Oriental Rug Cleaning
A Luxury Spa for Your Heirloom Rugs
The Carpet Chemist “Rug Lab” is a world-renowned 5,000 square foot facility that was specifically designed and built for a maximum rug cleaning and rug dyeing experience. Nestled off of I-64 Exit 32 at 560 Gordon Ln. in Shelbyville, KY, our world-class rug washing facility offers the perfect environment for efficient and dedicated rug cleaning.
Proper lighting, airflow, temperature, humidity levels, water quality and draining are all essential to giving your rug the most thorough cleaning imaginable. Rugs from all over the globe are shipped to our Carpet Chemist Lab for cleaning, repair and dyeing. As experienced rug cleaners, we have the tools and skills to properly clean silk, wool, viscose, Navajo, Turkish, Persian and Oriental rugs. We are rug cleaning connoisseurs and we guarantee VIP treatment for your cherished family heirlooms!
The Do’s and Don’ts of Rug Cleaning
It’s important to remember that not all rugs are created equal. For instance, a Flokati rug is much different than a synthetic machine-made rug from your local retail store. Since the quality and material of these rugs are very different, they need to be cleaned differently.
While you don’t have to worry about your synthetic rug being damaged by steam cleaning equipment, a wool or silk rug can be ruined by the same process. Harsh carpet cleaning chemicals can remove color from your rug and cause wrinkles, browning or even structural damage or dye bleeding. Expensive Oriental and Persian rugs should always be cleaned by professional rug cleaners at a facility that’s specifically designed to wash fine rugs.
The following is a step-by-step account of our rug cleaning process. Each and every rug is unique and treated on an individual basis. But this will provide you with a general sense of how we’ll care for your rugs.
- Pre-Inspection As highly trained rug cleaners, we start by inspecting your rug’s fringes, fiber type, pet odors, stains, moth damage, burns, color fading and a host of other variables. Such thorough inspection will help determine the proper cleaning strategy for your rug. For example, natural dyes used in the making of your handmade rug will not appear to have an even and consistent color like synthetic dyes typically do. Natural dyes can be made from bugs, berries and other plants. Another very important element to look for is moth damage or larvae. Moths can consume and destroy natural fiber rugs if they aren’t eradicated immediately.
- Meticulous Dusting Dusting (or dry soil removal, as we rug geeks prefer to call it), is the most important part of the rug cleaning operation. An uneducated rug cleaner might blast copious amounts of scalding hot water down into your rug and extract maybe 40 percent of the dust. But here’s the problem with that: Dry soil is caked far down into the rug fibers, and there’s no possible way this approach is ever going to remove it all. Here at The Carpet Chemist, we utilize special equipment that beats every morsel of food and dirt out of your rug before it ever enters our rug washing area. Without this crucial step in the rug cleaning process, your rug will be riddled with hardened dirt that will destroy the structural integrity of the rug itself.
- Specialty Stain and Odor Removal The Carpet Chemist is recognized throughout the world for our ability to remove virtually any type of stain from your invaluable rugs, including:
- Pet urine and odor (typically from dogs and cats)
- Red-tinted beverages (wine, kids’ flavored drinks, sodas, sports drinks)
- Rust
- Color loss (sun fading, high-pH cleaning chemicals)
- Coffee
- Browning (cellulose browning from high-pH chemicals or water)
- Complete Rug Submersion In many parts of the world, rugs are cleaned in rivers. The cold water flushes out every single bit of material that doesn’t belong. At our private rug cleaning lab, we embrace the same concept that’s been used by rug washers for thousands of years. Only instead of heading to the river, we use our fancy modern equipment and flush out our rugs in a submersion pool or “artificial river.” This is the only way to ensure that contaminants such as urine are completely and totally eliminated from the rug. The amount of time a rug spends in the submersion pool depends on the amount of urine saturation and other contaminants that are present in the rug. Don’t worry. Your rug will love this part—it’s like a spa for your rug!
- Fiber Agitation Depending on the fiber type of the rug, we will add the exact amount of special formula needed (wool fiber cleaner, silk fiber cleaner, etc.). Once the solution has been properly and evenly applied, we will agitate the rug with brushes (we use different brush types depending on the rug’s textile types). This will ensure that each and every fiber is being adequately scrubbed from side to side and top to bottom. This is where those stubborn stains such as candy, syrup and other hard, sticky substances become dislodged.
- Neutral PH-Balanced Rinse The final step in cleaning the largest portion of the rug is flushing out every bit of rug cleaning solution and dropping the pH level back down to a neutral state. We do this by rinsing the rug with a safe, low-pH rinse. This is what makes the colors in your rug pop and will make it feel nice and soft again! This is a very intricate step in the rug cleaning procedure and should never, ever be rushed.
- Fringe Cleaning Fringe cleaning is a crucial step in getting the fringes to their whitest point. The fringes are actually the foundation of your rug. There are many types of fringes and many ways to clean and whiten them. Here at The Carpet Chemist, we have a solution for each and every type of fringe to get your rug looking its absolute best.
- Fiber Protector Think of this as insurance for your rug. Once your rug has been fully cleaned and manicured, we always encourage you to opt for the spill guard fiber protector. While it’s true that we are able to remove extremely difficult stains, the fiber protector prevents future spills from becoming new stains. Spills will actually bead up on top of the rug fiber instead of absorbing into it and staining the rug.
- Optimal Rug Drying Yes, there is a science to drying! The fancy term for it is psychrometry. When drying extremely valuable heirloom rugs, we place them in a special drying room that is temperature-controlled with powerful heated air movers and dehumidifiers. We generally allow 1-3 days for rug drying to take place, depending on the density of the rug.
- Rug Grooming This is like combing your rug’s hair! Since rugs vary widely in fiber type and length, we have a cornucopia of grooming rakes and brushes to suit your rug. Fringe grooming is another form of grooming that gives your fringes a neat and clean appearance for a flawless finish.
Our Fiber Protection Formula
Once the cleaning is finished, we highly encourage our customers to opt for our rug fiber protection treatment. Our unique formula protects your rug’s textiles from everyday soils, oils and spills. It also will deter pesky moths, carpet beetles, spiders and Japanese stink bugs from making your rug their new home. While our rug cleaning service targets the current problems with your rug, our fiber formula is a smart investment to prevent future problems down the road.
- Keeping Your Rug Looking New We have developed the most environmentally safe textile protector that has ever hit the market. While we use it specifically on rugs and carpets, our customers love it so much that, per their request, we have applied it to their curtains, dining room chairs, living room upholstery, mattresses and even boots and clothes. In the event of a spill, you will actually see the liquid pool up on the tips of the rug fibers without being absorbed into the rug. It’s science at its finest and makes a world of difference in protecting the look and feel of your cherished heirloom rug.
- Peace of Mind With Our Worry-Free Guarantee We are so confident in our rug fiber formula that if you have a stain on your rug within one year of having the rug fiber protection applied, we will remove the stain for free. That’s our guarantee to you! Trust your precious heirloom rugs with our expert rug cleaners providing world-class workmanship and superior products.
- Extend the Life of Your Textiles Our rug fiber formula forms an invisible shield around the rug fibers as it dries. This means that microscopic sand will not scratch the rug fibers as you walk over them. Spills will not become sticky messes that attract dirt. Your rugs will look as good a year later as they did when you first had them cleaned and protected. And rest assured that every single carpet and rug solution that we formulate is safe for people, pets and our planet.
The Carpet Chemist says: Protect your heirloom rugs with our rug fiber protection formula. It’s like having insurance for your rug with a worry-free guarantee!
Our Commitment to You
Some companies use a blanket approach to rug cleaning without considering important factors such as the solubility of grime or the required pH of cleaning solutions. We do things much differently at The Carpet Chemist. We apply science to built-in dirt, stubborn carpet stains and color loss. For the very best in Oriental rug care, call The Carpet Chemist at 800-515-1342.
In addition to rug cleaning, we specialize in the following carpet care solutions:
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