After 56 years of cleaning carpets, upholstery and area rugs, I’ve encountered just about every type of area rug you can imagine. Different fibers, different combinations of fibers, different constructions, different pile heights and different dyes.
Over all those years, I’ve learned that there are really two things you should think about when buying an area rug: appearance and area rug maintenance.
Different fibers. Different combinations of fibers. Different constructions. Different pile heights. Different dyes. And, occasionally, materials that make you stop and wonder, “They made a rug out of that?”
Over all those years, I’ve learned that there are really two things you should think about when buying an area rug: appearance and cleanability.
Good area rug maintenance starts with understanding what your rug is made from.
The appearance part is easy.
You see a rug you like, you look at the colors and pattern, you picture it in your home and think, “That’s the one.”
Done.
But there is another question that most people don’t think about until something gets spilled on the rug:
How easy—or difficult—is this rug going to be to maintain and clean?
That’s something I wish more people would consider before they buy the rug.
Yes, I’ve Actually Seen a Rug Made From Paper
One of the more unusual rugs I encountered over the years was in the home of a young couple with a six-month-old baby.
Now, anyone who has had a six-month-old knows that food doesn’t always stay where you put it.
Sometimes babies throw food.
And sometimes they seem to find it especially funny when they do it.
If the baby is sitting on an area rug at the time, you’ve got a problem.
In this particular case, the rug was made from what was essentially paper.
The manufacturer had taken brown paper, similar to the material used to make a grocery bag, cut it into strips, rolled the strips to create a thicker fiber-like material and treated it so that it could be woven into a rug.
The finished rug had a very distinctive appearance.
But now think about what happens when you spill something on a brown paper grocery bag.
You don’t exactly think, “I wonder how well that will clean.”
The treatment applied to the paper helps, of course, but there are still significant limitations to how aggressively a material like that can be cleaned.
I’m not saying that someone shouldn’t buy a rug like this.
I’m saying that you should know what you’re buying.
A rug can look beautiful in a showroom and still be a very different proposition when you have to clean it.
And the paper rug is an extreme example. There are plenty of much more common rugs where the same basic issue applies.
Mixed Fibers Can Change How a Rug Ages
Let’s take a more common example.
Suppose you buy an area rug that is 80% wool and 20% silk.
When the rug is new, the combination can be beautiful. The silk can provide a sheen and appearance that gives the rug a look you simply wouldn’t get from wool alone.
But wool and silk are different fibers.
They don’t have the same durability, resilience or resistance to abrasion.
After years of people walking across the rug, particularly in the main traffic areas, those fibers can begin to show the effects of use differently.
The silk may gradually lose some of the appearance that attracted you to the rug in the first place.
That’s not necessarily a cleaning problem.
It’s a wear problem.
Vacuuming is one of the most important parts of area rug maintenance.
And there is another consideration when that rug eventually needs to be cleaned.
When a rug contains several different fibers, you have to consider the most sensitive fiber or component when deciding how aggressively it can be cleaned.
You can’t simply say, “It’s mostly wool, so let’s clean it like a wool rug.”
If the silk is more sensitive to the cleaning process, that has to be taken into consideration.
That can place limitations on how aggressively the entire rug can be cleaned.
Then You Have to Think About the Dyes
The fibers aren’t the only thing I look at.
The dyes are important, too.
Different fibers can react differently to dyes, and some dyes can be more prone to bleeding or migrating when moisture and cleaning solutions are introduced.
Imagine a rug with a light wool background and a darker silk design.
If a dye becomes unstable during cleaning, it can potentially migrate from one area into an adjoining area of another color.
Now we’re no longer just talking about removing soil.
We’re talking about color migration.
That’s one of the reasons professional rug cleaning isn’t simply a matter of putting cleaning solution on a rug and extracting it.
Before you clean a rug, you need to understand what you’re dealing with.
Sometimes the Rug’s Texture Is the Problem
Another type of rug I’ve encountered over the years is the highly textured rug.
One that I remember particularly well was made from felted wool balls.
It’s difficult to describe unless you’ve actually seen one.
The individual elements were roughly an inch tall and perhaps a third of an inch wide, with considerable space between them. It was nothing like the relatively continuous surface of a conventional cut-pile rug.
The homeowner liked the appearance.
I could understand why.
But when I looked at it, I wasn’t just thinking about how attractive it was.
I was thinking:
“How am I going to clean this thing?”
I figured I might have to take a small hand tool and clean the entire rug on my hands and knees.
Fortunately, the homeowner sold the house not long after the rug was installed.
I was actually pretty happy about that.
I never had to find out!
But that rug illustrates an important point.
The more unusual the construction of a rug, the more important it is to think about maintenance before you buy it.
Different Pile Heights Can Make Vacuuming Difficult
A much more common situation is a rug with different pile heights or a lot of variation in its texture.
These rugs can look great.
Different levels of pile can give a rug depth and visual interest.
But there is something else you have to consider:
How are you going to vacuum it?
I’ve talked before about why regular vacuuming is so important to the life of an area rug. Dry soil isn’t harmless. Every time you walk across a rug, those tiny particles can be worked against the fibers.
That’s why regular vacuuming is one of the most important things you can do to maintain a rug.
I’ve explained more about this in Ask Alec: Is Vacuuming Really Just About Appearance?.
But effective vacuuming depends on airflow and suction.
Think about a relatively uniform rug with a 1/2-inch pile. When the vacuum head sits properly on the rug, the rug restricts the airflow entering the vacuum.
That restriction is important.
Now move the vacuum head toward the edge of the rug and let an inch of the vacuum head extend beyond the rug.
You’ve just created an unrestricted opening for air.
Air will naturally take the path of least resistance.
Instead of pulling air through the rug underneath the entire vacuum head, the vacuum can pull a large amount of air through that open space.
The result is that you can lose much of the effective suction underneath the part of the vacuum that is still sitting on the rug.
Now imagine having that same problem repeatedly across a rug because the rug has different pile heights.
You may not be removing soil equally well from all areas.
Over time, that can contribute to premature soiling and wear.
The Professional Cleaner Can Have the Same Problem
This isn’t only a problem for the homeowner.
Professional cleaning equipment can run into the same basic issue.
The wand we use to clean a rug has a relatively smooth surface. We need good contact with the rug to maintain airflow and effective extraction.
If the rug has substantial differences in pile height or an unusual texture, maintaining that contact can become difficult.
And when you lose that seal, you lose airflow.
That’s why I’ve sometimes had to resort to using a four-inch hand tool and cleaning difficult traffic areas by hand.
Yes, sometimes that means I’m down on my hands and knees trying to get enough suction to remove as much soil as possible.
It’s slower.
It’s more labor-intensive.
And sometimes the construction of the rug simply limits how much soil can be removed.
That’s not necessarily because the cleaner doesn’t know how to clean the rug.
The rug itself can be the limiting factor.
Cleaning Doesn’t Reverse Wear
This is another thing I think homeowners should understand.
Sometimes a rug is professionally cleaned and the homeowner is disappointed because it doesn’t look the way it did when it was new.
But cleaning removes soil.
It doesn’t put worn fibers back.
It doesn’t restore silk that has lost its original appearance from years of foot traffic.
It doesn’t reverse abrasion.
It doesn’t restore color that has faded from sunlight.
And it doesn’t change the physical construction of the rug.
I’ve written more about the importance of matching the cleaning method to the particular material in Ask Alec: Can Professional Carpet Cleaning Actually Damage Your Carpet?.
Although that article discusses carpet as well as area rugs, the principle is the same: different materials and constructions have different tolerances for moisture, chemistry, agitation and other aspects of the cleaning process.
There are also situations where moisture can expose or contribute to problems such as buckling or distortion. I’ve discussed that in Ask Alec: Why Is My Area Rug Waving or Buckling After Cleaning?.
The important thing is to understand that a professional cleaner has to work with the rug that is actually in front of them—not the rug that was sitting in the showroom when you bought it ten years ago.
So, What Should You Ask Before Buying an Area Rug?
The next time you’re shopping for an area rug, don’t just ask yourself:
“Do I like the way it looks?”
Of course you should like the way it looks.
But I’d also ask:
What is this rug made from?
Does it contain more than one type of fiber?
How is it constructed?
Are the dyes stable?
How difficult will it be to vacuum?
What happens if something is spilled on it?
Can it be professionally cleaned?
Are there limitations on how it can be cleaned?
And perhaps the most important question:
Can I realistically live with and maintain this rug?
After 56 years in this business, I’ve learned that a beautiful rug isn’t necessarily a difficult rug.
And a difficult rug isn’t necessarily a bad rug.
But I do believe you should understand what you’re buying.
Because the time to think about how an area rug will be maintained and cleaned is before you buy it—not after the six-month-old baby throws food on it.
Before buying an area rug, think about whether its appearance, construction and area rug maintenance requirements fit the way you live.
— Alec Houle
Alec’s Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning LLC
56 years of experience serving Massachusetts