Rugs can be shed due to a multitude of factors. The shedding can be the result of poor fibre quality, structure, or consumer care. Professional rug cleaning services can save your rugs from shading with various methods. However, as a rug owner, you should always consider the factors affecting your flooring. In this post, you will learn everything about shedding, from causes to cures.
What Causes Rugs to Shed?
You’re likely thinking to yourself, “What exactly is happening on with this rug?” Sometimes shedding occurs temporarily with new carpeting and ceases after mild vacuuming and typical wear. If your carpeting is still shedding after a few days, there are two key contributing factors:
- The fabric
- The manufacture
Fabric: Even among wool rugs, the quality of the material varies. Wool from high-altitude sheep is used to create floorings of exceptional quality and durability. Wool from sheep raised in the lower lands is coarser and of inferior quality. Adhesives are used to bring these short wool pieces together if the sheep are sheered too often. Over time, the glue breaks down, and the fragments start to shed.
Manufacturing: Another important consideration is the rug’s construction.
- Handcrafted, such as hand-knotted and hand-woven fabrics
- Machine-made floorings.
The manufacturing technique plays a vital role in rug’s quality of life. It’s the structure and weaving method that decides the years of rug’s lifespan. Threads are knotted to the carpet’s cotton or wool substrate in hand-tied rugs. A warp is regularly weaved into the carpet’s weft in hand-woven carpets. These techniques ensure that every component of the flooring is critical to its structural integrity and is less likely to come apart.
Current techniques emphasise the assembly of pieces rather than the weaving of strong, long-lasting carpets. In hand-tufting, for example, a tufting gun is used to fire fabric “tufts” through a plastic grid. These carpets require a polymer or glue to hold the tufts in place. Not only is the wool of lesser quality, but the backing material can degrade and cause the backing and pile to shed.
Some machine-made carpets are manufactured at fast rates using a machine and are generally composed of polymer-based materials to resist the process. These synthetic compounds disintegrate similarly to petroleum-based goods. When low-quality wool or synthetic materials are mixed with current rug-making techniques, it is common for carpets to be shed.
Tips From the Best Rug Cleaners for Shedding Rugs
One technique for wool carpeting is to groom the loose strands using a horsehair brush, as vacuuming a shedding rug can be difficult. Don’t use a beater bar brush vacuum for these rugs; do the vacuuming by hand.
Another suggestion is to take the rug outside while landscapers are around and have them use their leaf blower and blast away the dust and “junk” in the fibres (which works much better than a vacuum on these floorings).
So, take care of your valuable rugs and don’t let them shed. Connect with professional rug cleaning services when in doubt.
