Care and Cleaning
A Guide to Carpet & Rug Fibers
Rug Design Names
Appraising, Evaluating, Price Value
Rug Pads

Care and Cleaning

Proper care and cleaning will prolong the life of the rug.

Vacuuming
Any stray fibers should be cut even with the rug’s surface, never pulled. It is highly recommended that you vacuum your rug once a week.  If your rug has fringes, be careful when vacuuming.  Do not vacuum the fringes as they may pull and will ravel and look very worn and dirty very quickly.

Cleaning
SPOTS - Clean spills and spots immediately. Never rub a spill. Blot to prevent fraying of the yarns. Use a spoon to retract the excess spillage. NEVER use spot cleaners on wool. These cleaners can “set” the stain and make it impossible for a professional to remove the stain.

WHOLE RUG - Periodic professional cleaning is recommended. We recommend the hot water extraction method better known as steam cleaning. We only recommend this to be done by a professional. When hiring a professional be very careful to pick one that knows what they are doing and most importantly takes the time to use their training and knowledge.

Colors
All collections shown on the site have been professionally photographed and enhanced to show the true color and intricate details of each rug. However due to differences in color settings on individual monitors, we cannot insure that each rug is color correct.

Do not expose the rug to sunlight on a regular basis.  Too much sunlight causes the colors to fade which in turn creates unevenness in the colors of the rug.

Fringe
Some collections are available with fringe and others without, please refer to the specifications for each collection. The size of a rug is usually quoted to include the length of the fringe in the length measurement of the rug.

Making a rug Lay Flat
This can be easily done using the reverse roll procedure, simply roll the rug in the opposite direction.

Removing Wrinkles and Creases
This will go away with time and use of couple days to a month or more depending on type of rug etc. One can speed up the process by applying hot tap water to the back of the rug. Be careful to use the hot water from your homes hot water heater at the tap (Danger: do not boil water). Do not soak the rug through, just get it damp from the backside were the wrinkle or crease is.

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A Guide to Carpet & Rug Fibers

Fiber Types

• Wool is the only natural material that provides solid benefits for rug/carpet construction.
• Nylon is perhaps the only fiber to perform well a-cross all segments of the carpet and rug market. This is due to its balance of performance and styling flexibility.
• Polypropylene due to recent improvements polypropylene has been established in mid-range applications due to its great dye-ability and improvements in resiliency.
• Olefin is a great economical synthetic fiber that offers value at the lower price points but has less pile “memory”.

Performance
Carpet and rug performance can be divided into three major categories:

1. Retention of Appearance: Fiber's ability to retain its shape
You want a pile that has “memory”. A loop construction is the best for memory no matter what the pile is made up of. Wool has the best memory on it’s own, but nylon can achieve superior memory depending on the twist and heat-set. Polypropylene and olefin fall somewhere in between wool and nylon with polypropylene being better than olefin.

In cut-pile you look for a clean tip sheer and a tight and secure twist. In loop pile you look for density of the fibers and how tight the loops are together. Remember, a dense pile will help support itself since it doesn’t allow the pile to lean over as much.

2. Stain Resistance: The ability to blot-out spills.
Wool has the least amount of “blot-up” ability. Nylon has the best. Polypropylene comes in second and Olefin is last. This is due to the deferent fibers molecular structure, (pores).

However, you can add “Forcefield” to any of these products to achieve the amount of “blot-up” ability you want.

3. Clean-ability: How well the fiber cleans. (steam clean)
Wool maintains its ability to be cleaned and stay clean over the longest time. Nylon is second best, then Polypropylene, last is Olefin.

Wool has scales and a protective membrane that helps resist wear and dirt. Synthetic fibers have pores and less resistance to wear.

Fiber and Pile Appearance:
Wool will offer the best color reflection to your eye. This is because the fiber doesn’t shine and reflects light more evenly to your eye giving the color a flat appearance. The best nylon fiber can also achieve a wool-like appearance. Polypropylene and Olefin can have a shine to the fiber which makes is look more artificial. But remember, it always matters of the quality and processing of the fiber as to how much it does or doesn’t shine.

Summary
With the advantage of our ForceField application, wool will give you the best overall performance, clean-ability and value. This is why the busiest and most famous hotels use wool carpets. But, if you’re only looking to benefit short-term, (under 3 years) then Olefin could give you good performance. Nylon can come very close to wool in benefits, but only if you use the best grade of nylon with the best construction techniques. Polypropylene is a great midrange product offering about a 5-year life span in residential use.

Rug Construction Terms

• Aubusson Weaves: A weaving method originated by the French.
• Hand Tufted: a method of adding the pile to a rugs foundation. Specifically when a tufting gun is used to do this.
• Micro Hooked: a method of adding the pile to a rug resulting in loops of nap. This type has a very small loop height and shows better design detail than the other hooded types.
• Petit Point Hooked: same as Micro Hooked but a little larger of a loop.
• Hooked: same as above but has the larger loop of these three methods.
• Kilim: a rug made without pile.
• Persian: hand made pile type rugs constructed using their own type of knots.
• Tibetan: hand made pile type rugs using the double-looped knot.
• Turkish: hand made pile type rugs using their own symmetrical knot.
• Wilton: a machine method of weaving pile type rugs.
• Axminster: same as Wilton BUT DIFFERENT.
• Dhurries: a thick flat-woven cotton or wool cloth or rug made in India.

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Rug Design Names

Most rugs carry a market name that refers to the city, tribe, or the area the particular design was made and produced. As an example a Tabriz is name from a city in Iran of which it was made. If one states that a rug is a Tabriz, then one should know that the rug is from Persia-Iran. An Indo-Tabriz is a Tabriz pattern woven in India. A Rumanian Tabriz is a Tabriz pattern woven in Rumania. It is false to sell an Indo-Tabriz as simply a Tabriz.

A new rug that copies these designs and is produced in a country other than where this design of rug originated, the name should be hyphenated using the country where the carpet was actually produced

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Appraising, Evaluating, Price Value

The price of a new rug is related to the cost of production. The type of weaving technique directly influences the speed at which the rug can be produced. Hand knotting is the slowest method and is the method used for what it known as oriental rugs. Flat woven rugs, (kilims), are woven by hand on a loom and take less time to produce than pile rugs. A cheaper type of rug is the hand tufted rug. This is a technique in which a hand-held machine is used to tuft or hook the pile in. Machine-made rugs are generally less expensive than handmade rugs because the cost to actually produce them is so much less.

The quality of materials affects the price too. Wool and silk are the most expensive materials. Cotton and synthetic materials are lower priced. Most new rugs are produced using chemical dyes which don’t bleed (colorfast). Some larger rugs and special sizes and shapes may be slightly more expensive on a square foot basis because looms have to be specially made.

Older rugs value is determined by supply and demand as well as their condition, quality, and integrity.

• 100 years and older are “Antique”.
• 50-100 years old are” Semi-antique.
• Less than 50 years old are “Old”.

Condition is very important. Minor repairs that are done well, such as rebinding the edges or other small repairs, will not aggressively affect value. Major repairs, especially when done poorly, will reduce the value.

The best way really “appraise” a rug is to trust a professional rug expert. Much like having a jeweler that you can trust. To appraise a rug properly you have to acquire years of experience as well as searching for other similar rugs and compare prices.

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Rug Pads

Pads stabilize the rug, prevent crawling, provide additional sound absorption, and are an important safety issue. A good pad will extend the life of your rug. Dirt tends to accumulate in the pile of the rug and without a pad it will abrade the foundation of the rug.

When you cut your pad to fit, use a brand new blade in your utility knife for easy cutting. Try to cut it smaller than the rug enough so that the edge of the rug can roll downward to the floor. This actually prevents tripping!

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