Steam Cleaning Oriental, Wool or Silk Area Rugs in SW Florida – DON’T!
Before and After In-Plant Cleaning Results
An Oriental or Persian area rug can make a room look spectacular. These rugs bring a home to life with color, history, and texture and can separate living spaces, add character and become the design element of any room. Every day, depending on where placed, wool or silk textiles can endure much wear. They’re walked on, children or pets play on them, babies may throw up on them or worse.
To extend your area rugs life, value, and looks, it’s imperative you know how to care for them.
Steam Cleaning, Heat and Carpet Chemicals
Carpet cleaning companies do a good job cleaning nylon carpeting. They are not natural textile, such as wool or silk, cleaning specialists.
Never allow a “carpet cleaning” company the opportunity to “clean” your wool or silk textiles. The steam and chemicals used in the steam cleaning process can damage rug fibers and natural dyes.
Steam and carpet cleaning chemicals can cause discoloration, dye migration, and fading. In some cases, damage caused by steam cleaning is not noticeable right away and can take months to appear. By the time you notice the loss, it’s too late.
The steam cleaning method used by carpet cleaning company’s is a surface cleaning method only. It will NOT deep clean your rug.
Steam cleaning involves a technician spraying chemicals on top of a carpet and then applying steam and a vacuum. This process is ineffective at cleaning wool and silk rugs and at best, can merely remove the soil from the tips of the fibers.
During the steam cleaning process, there is no brushing, rinsing, dusting, or washing the fibers; or care taken to manage dye migration
When you steam clean the surface of a rug, the deep-set dirt is pushed further into the foundation and can lead to mold formation, off-gassing, fiber stiffening, and dry rot.
When you spray cleaning agents on an Oriental rug, the spray only removes the surface dirt and odor; it does nothing for deep-set contaminates, dirt, sand, pet urine, spills, etc.
The Hand Wash Method
In places like Turkey and Iran, where many beautiful hand-woven rugs are made, most people take off their shoes before entering a home, so hand washing of a rug every 3-5 years a year is all that’s needed.
However, in places like the United States, it is not customary to remove shoes before entering a house, so rugs experience more foot traffic, pet accidents, food and drink spills. The more traffic your rug receives, the more often it should be cleaned. A good rule of thumb is every 18-24 months.
To properly care for an Oriental, Persian or other wool or silk area rug, it should be cleaned by professionals, not in your home, but in a dedicated rug cleaning plant at the hands of an experienced professional.
Wool and silk area rugs require specialized cleaning and attention due to their construction, dye types, foundation structure and value. Some kid on a commission working for a carpet cleaning company is not capable of cleaning an area rug and chances are, they do not know the difference between a Tabriz, a hand-knotted, machine made or tufted area rug. If you can’t identify a rugs origin, there’s no way clean it properly
In over 90% of rug cleanings, the appropriate course of action is to submerge wash them. This entails:
- Inspecting the area rug with Xenon lighting to uncover hidden pet urine, bacteria, and insect activity
- Thoroughly dust the area rug at over 40,000 harmonic vibrations per minute to dislodge soils, sand, dust-mites, pollen and other contaminants from the foundation of the rug
- Prepare a specialty bath and submerge-wash the area rug and clean on both sides
- pH condition rinse to ensure no residues are left behind and that fibers are conditioned
- Dry the area rug on an air table
- Final inspection
- Groom the nap and lightly deodorize with an allergen-free deodorizer
For the life and beauty of your area rug and to guarantee a thoroughly exhaustive cleaning, only allow a certified, experienced professional access to your beautiful wool or silk textiles.
Oriental Rug Salon is a Certified Partner with the prestigious Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) and the International Carpet & Rug Institute (CRI). In addition, we are A+ Rated with the Better Business Bureau and a five-year-in-a-row-winner of the coveted Angie’s List Super Service Award. We are experts in Oriental, Persian, Turkish and other wool and silk area rug cleaning, restoration and repair.
For more information on Oriental Rug Salon’s award-winning services, please visit us online at www.OrientalRugSalon.com or give us a call any time at 239-424-8171. We offer free pick-up and delivery for most rugs and the average turnaround times is 7-10 days.
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To view our video library on how to care for your beautiful area rugs please click on this link: //orientalrugsalon.com/videos/
Oriental Rug Salon offers free pick-up and delivery for most rugs in the cities of Cape Coral, Fort Myers, North Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Lehigh Acres, Alva, Buckingham, Estero, Bonita Springs, Naples, Marco Island, Sanibel, Captiva, Useppa, Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte Florida.
We offer services such as fringe repair and replacement, pet urine treatments for Oriental rugs, insect treatments for wool area rugs, Oriental rug appraisals, and valuations, Scotchgard Fiber Protector for Wool and Silk Area Rugs, Silk Area Rug Cleaning, Turkish, Oriental, Indian and Persian Area Rug Cleaning.
