the two groups of rugs we had were “investment” and “decorative” rugs.

I was surrounded by antique and semi-antique works of woven art in our gallery. I was always amazed by the stories of how these rugs were literally knot by knot crafted by hand over months, and sometimes years, of weaving.

Today the rug market has been overridden by a lot of really bad product. There are cheap synthetic rugs, and cheap wool tufted rugs, all basically considered “disposable” rugs. The synthetic ones, because of the problems I’ve noted already, and the tufted rugs because of the growing problem with the latex holding them together. The landfills are slowly being filled with these rugs that only last a few years.

There are however, still “enjoyable” REAL rugs out there. WOVEN rugs. Rugs with a part of a weaver’s heart and soul added to the strands.

You might think that to buy a woven rug will set you back financially, but there is actually good quality new woven wool rugs at very affordable prices available. My rug friend Barry O’Connell on his oriental rug website recently laid out a comparison between an average new tufted wool rug price and a new woven wool rug to see what the difference was… it may surprise you.

It basically all comes down to this regarding synthetic fiber area rugs…

…if you need a rug that you don’t want to worry about, you could care less about the look because you are using it for a floorcovering rather than as a decorative addition to your home, and you know you will replace it in a few years – then buy a synthetic rug. (Or perhaps a wool tufted one if you want something that hides soil better than olefin.)

I have both in my house. A few small tufted wool rugs, and a few olefin mats, literally being used as door entry rugs because I did not want feet being wiped off on hand crafted woven rugs… that just seems disrespectful even though a wool woven rug could take it very well. Wool woven rugs are tough.

When I look at a hand woven rug though I see a piece of a weaver’s life in front of me…

,,,so I don’t like wiping my feet on it. =)

And with that, you know more than you probably wanted to about today’s synthetic fiber area rugs.

If you are a consumer, you know whether a synthetic rug is what you really want and need. (You can read up on more rug buying tips if you feel like you want to find “real” rugs to purchase, and if you plan to buy a rug from Pottery Barn, you can see what is good and what is not.).

If you are a rug cleaner, you probably already know some of the challenges being presented to us in the field today with these specific synthetic rugs, and perhaps this post can help you explain these situations better to your clients who own them.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional cleaner who wants to know how to get trained by “me” in the rug cleaning craft and business, just send an email to my team at textilepros@gmail.com for more information. Jim Pemberton and I are in the midst of compiling a waiting list for our 2012 and 2013 Textile Pro training programs.

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:

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!

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.)

Most professional rug cleaners should know this, but in case you don’t…

… wool rugs with material on the back like this one, are called TUFTED rugs:

Tufted rug from China. Loose cotton material backing.

Some have a loosely attached material like the above one from China, and some have material that is more firmly in place like this one from India:

Tufted wool rug from India.

I call tufted rugs “fake rugs” because these are commodity rugs that are quickly constructed by punching tufts through a canvas backing, and covered in a great deal of latex adhesive to hold it together, and then they shear off the top loops so that it gives the illusion of a pile woven rug from the top side, when it’s not woven at all.

Woven rugs take months, sometimes years to weave. They are pieces of art.

Tufted rugs are a way to get the “look” of a real rug (to the untrained eye), at a fraction of the construction time and cost. Most are “commodity” rugs. These rugs take days to craft, as opposed to months, and they will last you several years of use as opposed to woven oriental rugs that often outlive several generations of owners.

So, as with anything where corners are being cut to create a faster, cheaper version, there are consequences. And especially consequences – and limitations – if you are cleaning these tufted rugs.

Regardless of the type of material on the back of tufted rugs, they are all covering up this ugly mess of latex on the back holding the tufts of wool in place:

Latex backing of a tufted rug.

It is much prettier when covered up with material, don’t you think? =)

We mentioned the “plus” of tufted rugs, which is primarily that they are crafted faster and as a result are much cheaper to buy versus woven rugs.

(There are some high-price exceptions like Edward Fields hand crafted tufted rugs, which are much higher quality than what I’m showing here, but that is 1% of the tufted rug market, so I am talking about what you are seeing coming out of China, India, U.S., and other countries today.)

Let’s talk about some of the “consequences” of choosing a commodity tufted wool rug instead of a woven wool rug, so you are not surprised when any of these challenges come up.

BUCKLING

If you take a tufted rug and place it on a soft surface (like putting it on top of wall-to-wall carpeting) and then set heavy furniture over it, you will be in for a surprise.

Tufted rug buckling from furniture.

Though a good amount of latex is used on the back of these rugs, it’s still susceptible to cracking when too much weight is focused on specific points. If there is not a durable pad under the rug to support the furniture, then these lumps in a rug like this may not be correctible.

Back of Chinese tufted rug.

These rugs, to keep their shape, need to be on top of a hard surface when used. These face fibers are not twisted around warps like woven rugs are, but rather are looped in the shape of a “U” – so the only thing holding them in place is a thin dollop of glue. Take a look at these fibers falling away from this torn corner of a tufted rug:

Tufts falling away from a damaged corner.

There really is not much there to hold those “U” fibers in place. In fact, even with brand new tufted rugs, if you grab one fiber and tug, you will be able to pull it out.

Because of this latex construction, you want to take care on what you place on top of it, even if the rug is brand new, because it can’t take too much weight and bending.

DELAMINATION

Over time latex will degrade and deteriorate. In the past this meant a bit of crumbling and cracking, but in some of today’s tufted rugs, delamination is a MUCH messier situation:

Backing deterioration from water exposure and inferior quality latex.

Some of the lesser quality tufted rugs, in particular some coming from India today (and also some US hooked rugs), are using latex mixed with “filler” to help extend the batch of the adhesive and also to provide a firmer application to give the rug some shape.

This filler is sometimes marble dust, and sometimes concrete. But it is always a MESS when it gets wet.

This is by far the biggest danger facing rug cleaners today in handling tufted rugs, is the fact that some of these rugs cannot be soaked without having to deal with a big ugly mess. The rug not only cracks, crumbles, and powders all across the back and often “poofing” up through the front also…

…but it also leads to the rug losing its shape, because it was that heavy latex and filler that was making the rug stiff and square in the first place:

Tufted rug lost its shape after the latex deteriorated from a flood.

If you need to wash the rug (because it’s quite dirty), pull off the material on a corner and see if you might be unleashing a disaster with getting the rug wet.

BACKING DISCOLORATION

What do you think happens when you have an ugly, messy latex application, and then place a nice clean cotton material backing over the top?

At first, it looks great. Then, over time it begins to yellow (wouldn’t you if you were laying up against glue 24/7?)…

…and then when you wash it, and the glue residue, soil, dyes, and other “unmentionables” go through that cotton, like a filter – what do you think that does to the cotton? Well, I’ll show you:

Water marks, dye marks, browning marks on the back of a clean tufted rug.

One of the unfortunate consequences of owning a tufted rug is that when it gets washed, that backing gets marks all over it.

If the tufted rug is not heavily soiled, then a cleaner may opt to surface clean it as best as he can, and not mark up the backing, but in most cases rugs that come in for cleaning need a good wash. And soaking these rugs, which gets them the cleanest, will change the look of the backing material.

Water marks and browning on backing material.

Some of these marks can be improved with additional cleaning on the back side with an upholstery tool, to try to remove some of the browning on the cotton material. It adds additional cleaning time, and cost for this, but many people often do not care what the back side of their rug looks like, as long as the top side is nice and clean.

If the additional cleaning time does not improve the backing enough for the owner, it is also an option to pay to replace the material backing with a new piece (sometimes that is easier than trying to carefully clean the back and strip out those discolorations).

STENCIL INK BLEED

Another problem that is sometimes uncovered in the lesser quality hand-tufted rugs is the use of stenciling ink (usually pink or blue) to mark where tufts are places, and this ink can wick out and bleed when wet.

Back of tufted rug - stencil ink bled into backing material.

If you are not careful when cleaning rugs with this type of manufacturing flaw, then washing the rug can wick that ink to the top side of the rug’s fibers, and create large ink stains, which can be difficult to remove.

It’s important to look for “clues” on the back side that indicate stenciling marks were used. You can also grin the front fibers and look for anything noticeable from the front side.

Stenciling can be a messy problem. If you see the ink in your inspection process, and it is heavy, and bleeds in your dye test, then you may opt to only surface clean the rug.

It’s not the most thorough cleaning process to surface clean it, but it will be the only safe option for you in that case, especially if you are not equipped with the right type of equipment to quickly remove the water from the tufted rug and dry it quickly.

DECONTAMINATION CHALLENGES

Decontaminating tufted rugs to remove pet urine odor, or to decontaminate from flood exposure, can be tough.

Repeated pet urine contamination on a tufted rug can be next to impossible to remove the stink. Think about it… urine penetrating heavy glue. Do you really think a quick cleaning can get the contaminants out of that adhesive?

Tufted rug - flood contaminated.

Whether the tufted rug was a pet toilet, or was involved in a flood, it needs to be fully soaked to wash and decontaminate. But, with the earlier problems mentioned, the longer you soak these rugs the more problems you have.

It’s a catch 22.

You need to soak it to remove the odor causing contaminants, but soaking it can contribute to delamination, yellowing, water marks and discoloration on the backing material, and possible stencil ink bleeding.

What’s a rug cleaner to do?!?

Communicate all of the dangers, and the options, and have the rug owner tell you what they want done. Just be sure if you go ahead with the wash that you have a release of liability in case the “worst case scenarios” unfold during the soaking. The cleaner should not be punished for limitations created by poor rug construction.

ODOR THAT IS NOT COMING OUT

On some tufted rugs, the odor will not be coming out no matter how long you soak the rug.

Tufted rug bad odor.

With a certain percentage of tufted rugs from India (including many of the problem India rugs being sold through Pottery Barn, at least in the San Diego area), the rugs have an awful odor present in brand new product.

The odor is a smell that is like a combination of burnt rubber and dirty sweaty socks. It’s rancid, and it gets WORSE with cleaning.

It appears to be situations where the latex has gone bad and soured, and they still use it anyway. This is a manufacturing flaw, and the rug should be returned for a problem-free one instead.

HOW TO HANDLE TUFTED RUGS:

If you own a tufted rug, and you’ve bought it from a reputable rug merchant, you will likely have no issues taking it to be professionally cleaned. Do not clean the rug yourself. These rugs take considerably longer to dry, and you open up yourself to a whole host of problems (and mess) if you try a D-I-Y clean.

These rugs also should never be cleaned in the home setting. Though there may be no warning signs on the rug itself, you open yourself up to potential damage to the floor underneath (yellowing, dye transfer, latex powder residue).

If you are a professional rug cleaner, these are the things you need to take into consideration, because today’s tufted rugs hold many more challenges than those from even a few years ago.

Your pre-wash inspection process needs to include front and back close evaluation, and grinning open the front tufts to look for stencil ink dangers. Give the back of the rug a whack and see if any powder POOFS out to the front, especially in areas where you see there have been spills on the rug. This will show you delamination dangers if you are unable to pull away the backing material to evaluate the strength of the latex.

Tufted hooked rug. Latex back.

It is always best to communicate expectations BEFORE the wash. Share how the rug is constructed, and why it has material covering up the back, and that this will get blotchy after cleaning.

It is possible, when rugs delaminate, to re-latex the back and put a new material backing on the rug. This takes time and adds a significant repair cost to the cleaning. But if the rug has gotten heavily soiled, or contaminated by pets or a flood, it may be necessary to fully wash and then fully repair the rug in this way.

And the work may end up approaching what they paid to purchase their rug to begin with, so you might give them the opportunity to buy another rug instead. Especially if there is a chance that the odor in the rug won’t be coming out of that glue. Unfortunately some of these rugs end up being “disposable rugs” when they get contaminated badly with pet urine, because getting the odor out can be tough.

When corners get cut to produce a product that is cheaper for the buyer – someone ALWAYS ends up paying.

I just wanted to point out some of the dangers lurking in some of these tufted rugs so professional cleaners don’t end up being the ones who end up paying. =)

If you are thorough with your pre-inspection process, you will see the warning signs to keep you on safer ground.

Happy rug cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Those of you anywhere near Fort Myers, Florida – I’m teaching an afternoon class at Excel Supply on Wednesday, November 9th. I rarely make it down south so come learn some valuable rug basics, and bring all the questions you have about this business and how to be the best at it. Sign up by calling 1-800-909-3590. See you there!

Looking for some really good (and FUN) rug education?

Rug workshop "shop talk."

Not another infomercial to sell juice and big equipment, but an event where you walk away with know-how to take action on right away to avoid rug disasters, save rugs when they go “bad” on you, and tips to make you an even better rug cleaner so you have even more HAPPY rug clients?

Well then… I’ve got an event for you! And even better – it’s CHEAP! =)

(Thanks to our host.)

Wednesday October 12th in McKeesport, PA at the Pembertons, I’m bringing a half-day class to town => “Rug Disasters… And How To Avoid Them.”

Here’s what I’m going to share with the cleaners who come to town to spend this afternoon with me:

=> Discover the top costly mistakes both rookies and long-timers are making with today’s rugs.

=> Get introduced to the dreaded “Rugs To Run From” – the rugs that are the top ones that canNOT be safely cleaned, and end up creating a nightmare to the cleaners who give it a try.

RUN Forrest RUN!!! =)

=> Get a “top 10 tips” list on how to tackle some of the bigger problems with rugs, so that you can be a rug cleaning HERO.

=> Discover tips for getting into this business successfully, because this business is NOT for everyone, and it’s NOT as easy as some of the louder voices in this industry purport it to be. I’ll give you the straight scoop so you know if it’s the path for you.

Plus…

…if you are a regular reader of the Rug Chick blog, you know I don’t pull any punches on my opinions. I call them like I see them, and ruffle a few feathers in the process.

What can I say? I like the unvarnished TRUTH.

And I like to share things in plain English because I feel some in this industry over-complicate this craft, usually because most of them don’t know what the heck they are talking about because none have ever actually run a rug cleaning business. (Seriously.)

With so many different voices, it gets confusing, and most who want to learn the truth about building the best rug cleaning business end up feeling LOST…

Hello? Anybody out there? I'm lost!

So for those who make the trip to join me for this event on October 12th, I will be giving you access to my latest report “The Real Dirt On Rug Cleaning.”

It lays out the different choices of rug cleaning products, education, and systems, and my opinion on all of it. Things I feel are over-priced, people I feel are full of crap, and most importantly ways to get the different phases of rug cleaning done RIGHT whether you have a lot of money and room… or you don’t.

“Lisa, How Much To Attend?”

I said it would be cheap, and it is. It’s only $97 to attend.

Why so little? One reason => The Pembertons.

(I guess that’s TWO reasons, Lee and Jim.) =)

They are already flying me out because we are rolling out the first big Textile Pro Program intensive workshop at their facility on Oct. 13-14 with our first 20 hand-picked companies who we are working with over six months with on-line, in-person, and consulting training to make them the best rug and fine fabric cleaning specialists in their region.

Our industry is desperate for real-world textile specialist training, so we are developing the upcoming generation of go-to rug and fabric cleaners one small exclusive group at a time.

So, I will be in PA to work with our 1st Textile Pro Team. And we thought it would be a great idea to put on a valuable rug basics class for any of the Pembertons clients who want to come gain nuggets of know-how on rugs.

And since Pembertons is not the quickest place to get to (it’s sure beautiful though!) – I wanted to make sure that anyone who comes to this half-day event gets at least 10 times their investment in return. And that is my guarantee to you. You come, I will make it worth the trip.

However, if you want to attend, there are only 35 spots, so jump on the phone and give Pembertons a call to register at 800-342-2297.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. If Pennsylvania is just too far away for you, I will be putting on this same half-day program at Excel Supply in Fort Myers, Florida on November 9th. Same format, same price, but warmer weather. =)

We LOVE Rugs!

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

Blue dye migration on Wilton wool rug.

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

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

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

The red dye crocks on to a damp towel.

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

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

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

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

1) TEA WASHED RUGS

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

India tea washed rug

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

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

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

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

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

Cleaning the fringe removes the tea wash dye on some.

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

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

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

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

2) INKED RUGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dry towel picks up red from the rug easily.

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

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

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

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

CLICK HERE => Rug Shop Set-ups

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Pets

CLICK HERE => Rugs That Bleed

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Plants

CLICK HERE => Tea Wash Rugs

CLICK HERE => Why Some Rugs Buckle

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

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Floods

CLICK HERE => Silk Rugs

CLICK HERE => Fake Silk (Viscose) Rugs

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

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

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

- Lisa

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

You’re in trouble indeed…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pet Urine Odor Removal From Rugs

Remove The Source (Woven Rugs)

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

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

Rug loom. Hand tying wool knots around cotton warps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s another woven rug, but by machine:

Woven rug. Machine made.

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

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

Rug wash pit.

Wash floor - high volume water.

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

Dangers From Pet Urine To Woven Rugs

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

1) STAINS

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) DYE BLEED and COLOR LOSS

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

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

Red dye bleed on a silk rug from pet urine.

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

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

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

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

Light gray color is gone where the urine stain is.

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

3) DRY ROT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remove The Source (Tufted Rugs)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) Pre-Inspect and Protect

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

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

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

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

2) Pre-Treat Visible Pet Urine Stains

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

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

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

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

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

Water Claw Flash Spotter

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

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

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

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

3) Wash & Deodorize/Enzyme If Needed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4) Dry Thoroughly & Additional Work If Needed

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

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

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

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

Back to pets…

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

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

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

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

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

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Tips for Rug Owners who have accident-prone Pets…

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

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

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

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

Happy rug cleaning!

- Lisa

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

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

And my answer is usually… it depends.

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

Here is the list of different causes of buckling:

Weaving Characteristics

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

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

Weaver using a horizontal loom.

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

Tension along end of this Afghan rug causes buckling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stretching an Afghan rug to help it lay flatter.

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

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

Material Backings

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

Embroidery needlepoint rug with a heavy cotton backing.

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

Crewel stitch (aka chainstitch) needlepoint with material backing.

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

Seam tape can split and buckle.

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

Tufted Rugs (Latexed Material Backing)

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

Old latex delaminating on a tufted rug.

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

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

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

Buckling in a tufted rug from furniture.

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

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

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

Edge Finishes (By Machine or By Hand)

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

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

Machine serging of edges created curling of this rug.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Floods and Extraction Equipment

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

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

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

Buckling in field of a rug from extracting.

Hanging Rugs To Dry

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

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

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

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

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

Hang rugs at an angel to lessen potential creasing.

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

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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! =)