What Is That Smell In My Rug?

What is that smell?

Your beautiful rug can get a nasty smell due to several reasons. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why.

Bad Latex. Occasionally you will get a tufted rug (they generally have a material of some sort on the back) that will have an odd odor. Sometimes it smells sour or it even smells like something is burning. The cause of this is the latex used to hold the rugs together is not of a good quality. Even when the rug is peeled apart and put back together with quality materials, it will again begin to smell. Sometimes right away and often times up to years later. If you are considering buying a new tufted rug and it has a sour or burning odor, you should avoid buying it! Although the manufacture says it isn’t harmful and will get better with time, do not trust that. Any cleaning or attempts to make it smell better, will many times make the smell worse.

Flooding

If your rug gets wet from water or flooding damage of any kind, it needs to be dealt with immediately. Even if you think you have the rug dried, it must be sanitized to prevent mildew or mold. Both of these can cause permanent damage and rot the foundation or even the yarns of the rug. Repairs can be costly and depending on the severity of the damage, may be irreparable.

Pets

Our four-legged pets are a big part of our family. Part of pet life is that there will enviably be accidents, either from a new puppy, an elderly dog or simply a sick dog, it is something that happens. We are here to help. If you do not combat the stains as they occur and they build up, it can cause some serious damage down the road.

What people tend to do is get upset and start scrubbing at the stain with a host of ill-suited cleaners, homemade internet ‘cleaners and fixers. All off which, can either ruin or even set the stain permanently.

When you scrub frantically at the stain, you are going to ruin the fibers. If you were to take a single fiber of rug yarn and rub it vigorously you would see that it would separate and look incredibly frizzy. This is permanent damage to your rug fibers. Take a clean white towel and blot, blot, blot! Only use a white towel to prevent dye transfer from the towel to your rug.

Call us. Pet urine can penetrate the fibers and become trapped into the foundation of your rug. We will need to do a deep flush of the rug to thoroughly get out the pet urine. If we just do an in-home cleaning, it is only going to be a surface cleaning and while it may look better and even smell better, that urine could have made it to the foundation of your rug. Don’t let it rot your rugs foundation! We can help.

From Davis, to El Dorado Hills, Folsom, Lincoln and all points in between, we are here to keep you informed and keep your rugs looking their best. Be sure to check out our before and after gallery to see our work.