How to Properly Clean Your Area Rug

Unlike wall-to-wall carpeting, very few rugs can be properly cleaned in your home. Both do-it-yourself machines and services with truck-mounted tanks for carpeting can lead to problems for cleaning your precious area rugs in your home.

Effects of Improper Methods to Clean Area Rugs

It’s crucial that your cleaning technician knows the exact type of rug they are working with. Yes, being able to identify hand-made vs machine-made is important, however, being able to identify the type of material a rug is made out of can dramatically change how a rug is cleaned.

• Many rugs contain wool, silk, mercerized cotton, or viscose. If not cleaned in a controlled environment, the rug can easily be ruined. Damage occurs to the rug if the water is too hot or if the rug is not dried properly. Controlling these elements can be very difficult to do in-home. Plus, these types of rugs regularly fall victim to color bleeding. Most commonly, red or blue dye migrates into other colors.
• Wilton & Axminster bordered rugs are very susceptible to issues during cleaning. For example, these types of rugs can easily shrink due to the border and field being women in different directions. This can easily result in the rug shrinking. Wilton & Axminster bordered rugs should be tacked out onto a special floor. By tacking the rug down this minimizes the risk of shrinkage. It can also result in humping as well.
• Mold, mildew, and browning can occur from having the rug too wet for too long. And, a wet rug sitting on your wood floors, especially laminate or engineered flooring, can cause your floor to swell.

Woodard’s Professional Area Rug Cleaning Process

When you choose Woodard to clean your area rugs, we treat them in our state-of-the-art Rug Care Center with specialized cleaning equipment and controlled temperature and humidity in our drying room. This accelerates the drying process and eliminates possible mold/mildew, as well as minimizing browning and color run. The temperature also kills many insect larvae such as moths and carpet beetles. You definitely cannot reach these temperatures when cleaning an area rug in-home!

Woodard also utilizes an air-dusting process to remove dry soil and particulate in the rug before cleaning. For pet damage, there is an additional decontamination bath in a specialized tank to remove contaminants and odor. If rugs have areas that need reweaving, hand repair, rebinding, fringe, or fibers replaced, their specialists perform needed repairs.

About Woodard Cleaning & Restoration

Woodard Cleaning & Restoration was founded in 1946 by Earl and Nancy Woodard. Located in St. Louis, Missouri, Woodard services the greater metro area (Illinois, St. Charles County, Jefferson County, St. Louis County, and many more). Woodard is proud to serve as the preferred provider for cleaning & restoration services. Our cleaning services include carpet, hard surface, furniture, and rug cleaning for both residential and commercial properties. We also provide water, fire, board-up, storm, and smoke restoration services for residential and commercial clients. For information or questions submit a form online or call us at (314) 227-3932.

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Updated 4/21/2020