Should you pressure wash your rugs? I don’t know. Let’s find out!
A while back, one of my vintage Moroccan rugs got VERY dirty. Long story short, our fridge fell and a lot of food from the fridge spilled out onto the rug. Broken eggs, ranch dressing, leftovers. Lots of food. I cleaned it up as best I could, and folded it up and put it outside on the porch. Knowing that I’d need to do a deep clean at some point soon.
Yesterday was that day.
I got the pressure washer out and rolled the rug out onto the driveway. After a quick vacuum, I tested the pressure washer in one small spot to see how it might do. And it seemed okay. So I went for it.
I was a little nervous because everything I read online basically said not to power wash / pressure wash a rug with natural fibers (like wool). I didn’t have much to lose though because if this rug wasn’t clean, I couldn’t really use it again anyway. So, on I went.
I got the whole thing wet and then slowly pressure washed the rug, sweeping across in long strokes width-wise. When I got to the end, I turned it over and did the back of the rug the same way.
Then I rolled up the rug tightly, a little bit at a time, and pushed out as much excess water as I could. Standing on top of the roll helped get the most water out. And I just went side to side with every roll, moving my feet from one end to the other each time.
This technique seemed to help get a lot of the water out of the rug quickly. And the water was dirty. Yuck.
Then, I flipped the rug over again (rightside up) and gave it one more wash, again, over the whole thing. I originally thought I would do a round of cleaning with soap here. But when I flipped the rug over the first time, I noticed I lost some fibers from the rug. Not a ton, but enough to notice.
That paired with the fact that I saw a little bit of dye washing out of the rug and down the driveway, was not great. And because I was worried about further damage, I opted not to use any soap.
I haven’t really decided if not using soap to clean the rug is gross or not. It did seem pretty clean after all that water and ringing it out though.
After that additional round of pressure washing, I slowly and tightly rolled up the rug again. Stepping on the roll everytime I added a little more rug into it, to remove as much water as possible.
That really helped with removing excess water. And then it just had to dry.
I rolled it back out on the driveway, in a spot in the sun that wasn’t wet. And then moved the rug to a new dry spot on the driveway every couple of hours. After 4 or 6 hours it was still damp. So I moved it into the garage overnight, hanging over two sawhorses, to get it aired out underneath.
The next day it was pretty much dry. I laid it out in the sun one more time (for about 2 hours) and then brought it inside after vacuuming. I checked for damage when I brought the rug inside, and decided the damage was minimal(ish).
But would I recommend pressure washing a vintage rug?
Honestly, I don’t know. The internet is not wrong on this one…you can definitely damage a rug with a pressure washer. Ooops. BUT in this case, the damage was minimal, so it seemed worth it? At least, for now.
That said, I probably won’t be doing it again, at least not to this rug. So, I guess my verdict is I would not recommend it with a vintage / special / wool rug. But if you’re desperate, it may be worth a try. At your own risk.
Let me know if you have any questions.
