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Upholstery Cleaning
Upholstery cleaning can be a very complicated task. It is more involved
than carpet cleaning and should not be attempted by consumers. For
anything other than spot cleaning, you should call a professional
upholstery cleaner to do the work. Here is a brief overview of what is
involved in upholstery cleaning.
Fiber Identification
This is the most important part of upholstery
cleaning and one of the chief reasons that consumers should not attempt
their own upholstery cleaning. Every different type of fiber responds to
cleaning differently and must be handled carefully. Cotton is cleaned
differently from rayon which is treated different than acrylic which is
cleaned different from silk, etc, etc, etc. Your fabric might contain
several different types of fibers. You might have a combination of cotton
and polyester threads or cotton and rayon. Every thread in a fabric must
be tested to determine what types of fibers are present.
Dye Stability
The fabric should be tested for stability of
the dye before upholstery cleaning. Your technician should test the
cleaner that they will be using on a hidden area of the fabric. Every
different color should be checked. If the dye bleeds or transfers to the
test cloth, special procedures must be used. The technician can use a dye
lock chemical which will keep it from bleeding or they might switch to a
less aggressive chemical. In the worst cases, the fabric might not be
cleanable.
Fabric Construction
The construction of your upholstery's fabric
must be taken into account. If it is delicate, then the upholstery
cleaning technician must be gentle with it. If it has different colored
threads running underneath the fiber then it must be handled carefully. If
it is velvet, it must be brushed after cleaning. If it is a sturdy fiber,
the technician can be more aggressive with the cleaning.
The upholstery cleaning technician should also unzip the cushions and look
behind the fabric. Sometimes during assembly, furniture manufacturers will
use a grease pen to mark the fabric. This can bleed through if cleaned.
These marks can not always be seen but an attempt should be made to look
for them.
Upholstery Cleaning
Codes
You might notice that a tag with a cleaning
code is attached to your furniture. These codes are seldom correct. It is
not uncommon to have three pieces of upholstery in the room made of the
same fabric and each of these pieces will have a different cleaning code
on it. These stickers are often just slapped on upholstery and should not
be used by your technician to determine a cleaning method.
The codes you might see on your upholstery are S (Dry Clean Only) , W (Wet
Clean) , SW (Low Moisture Cleaning) and X (Vacuum Only).
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