Area rug lingo

Believe it or not, there are entire conventions dedicated to area rugs. Recently I found myself at the Atlanta's Area rug market. There was a cocktail party held after all the rug vendors had shared their products for the week. We all stood around sipping our drinks and talking about area rugs and how much the rug business had changed over the years. At one point we were using a bunch of abbreviations and acronyms.

One of the new staff members at Rugs To My Door looked over at me with a dazed look in his eye. I thought he was beginning to get sleepy from the long work week so I said my good byes and we exited the event.

As we made our way from the area rug show to the hotel, he asked me what we were talking about-and even claimed that it was like a different language. I had no idea what he was talking about-and wondered if I made a bad hire with this younger man who had earlier had such promise.

Then he started asking me what Van DeWiele, cross woven, polypropylene, olefin, power loomed, and other such words meant. It was at this point that I realized he had been failed by me. The area rug industry is so rich with information that sometimes it gets to be too technical and possibly overwhelming to the onlooker.

So how do we overcome this? I have put together a brief glossary of terms related to rugs below. That way when you go through the site you will feel more comfortable with what you are looking at. If there is a word that you are not familiar with that I have omitted-just shoot us an email or give me a call.

A few commonly used terms in area rugs:

1)Machine Woven A machine woven rug is very similar to a power woven rug and a cross woven rug. Essentially a machine is used to weave the face fiber together with a primary backing material. Machine woven rugs can be made of all sorts of materials. Benefits of machine woven rugs include their ability to be cleaned without fear of delimitation (secondary backing adhesive comes unbound and rug structure fails), their bind rating (ability for the rug to keep it's yarns in place with heavy traffic or vacuuming), and the possibility for them to be mass produced bringing the cost per unit down significantly.

2)Polypropylene Polypropylene is a man made fiber that is highly versatile. Polypropylene is also used to produce things such as soda bottles. Another name for polypropylene is olefin. For the sake of clarity the team at rugs to my door tries their best to name everything polypropylene even though the word olefin may be used interchangeably. Rugs made of polypropylene are highly resistant to stains with their arch nemesis being oils. Other than an oil based spill, polypropylene is an impermeable yarn that can take wine and grapes and all sorts of other things being spilled and dumped on it without any impact. In fact polypropylene rugs are so stain resistant that you can actually use a mixture of bleach and water if a stain will not come out with the use of a premium rug cleaning product such as Rug Renew.

3)Rug Pads Often we are asked why do we need rug pads? There are a few reasons you should always use a pad beneath your rug. The main reason in my opinion is that the rug can bunch if you choose not to use a rug pad. Bunching can occur when area rugs are placed with furniture on top of them without a rug pad. The furniture keeps the rugs in place where the furniture is, but where there is not any furniture the rugs begin to shift and bunch. The result over time can be a misshapen rug that is severely damaged and will either require professional care to restore it or in many cases out right replacement. Rugs that have rug pad are also more likely to stay in place reducing the likelihood that a fall will occur. Of course, we always encourage caution when making one's way from a given surface of the floor to another as steady footing is essential regardless of whether rug pad is present or not.

If you have any questions that were not answered in this brief discussion about rug lingo just let us know. Thanks again for reading, and leave a comment any time!

Kind Regards.