Every rug is washed by hand, off site — not cleaned in place with a wand over your floorboards, and never run through a machine that treats silk like a doormat.
Wall-to-wall carpet is stretched and tacked over a pad. It has a backing that seals it, it drains downward into that pad, and it tolerates a fairly aggressive approach. An area rug is the opposite: open on both faces, sitting directly on your floor, often held together by hand-tied knots on a cotton warp that is more than a century old.
When someone cleans a rug in place with a hot-water wand, three things happen. Soil at the base of the pile gets pushed deeper rather than lifted out. Water goes into the foundation with nowhere to go. And in an old Charleston house the floor underneath is rarely a neutral party — original boards, a masonry-walled room, and building fines already down in the pile all mean that wetting a rug where it lies makes a chemistry problem out of a soiling one.
Off-site washing exists to avoid all of that. The rug leaves the house, gets its dry grit removed before any water is introduced, is washed and rinsed until the water runs clear, and is dried flat in moving air. Then it comes back.
Six stages, in this order, every time. Skipping any of them is how rugs get damaged.
The rug is opened flat and examined front and back. We identify fibre and construction, log existing damage and old repairs, and test each colour for bleeding and for crocking — dye that rubs off dry, which older indigo will do. Findings drive the wash plan, and you are told about anything we find.
Before water, the dry material comes out. A rug from a peninsula house holds street grit off cobbled and paved surfaces and building fines off plaster and mortar, all of it down at the foundation. Compressed-air dusting and controlled beating shake it loose — the single most important step for how long a rug lasts.
Spots, pet accidents, oily residue and traffic lanes are treated individually with chemistry matched to the fibre, then given dwell time. Wool and silk get a neutral pH; lipids get a solvent-side treatment before any water; synthetics can take something stronger.
The rug is submerged and washed by hand with soft brushes worked in the direction of the pile, so suspended soil floats free instead of being ground in. Immersion is also what carries alkaline building salts out of a foundation, which no surface method does. Delicate and unstable-dye rugs get a low-moisture method instead.
Flushing continues until the water runs clear, because leftover detergent is a magnet for new soil. Water is then pulled out mechanically and the rug dries flat under moving filtered air — not in the sun, which fades dye and hardens wool.
Pile is groomed back into direction, fringe is cleaned and straightened, and the rug is inspected against the intake notes. Anything unresolved is flagged before it is wrapped for delivery.
One hand-knotted Persian rug, photographed before and after cleaning.
If it lies on a floor, it has an appropriate method. Each type gets its own handling.
| Rug type | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Hand-knotted Persian & oriental | Full immersion wash, dye-tested first. Fringe cleaned by hand. Antique pieces get reduced agitation and extra drying time. |
| Wool area rugs | Neutral-pH immersion wash. Lanolin is preserved rather than stripped, which is what keeps wool resisting soil. |
| Silk & art silk (viscose) | Low-moisture specialist cleaning. Viscose in particular yellows and stiffens if it is over-wet, so it never goes into immersion. |
| Cotton flatweaves & dhurries | Washed with tight moisture control and dried under tension so the reversible weave does not pucker or shrink. |
| Jute, sisal & seagrass | Dry or very-low-moisture methods only. These plant fibres brown from their own water, so the risk is the cleaning as much as the spill. |
| Hand-tufted rugs | Washed carefully around the latex adhesive layer, which is the part that fails with age and produces that unmistakable old-glue smell. |
| Machine-made synthetics | Polypropylene, nylon and polyester take a thorough wash and a stronger pre-treatment. Very good results for the money. |
| Shag, hides & sheepskin | Specialty handling with fibre-specific cleaning agents and hand finishing to bring the loft back. |
Two different hard particles arrive in a peninsula rug and they need the same answer for different reasons. Cobble and Belgian-block streets grind a sharp mineral grit out of the joints between stones, and it comes in on shoes across a piazza that is swept rather than cleaned. Renovation adds lime plaster and mortar fines, which are alkaline — and wool wants a mildly acidic environment, so they are working on the fibre rather than merely sitting on it. Both have to come out dry, before water. Wetting plaster fines in place turns them into a slurry that sets in the base of the pile, and wetting grit just packs it tighter against the knots.
Coastal decorating puts an enormous amount of plant fibre on Lowcountry floors, and plant fibre is cellulose. Cellulose browns from its own water: lignin travels with the moisture to wherever the fibre dries last and leaves a halo darker than the spill that caused it. Viscose — sold as art silk, bamboo silk or banana silk — is the same chemistry with worse manners, losing most of its strength when wet and yellowing from clean water alone. Neither goes into immersion. Both get low-moisture handling and an honest word about what will not come out.
Urine soaks straight through the pile and sits in the foundation, where it burns dye if it is left and where nothing sprayed on the surface reaches it. In a house that is walked in and out of all day — which describes most of Mount Pleasant and all of I’On — it is also usually found late, because the smell is competing with an open door. The contamination is flushed out entirely, and discolouration is corrected where the dye underneath survived.
Rugs are collected and washed away from the house, then dried flat in moving air rather than hung wet or dried on your floor.
Dye testing and fibre identification happen before water. Neutral chemistry on wool and silk, stronger treatment only where it is safe.
Charleston and Berkeley counties, both directions, included. Furniture gets moved off the rug too.
You get told what we find at intake, what it will cost, and what will not come out. Nothing starts before you agree to it.
Tell us roughly what you have and where you are, and we will get it on the route.
Free estimate, collection included, and a rug that comes back the way you remember it.
Fringe, selvedge, grazed pile and reweaving — what can be fixed and what it involves.
Repair servicesWhat to do in the first forty-eight hours after a rug takes a leak, a storm or a flooded floor.
Water damageKnots, fibres, construction, and how to care for all of it in a Charleston house.
Read the guide