Proper care can help the possibility of damage to your rug.
How to prevent damage to your rug
- The shoe rule: wear house shoes or slippers. Not wearing your shoes inside the house means you are not bringing all the dirt and bugs from the street and leaving them on your carpet.
- Rotate the rug regularly. If part of your carpet is near a window or door and is exposed to the sun light, regularly rotating it will avoid fading.
- If your rug has been immersed in water such as during a flood, remove it from water as soon as possible. Extract as much of the water as you can. Place objects under the carpet to aerate it. Get it cleaned professionally. The foundation of Oriental rugs can weaken or rot if the rug is repeatedly exposed to water and not properly dried.
- Do not place plants directly on top of the rug. This can also cause water damage.
- Spot cleaning. Spot cleaning is important, and using the right products is just as vital for your carpet’s life. Using the wrong products can damage the carpet, stain it or bleach it.
- Use padding. A good quality, thin and dense carpet pad/ underlay will help prevent dents and stand up to the weight of heavy furniture and stop your carpet from slipping.
- Use furniture coasters. They can help disperse the furniture’s weight, making it less likely for the furniture to make dents. Using coasters will also make it easier for you to rotate the furniture.
- Place doormats outside your doors. This will encourage people to shake off or wipe their shoes before coming in, and can help decrease the amount of mud, dirt, rain and snow that is coming into your home and onto your carpet.
- Cover the carpet when doing home projects. Painting, remodeling or DIY projects can compromise your carpet. A drop of paint or other chemicals can damage it, and you certainly don’t want saw dust or other particles falling on it. Consider moving the carpets to another room until the project is completed, or cover them with a drop cloth or tarp.
- Get your carpet cleaned regularly. The regularity depends on the amount and type of use. Generally once every three years is usually needed for normal use but if it is heavy use then probably once a year.
- Be wary of clothes moths. While they do not eat rugs, female moths lay hundreds of eggs, which hatch into larvae and consume wool, fur, and silk fibres. Moths usually live in dark areas of the rug that get little foot traffic. Infestation can also extend to or from woolen or fur clothes stored nearby. You can avoid moth damage by vacuuming the entire rug weekly, and the backside of the rug, as well as the pad and floor underneath it, several times a year. Moth balls, flakes or crystals are not effective moth control for rugs.
