How To Protect Your Oriental Rugs
When it comes to protecting your oriental rugs from damage, the same principles, many of them, that apply to wall-to-wall synthetic carpet also apply to oriental rugs.
In this article we are going to go over a number of ways you can help protect your oriental rugs from stains and other damage.
If you have ANY questions regarding spot and stain removal please contact us. We will be more than happy to answer any and all questions related to our oriental rug cleaning service in Vancouver, Washington and the surrounding areas.
So Let's Get Onto How To Protect Your Oriental Rugs
1. The first thing you must realize on any carpet, but especially oriental
rugs, is to act fast.
The longer you allow a spill, or other substance, to remain in the carpet the more difficult it can be to get out or, in a worse case scenario, the more damage to the fiber can occur.
Oriental rugs are made with natural fibers, which are more prone to staining and damage than synthetic fibers.
2. When you have a spill on your carpet, be sure to address it with a white terry cloth towel and blot the spill up.
Do not rub back and forth. Blot.
Another good way to get a lot of the spill out of your oriental rug is to fold the white terry cloth towel in half, or in fours, and put the towel on the spot where the liquid was spilled.
Then stand on the towel for a good 60 seconds or so until you get no more transfer to the towel. You might need to do this a few times, but the towel will absorb quite a bit of the liquid.
Always use a CLEAN WHITE TERRY CLOTH TOWELL or a WHITE MICRO FIBER
TOWEL.
3. When it comes to solids that are spilled on your carpet, they need to also be addressed quickly, so they do not get "smooshed" into your carpet fibers.
But solids allow you a bit more time to address them.
When you attempt to remove solids from a oriental rug always use a spoon or spatula, and be gentle when scooping up the solids. Take your time and do a good job - you will be rewarded in the end.
As with liquid spills, DO NOT RUB!
4. Once you have all of the liquid blotted up and the solids removed from the oriental rug - the next step is to use a spot remover.
Now this is where things can get VERY tricky. With synthetic carpet there are a number of different types of spotters you can use on the carpet and probably not do any harm.
With oriental rugs this is not the case! Proceed with extreme caution!
Always, and we mean ALWAYS, test the spotter in a VERY inconspicuous area. The back of the rug would be a good place.
Never apply the spotter directly to the oriental rug, always apply the spotter to a white terry cloth towel and then BLOT the towel on the spot.
If you have a huge desire to apply the spotter DIRECTLY to the spot (you should not do this) then at least use VERY small amounts of the spotter.
When testing the spotter, the main issue is color transfer and/or color loss. If you see any color transfer from the oriental rug fibers to the white terry cloth towel - that is not a good sign and also a sign to give us a call. You are in big time danger territory once you start seeing bleeding and color transfer. So STOP.
5. If your testing shows no color transfer, or bleeding, the proceed with the spot removal. Continue to add SMALL amounts of the spotter to the towel and then blot the towel on the spot. Again, never rub!
6. Continue to blot up the spot as long as you continue to get transfer, once the transfer of the spot to the towel ends - stop.
7. At this point the fibers might be slightly damp if it was a solid spill you were cleaning up but, still, you should put air movement on the rug to get it to dry as quickly as possible.
If the spot you were trying to clean up was a liquid spill, and the carpet is fairly damp, you need to get air movement on the area as soon as you get done blotting up the spot and leave it on the carpet until the fibers are totally dry.
8. Protect your oriental rug with a high-quality fabric protector. When your oriental rug is well-protected with a quality fabric protector it can be extremely difficult to stain the fibers.
A good fabric protector can save you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars in expensive stain removal for valuable oriental rugs.
Some Things To Pay Close Attention To
Never use bleach to clean any carpet spot. EVER. With synthetic carpets, most of them, you are going to get color loss.
With a natural fiber oriental rug you are literally, in many cases, going to dissolve the fibers! Yes it happens. We have seen it a number of times.
The Bottom Line:
If you follow the procedures outlined in this article you can clean up many spots, and do it safely. The key here is the word SPOT. A spot is not a stain.
A stain is where the fiber has absorbed and taken on the color of the liquid or food that was spilled on it. Stains are much different and can be very tricky to get out in oriental rugs.
So if you are even slightly stressed out about treating your oriental rug for spots and stains - don't be!
Just give us a call at Linton's Carpet Cleaning and we'll be happy to help you with any oriental rug cleaning in Vancouver (or the surrounding areas) that you need done.
Linton's Oriental Rug Cleaning - (360) 608-5441
If you have the need for any oriental rug cleaning in Vancouver, Washington, or the surrounding areas, please give us a call today.
We offer expert and high-quality oriental rug cleaning and we guarantee we clean your valuable oriental rugs the right way.
If you need pickup and delivery of oriental rugs we can also provide that service. You can be assured that when you hire us to clean your oriental rugs you are getting the very best in oriental rug cleaning in Vancouver.