A Look at the Rug Hand-Cleaning Process

Last updated 9 months ago

Your Oriental rug is priceless to you, and it should be. That's why it's best to leave it to a professional rug cleaner to clean and repair your Oriental, vintage, or antique rug. A high-quality rug usually needs annual cleaning, depending on the traffic it receives and the environment it's been displayed or stored in.

Modern professional cleaners might insert your prized rug into automated cleaners that resemble assembly lines, but a hand-woven rug deserves hand cleaning and personal attention. Rug hand washing generally follows this process:

Provide a personal inspection. Before washing, cleaners should check to make sure the rug has no condition problems. If the cleaner finds one, the staff should contact the customer about possible repairs.
Remove dust and particles. Before wetting a rug, the staff carefully removes any dust or loose particles to pre-clean it.
Give the rug a bath. Natural fibers require decontamination to eliminate germs, stains, and odors from mold, insects, or your family pets.
Rinse carefully. Rinsing washes off the cleaning agents and all of the removed soils. The cleaner should rinse and ring the rug repeatedly until the water is clear and clean.
Hang to dry. Oriental rugs need to hang to dry in rooms with carefully controlled conditions to prevent mold or mildew from forming on the wet rugs.
Inspect before the customer collects. The professional rug cleaner should inspect your Oriental rug at least one more time before you pick it up to make sure all spots have been removed and that there is no damage to the rug.

At Hadeed-Mercer Rug Cleaning, we inspect the rugs we hand clean at least three or four times before returning them to our customers. Learn more about our hand-cleaning and repair services by calling (804) 358-3811.