Rugs, not carpets
Richmond Rug Cleaning & Restoration handles hand-knotted and flatwoven rugs for households across the Richmond area. Cleaning, repair, restoration, and free pick-up and delivery.
Why a rug is different
Wall-to-wall carpet is cleaned where it lies, and it has to be. A rug can be taken away, submerged, flushed through the back and dried under control — which is the only way to get soil out of a foundation rather than push it further in. Anyone who cleans your rug in your living room is cleaning the top of it.
Hand-knotted rugs also behave unlike anything else in a home. Natural dyes can bleed. Wool holds lanolin that alkaline detergents strip. Silk scorches. Cotton foundations rot if a rug is left damp. The right treatment depends entirely on how the rug was made, which is why we look at every one before quoting.
What happens to your rug
We collect it, inspect and photograph its condition, and test dye stability before any water touches it. Dry soil comes out first — often several pounds of it. Then a full-immersion wash with fiber-appropriate agents, controlled drying, grooming, and a final inspection. Repairs, if you've asked for them, happen after the wash. You get it back cleaned, dry and flat.
The process page covers each stage in detail.
Pricing
Estimates are free and based on size, construction and condition. The final price is set only after we've seen the rug in person — a quote given sight unseen on a hand-knotted rug is a guess, and usually a self-serving one. There's no charge for the assessment and no obligation to proceed.
Where we work
Across the Richmond area — Windsor Farms, The Fan, Short Pump, Glen Allen, Midlothian, Bon Air and the surrounding counties. Full list of areas.
Common questions
That depends far more on the rug than on the calendar. The wash is the predictable part; controlled drying is not something to hurry, because a foundation that goes back down still damp will announce itself later as a smell. Repair work is scheduled on top of the wash once the assessment is finished.
You do not. Collection is booked around your schedule, and plenty of people simply leave the rug rolled inside a front door or a vestibule. The written assessment and the figure both reach you before any work is authorized.
Size, construction and condition all move the number, so the honest answer is that we quote after looking rather than before. A figure offered sight unseen on a hand-knotted piece is invented. The assessment itself is free, and you are under no obligation afterwards.
Not if the salts are actually removed. The crystals sit down in the foundation, and any method that only wets the pile leaves them there to reactivate the next humid week. Flushing the rug right through is the only thing that clears them out. Long or repeated soaking may also have damaged the dye permanently, and that gets flagged at assessment rather than discovered at the end.
Every rug is dye-tested first; nothing goes into water untested. Unstable dyes — often an older red, sometimes a later synthetic — get a lower temperature, a shorter time in the bath, or a surface method instead of immersion.
Usually, and age is rarely what decides it — the state of the foundation is. We look at the structure before anything else, and a rug that needs securing gets that done first, because a weak foundation does not survive being handled wet.
No. Anything done on the floor treats the top of the pile and drives the rest downward into a foundation that then has to dry in place, on your hardwood. Soil leaves a rug through the back, which means the rug has to come off the floor to be washed at all.