Oriental Rug Cleaning

Al’s Carpet Cleaning & Restoration has been providing oriental rug cleaning in the Josephine / Jackson County area for many years. Take advantage of our detailed, 19-step rug-cleaning process, where we will clean your oriental rug in our rug-cleaning plant. We will take, whether your rug is a braided heirloom from your great-grandmother, or whether it’s an antique collectable rug, and treat all rugs with care. All wool rugs, rugs with fringe, or hand-made rugs are cleaned only in our rug-cleaning facility. Cleaning rugs in a rug-cleaning facility gives control over the cleaning and drying operation and ensures outstanding results that cannot be achieved with on-location cleaning.

Your rugs will be carefully inspected before and after the cleaning process. We will treat your fine oriental rugs with the care that they require. We pledge to our customers the finest oriental rug cleaning services available anywhere. We are your oriental rug cleaning specialists.

Why Rugs Are Not Cleaned In The Home.

The recommended cleaning method for wool oriental and specialty rugs, is in plant cleaning.

For as long as rugs have been woven, they have also been washed. Though in the past with a bit more “low tech” methods than are available today.

Rugs being washed near a river.

But before the washing even begins – the beating does!

Let the beating begin!

Rugs – ESPECIALLY wool rugs – have a capacity to hold a large amount of soil in them. This is because wool under the microscope looks kind of like fish scales, so lots of layers, with MANY places to hide dirt and grit. See, take a look:

Wool strand under a microscope.

It’s these many “little pockets” that hold soil, and why a wool rug can have POUNDS of soil in it and still not look especially dirty. The dirt is hiding. And not just dirt and soil, but a whole host of other contaminants. Look at what came out of this rug by vacuuming the back side of the rug with an upright beater bar vacuum:

Pounds of soil out after dusting the rug on the back side.

This rug below also, shows the soil from using a heavier dusting machine.

Pounds of soil "beaten" out of a rug before washing.

There are several reasons why cleaning rugs requires them to be removed from the home. The big one is of course the removal of this soil before cleaning, and then the actual washing of the rug itself, which simply cannot be done in the home the same way. In plant cleaning gives the technician control over the cleaning and drying environment.

In the latest cover story of Cleanfax Magazine, they list the specific reasons why choosing to clean a rug in the home can cause more harm than good. This is information every professional cleaner should know, and certainly what their clients need to know regarding any rugs they value:

I am not saying that rugs can just be tossed in water with no worries. You do need to understand what you are doing. We get calls regularly from homeowners who thought they could hose down their rug, and then discover that this can lead to dye bleeding, buckling or shrinking, and incredibly long drying times.

That because those “tiny pockets” that hold soil, also can hold a lot of water molecules too. Wool rugs get HEAVY when wet, and the inside fibers are absorbent cotton warps and wefts that swell with water, so you need to have the equipment capable of removing that level of moisture so that the rug can be properly and thoroughly dried quickly.

Our rug cleaning operation is more of a “workshop” operation instead of high-volume rug cleaning facilitie. I guess you would call them “boutique” rug operations. They wash the rugs one at a time, and have some equipment to help them be more thorough in the dusting, washing, rinsing, and drying processes.

Sometimes we use a large wash floor to wash the rugs, like this:

Persian runner being washed thoroughly.

Rug being rinsed thoroughly. Can't do this "in" the home.

We use a 22 step process in our rug plant to ensure that every rug comes back to you clean.