How to Care For Oriental Rugs

A good friend and talented Dallas designer, Courtney Price, recently wrote an article on her blog titled “10 Tips for Oriental Rug Care,” which has some great points on how to care for oriental rugs. It is so important to protect your investment with these wonderful rugs. They can literally last a lifetime and will even allow you to pass them down to your kids (or grandkids) if you give them the proper care. Here are her wonderful tips and photo, my added comments will be in parenthesis after the tip.

1. Even Wear:  Your oriental rug needs to be rotated every 6 months to get even wear.(This is especially true in high traffic areas, maybe less often in spare bedrooms etc.)
2. Dust:  Your rug needs to be made dirt and dust free every 18 months (in normal traffic), but in commercial places, every 12 months for the natural wool to breathe. Consider this: wool rugs are the biggest filters in your home. Everything in the air in your home (dust, mites, etc) settles downward, and the lanolin in the wool TRAPS everything.
3. Padding:  Check the padding underneath your rug. The proper pad will protect your rug in three different ways:
a. Prevents your rug from sliding.
b. Eliminates friction between the rug and a hard surface as well as preventing dust and moths from living under the rug.
c. Keeps humidity from transferring from the floor to your rug. (A good padding is so inexpensive compared to your investment in the rug, so invest in good padding.)
4. Be careful how you vacuum: Protect the fringes, do not vacuum over them… if you lose the fringe, the vacuum cleaner will continue to eat away at what is next, the pile, which is damage you don’t want…(This is so easy to do if you are not careful.)
5.  Spills:
     a)     blot spill first
     b)     gently apply warm water with very mild soap (woolite, not dishwashing soap)
     c)     do not apply too much water (risk: color bleeding) (Red is especially susceptible to bleeding)
     d)    blot with towel
     e)     If you see no improvement, see a rug care specialist
      f)     or if stain is already dry, see a rug care specialist
     g)    club soda is safe to use, vinegar-never!-it sets the stain.
6. A word of caution for Antique Rugs: Know your rug before you do anything with it.  If it has any “touch-ups” (usually done by a dealer, with marker rather than repairing), do NOT attempt to clean a spill or the liquid will bleed the applied color.
7. Pets-  If your rug has been repeatedly abused by an animal, you might want to consider having it enzyme washed by a professional.  Usually, regular washing is sufficient. Again, by a professional.
8. Professional Cleaning- Usually recommended about every 2-3 years. Be careful who you hire to clean your rugs. I do not recommend the cheapest deal in town, do your homework to make sure you entrust your investment into the most capable hands. If you are looking for a good rug cleaning service in the DFW area, I can recommend one.
9. Appraisal:  Check to see if you have an up to date appraisal on your rugs. If anything happens to your rug, insurance companies might need the appraisal document. (Be sure and keep your original receipt in a safe place, like a safe deposit box or fire proof safe where a fire would not destroy it.)
10. Repairs:  Sometimes a small repair can prevent further damage to your rug, saving you a lot of expense in the future. (Most oriental rug stores have someone that can do this for you.)
I might suggest that you check out Courtney’s blog, CourtneyPrice.com. She regularly posts some great articles that will give you some useful information with design ideas as well as articles like this one. You will likely see more from her on this site.

While we are on the subject of oriental rugs I thought I would add some hints on buying these rugs. Invest in the more expensive rugs for the main living areas. Another Dallas designer would spend the majority of the client’s rug money on these main areas. Then for rooms such as a spare bedroom, she would find oriental rugs with the same basic color palette that were less expensive. I sold the less expensive rugs because I didn’t have the expertise (or the room) to sell the finer rugs.

You can also find rugs that have been abused that are very inexpensive. You can then cut them up and make pillows, cover chair bottoms, and other things. One designer even made dog beds for her clients with these remnants. Just use your imagination and come up with other imaginative uses.
If you want to do some reading on oriental rugs before you invest in them, here are some excellent resources presented in a chart to let you compare them. Before you invest thousands in these beautiful rugs, it would help to have some basic knowledge.

I hope this article has been useful in helping you learn how to care for oriental rugs.

Related Articles

• Repairing Antique Furniture: If you want to refinish antique furniture, you will need to at least learn the basics of repairing antique furniture. Ma…
• How to Use a Palm Sander: When refinishing furniture, one of the most important skills is knowing how to use a palm sander. If the piece you are …
• How to Rewire a Lamp: If you are an antique dealer or collector, you need to learn how to rewire a lamp. It is not nearly as difficult as most…
• Refinishing Antique Furniture: Refinishing antique furniture can be a very rewarding experience. If you have not read my article on stripping antique f…
• Stripping Antique Furniture: There are a lot of questions about stripping antique furniture, but the most important one is whether you should strip i…
• Furniture Refinishing and Restoration: I have decided to add this category to Buying and Selling Antiques