Can a Carpet Cleaner clean my rug?

Proper rug cleaning should include thorough dusting and immersion washing. Immersion washing is where the rug is submerged in a pool or a stream of water during the wash process. This type of washing thoroughly removes all the dirt and safely rinses away all of the shampoo residues from the rug and leaves the foundation in the face yarns clean and supple.

What does carpet cleaning do?

Carpet cleaning equipment can only clean the tips of the face yarns in a rug. In addition, the high heat from the hot water extraction or steam cleaning can damage the dyes in the rug and cause colour bleeding. For this reason, wool rugs should only be washed in cold water. Dedicated rug cleaning facilities like ours also have specialised equipment to safely and quickly get the rugs dry – we have a temperature and humidity controlled drying room. Because of the tightly wrapped fibres in the foundation of the rug which are often made of very absorbent cotton, it’s easy for the outside fibres of the rug to become completely dry, while the inside of the foundation is still really wet. If the inner part of the rug isn’t dried quickly and thoroughly it can lead to mould, mildew and other problems like browning.

As good as modern carpet cleaning equipment is, it can leave residue behind, especially in the tightly woven foundation of the rug. This residue attracts soil and can cause your rug to become dirty, very quickly. Nothing can rinse the shampoos and detergents from your rug better than immersion washing, which is another reason that true rug washing should be your only choice when cleaning your rugs.

Finally, the proper cleaning chemistry is very different for wool than for nylon. Most carpet is made of nylon which is a type of plastic and nylon fibres respond well and can be cleaned with fairly strong detergents. Wool is essentially hair, and is much more delicate, similar to the hair on your head. If you washed your hair with something that was designed to clean plastic bathroom surfaces, it would dry out and become very brittle and damaged. The same thing happens to your rugs when carpet cleaners use detergents that are designed for plastic carpet fibres on your delicate wool rug fibres.

For these reasons, it’s important to never let your rugs be cleaned in your home with regular carpet cleaning equipment. It’s also important to have your rugs washed every six months to a year by a professional rug cleaner.