All You Need To Know About Rugs
Fringe. People love it. Or they hate it. On some rugs, it’s short, so it’s not a bother. On others it’s L-O-N-G, and drives some rug owners nuts. (I’ve had more than one take scissors to them in frustration… and then discovered the costly error of their ways, which we will get to later in [...]
“My rug has white dots in the field, is this damage?” Many rug cleaners, and rug owners for that matter, do not know that the “100% WOOL RUG” in front of them (that is what the label says) often has a very large amount of COTTON in it. In the loom photo to the right, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
You’re in trouble indeed… 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 [...]
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 [...]
“I know better.” That is EXACTLY what I said in my head as I was looking at a cute shiny, smooth blue top at Nordstrom… …and saw the label said “60% rayon.” You see, I know that rayon (also sold as viscose) is one of the weakest fibers out there. It’s one of the fibers [...]
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 [...]
Rugs are loosely lumped into two general categories – “tribal” rugs or “city” rugs. City rugs come from “bigger” weaving operations that tend to produce rugs with more intricate designs, higher knot counts, and tighter quality control. This is a broad generalization of course. Tribal rugs come from smaller operations, or nomadic weavers who weave [...]
I know… it’s supposed to be love… …but it made me chuckle anyway. I was behind a car of a rug dealer in La Jolla once, and he had a bumper sticker that read… “Rugs, not drugs.” I thought that was cute. But sometimes “war” and rugs cross paths, like in Afghanistan weavings. In tribal [...]