Whether you’re hosting a party or enjoying a quiet evening at home, accidents happen and you might need some help cleaning red wine, pet accidents, or any other liquid-based stain out of your rugs.
Oriental Rug Mart offers professional cleaning and repair services, but taking these first steps at home can eliminate the necessity of professional cleaning or make professional cleaning more effective.
When a spill happens, don’t run for the paper towels! Most fibers have some kind of protection against liquids, but wool is especially resistant to liquids due to the presence of lanolin oil in the fibers. Even with this natural resistance, blotting with paper towels can push the stain deeper and penetrate into the fibers, making it more difficult to remove.
The most effective method for removing liquid-based stains is extraction. Using a Wet/Dry Vacuum over the stain will lift most of the liquid out before it penetrates the fibers. This process can be repeated several times by adding cold water, enough to cover the stain area, waiting a few seconds, and extracting thoroughly before repeating the procedure again. Repeat this process as much as necessary. At this point most, if not all, of the stain should be gone. If you are not satisfied with the result, call us and we are more than happy to advise you. There might be other things you can do to remove the excess stain, for instance, if a red wine stain is being stubborn, you could try neutralizing it by pouring a bit of white wine on the stain and repeating the extraction process with cold water.
If you don’t have a Wet/Dry Vacuum, you can carefully use paper towels or a cloth. Moving from the edge of the stain to the center of the stain, wet the area with cold water and very gently blot, repeating the process with clean paper towels or cloths.
No matter which process you follow, you will end up with a wet rug. You want to make sure that the area dries thoroughly in a timely manner. Brush the pile to its normal direction and follow this drying process: Prop the wet area up above the ground and run a fan nearby, moving the air both on top and underneath the wet area of the rug. This will help dry the rug quickly enough to avoid mildew or dry rot. After your rug has dried, the cleaning process will be complete. You may need to brush the pile in different directions to make it look lustrous again.
In many cases, it should look like nothing even happened, but if the stain is noticeable enough that it bothers you, let us know and we may be able to help to make it better. Or you can wait till your rug needs a general cleaning and mention the stain to us.
You can always reach out to the team at Oriental Rug Mart and we will do our best to assist you. We offer professional cleaning and repair services for all types of area rugs. Visit https://orientalrugmart.com/rug-services/ if you would like to learn more.
By Kendall Baller and Reza Sattari
