Watering a potted plant near a rug can lead to a big ugly dry rot hole in a rug if it’s left undisturbed for too long. If you want to know why this happens, please read this => Don’t Water The Rugs! That’s what happened to this runner. The moisture from a potted plant was [...]
Silk rugs. What you need to know.
Silk is known as a fabric, and fiber, of luxury. People think you need to baby silk items, but silk is actually a very strong – and beautiful – fiber. (Unlike rayon and viscose, both names for artificial silk rug fibers, which are incredibly weak, yellow, lose color, and break at an alarming rate under [...]
Why rugs are not cleaned in the home.
The recommended cleaning method for wool oriental and specialty rugs, is washing them. For as long as rugs have been woven, they have also been washed. Though in the past with a bit more “low tech” methods than are available today. But before the washing even begins – the beating does! Rugs – ESPECIALLY wool [...]
Oriental Rug Dyes. What you need to know.
True or false - A colorfast wool rug can bleed? => TRUE. The rug may be colorfast in CERTAIN situations. For example, with a regular cleaning or wash, with a neutral or acid side cleaning solution, the rug could be perfectly fine. No dye migration (aka “bleeding”). But, under different circumstances, it could absolutely have dyes migrate [...]
Rugs and Floods. What to do.
With the number of home floods escalating due to severe weather, a number of rugs will be exposed to flood water. The longer a rug remains wet the more likely it is to have dye migration that is not correctible. Rugs that are not washed properly, and not dried thoroughly, can end up with mildew [...]
Rug-Eating Bugs. What to do about them.
I’ve been getting a lot of emails lately on bugs eating rugs – so I thought I’d share some tips for both rug owners and rug cleaners. The two biggest wool rug culprits are moths and carpet beetles. For some more extensive ways to get rid of theses critters from your home, visit this site [...]
Why some rug dyes bleed.
There are a variety of reasons a rug might “bleed” on you. Let’s go through different scenarios for a wool rug like this one, where the red dyes have migrated into the neighboring off-white areas: What could create this type of dye migration? Several things. FUGITIVE DYES – if the red is shown to not [...]
Don’t water the rugs!
If you have plants anywhere near your rugs in your home – or if you are a rug cleaner and see plants near rugs you are picking up to clean – you want to watch out for this particular problem that often is not discovered until it’s too late. Even the most careful person spills [...]
Hidden danger – bleeding rug wefts.
Every professional rug cleaner knows how to test a rug to see if the dyes are colorfast or not. At least they should know how to. =) Especially since a good percentage of new rugs today have dye colorfastness “issues.” I walk through the steps in my post on dye testing, and the video on [...]