Rug Cleaning in Glasgow — Wool, Silk, Persian & Antique

Guide £25–£40 per rug · Free collection & delivery

Rug cleaning in Glasgow is typically £25–£40 for a small rug and £45–£70 for a medium one, with hand-knotted, Persian, Turkish, antique, Oriental, silk and viscose rugs quoted after inspection — usually £90–£180 for a hand-knotted wool rug of ordinary room size. Collection and delivery are free. Hard-wearing wool-blend and synthetic rugs can be cleaned in your home; anything hand-knotted or delicate is washed in our workshop, where it can be dusted, rinsed and dried flat under controlled airflow — usually back with you in five to seven days.

A good rug is usually the most valuable soft furnishing in the room and the one most likely to be ruined by the wrong cleaning method. Wool browns. Silk bleeds. Jute rots. Cotton fringes fray and grey.

Our rug cleaning in Glasgow starts with fibre and dye identification, then a colour-fastness test on every colour in the rug. Only then do we choose between in-home low-moisture cleaning and a full workshop wash with controlled drying.

In-home or workshop — which your rug needs

In-home cleaning suits synthetic and hard-wearing wool-blend rugs that are not heavily soiled. We clean on site, extract thoroughly and have it dry in a few hours.

Workshop cleaning is for Persian, Oriental, hand-knotted, silk, viscose and anything heavily contaminated. We collect free of charge, dust the rug to remove dry soil that extraction cannot lift, wash it, rinse it, dry it flat under controlled airflow, groom the pile and deliver it back — usually within 5 to 7 days.

Rug types we handle

• Persian, Afghan, Turkish and Oriental hand-knotted rugs
• Wool and wool-blend machine-woven rugs
• Silk and silk-blend (specialist low-moisture method only)
• Viscose and art silk — the trickiest fibre there is, and one most firms refuse
• Jute, sisal and seagrass natural fibre rugs
• Modern shaggy, flatweave and kilim rugs

Everyday rugs: shaggy, wool, large and machine-made

Most rugs we clean in Glasgow are not antiques. They are the wool rug under the coffee table, the shaggy rug in the bedroom, or the big machine-made rug that covers half the living room floor. These need the right method too, and they are usually quicker and cheaper to get right.

Shaggy rugs. Long pile holds a surprising amount of grit, crumbs and pet hair at the base, where a vacuum cannot reach. We dust them first, wash with controlled moisture so the backing does not stay wet, and dry them flat with the pile combed upright, so the shag does not mat or flatten.

Wool rugs. Wool is alkaline-sensitive, so we use a pH-balanced, wool-safe product and test the dyes first. Washed wrongly, wool turns brown or shrinks. Washed correctly, it comes up soft and bright.

Large rugs. Anything over about 2×3m is hard to wash and dry properly in a home, so large rugs go to the workshop for a full wash and controlled drying. That is £75–£110 for a machine-made rug, with collection and delivery included.

Washable and synthetic rugs. Polypropylene and polyester rugs are the most forgiving and can usually be cleaned on the spot during a carpet clean, so you do not have to take them anywhere.

Rug cleaning prices

Oriental and Persian rug cleaning in Glasgow

A hand-knotted Persian, Afghan, Turkish or Caucasian rug is not a carpet that happens to be loose. It is hand-spun wool, often dyed with traditional dyes that are not colour-fast, knotted onto a cotton or wool foundation, with hand-finished fringes that are structural rather than decorative. Every one of those details is a way for an in-home extraction clean to go wrong.

So Oriental rugs are collected and cleaned properly in the workshop, in this order:

• Inspection and dye test. Every colour in the rug is tested separately for colour-fastness. Reds and deep blues in older hand-dyed rugs are the usual offenders, and a red bleeding into an ivory field is permanent.
• Dusting. A hand-knotted rug can hold several kilos of dry grit deep in the foundation. No amount of extraction lifts it, because it is below the pile — it has to be vibrated out before any water is introduced. This is the step that separates a proper rug wash from a carpet clean done to a rug, and it is the step almost nobody doing in-home cleaning performs.
• Washing. Immersion or controlled low-moisture washing with a pH-appropriate, wool-safe solution, worked with the nap by hand.
• Rinsing and acid rinse. Removes the product and returns the wool to its natural slightly acidic pH, which is what keeps it feeling like wool rather than straw.
• Flat drying under controlled airflow. Slow and flat. Rushing this stage is what causes shrinkage, distortion and a rug that will not lie straight again.
• Grooming and fringe finishing. The pile is groomed back in its natural direction and the fringes are cleaned and straightened.

Typical turnaround is five to seven days. Collection and delivery anywhere in our coverage area are free, the rug is wrapped before it leaves your house, and it is covered by our treatment-risk insurance for the whole time we hold it.

What an Oriental rug clean costs, and why nobody quotes it over the phone

Hand-knotted rug cleaning is quoted after inspection rather than from a price list, and any firm giving you a firm number down the phone for a rug they have not seen is guessing. The price depends on the size, the fibre, the foundation, how colour-fast the dyes turn out to be, and how much contamination is actually in it — a 2×3m Persian with pet urine through the foundation is a completely different job from the same rug that is simply dusty.

As a realistic guide, a hand-knotted wool rug of ordinary room size generally lands somewhere between £90 and £180, and we will give you the exact figure after inspection and before any work starts. Collection for inspection costs you nothing and commits you to nothing — if you do not like the number, we bring it back.

Rug dry cleaning — when a rug should not get wet at all

Rug dry cleaning is the right answer more often than people expect, and it is what we use whenever water would do more harm than the soil is doing.

It covers two related methods. Dry compound cleaning works an absorbent, slightly damp powder into the pile with a brush; it draws the soil out of the fibre and is then vacuumed away, leaving the rug usable immediately. Solvent dry cleaning uses a liquid that carries soil without wetting the fibre the way water does.

We use one or the other on viscose and art-silk rugs, which lose strength and distort permanently when wet; on jute, sisal and seagrass, which rot and stain with water; on rugs with dyes that fail a colour-fastness test; and on anything that simply has to be back in use the same day. Everything else cleans better and more thoroughly with a proper wash, so we will tell you honestly which one your rug needs rather than defaulting to whichever is quicker for us.

Silk, viscose and the rugs most firms refuse

Silk is strong when dry and weak when wet, and the dyes are frequently fugitive. It is dye-tested on every colour and cleaned with a specialist low-moisture method, never immersion.

Viscose — also sold as 'art silk', 'bamboo silk' or 'banana silk' — is the single most difficult floor covering there is. It is regenerated cellulose: it loses most of its strength when wet, yellows where it has been damp, and the pile distorts permanently if it is brushed against the nap. A spilled glass of water leaves a mark on a viscose rug. Most cleaning firms refuse viscose outright; we clean it with a dry-compound method, and we will tell you plainly before we start if a viscose rug is already past the point where cleaning improves it.

Jute, sisal and seagrass rot and stain with water and are cleaned dry only.

Antique rug cleaning — where age changes the method

An antique rug, by the trade's rough convention, is one over about eighty years old, and age changes three things that matter before anyone puts water near it.

The dyes are usually natural. Pre-1900 rugs were coloured with madder root, indigo, walnut husk and cochineal rather than synthetic dyes. Natural dyes are beautiful and far less colour-fast, so a dye test on every single colour stops being a formality and becomes the whole decision.

The foundation has aged. Cotton warps go brittle over decades, especially where a rug has been folded in the same place or stored damp. A rug that feels sound underfoot can still have weak areas that only show up under the tension of handling, which is why we inspect and photograph condition before we accept it, not after.

Previous repairs are already in there. Most antique rugs have been mended at some point, sometimes with modern thread or synthetic dye that behaves completely differently in a wash from the original wool around it. We look for that first, because it is the thing most likely to produce a surprise.

So antique rugs get a slower, gentler process: full dye testing, dusting, a controlled low-moisture or immersion wash depending on what the inspection finds, flat drying, and hand grooming. If we think a rug is too fragile to wash safely, we will say so and recommend a textile conservator instead of taking the work. That happens rarely, but it happens.

Turkish, Afghan, Caucasian and the other hand-knotted traditions

People usually say "Persian" for any hand-knotted rug, but the weaving traditions differ in ways that affect cleaning.

Turkish rugs — Oushak, Hereke, Konya, Milas — are typically woven with the symmetrical Turkish knot on a wool foundation. Wool-on-wool construction is more forgiving of moisture than cotton-foundation rugs, but older Turkish village rugs often carry hand-dyed reds that are among the least colour-fast we see.

Afghan and Bokhara rugs are usually dense wool with deep madder reds, and they hold a surprising amount of dry soil in the foundation — these are the rugs where proper dusting makes the most visible difference.

Caucasian and Kazak rugs tend toward bold geometric designs with strong colour contrast, which is exactly the situation where a dye bleed is most obvious and least forgivable.

Indian, Pakistani and Chinese hand-knotted rugs are more often cotton-foundation with modern dyes, which generally wash well, though Chinese silk and silk-blend pieces need the specialist treatment described above.

You do not need to know which you have. We identify construction, knot type, fibre and foundation during inspection, and the method follows from that rather than from what the rug is called.

Oriental carpet cleaning — the same job under a different name

"Oriental carpet cleaning" and "oriental rug cleaning" describe the same work, and the distinction between a rug and a carpet in this context is only size — roughly, a carpet is over about 6×9 feet. Larger pieces are a practical difference rather than a technical one: a big room-size oriental carpet needs more hands to move, more space to dry flat, and a longer turnaround, but the process is identical.

Room-size oriental carpets laid over fitted carpet or hard floors are collected the same way, and we bring enough people to lift one without dragging it. Dragging a heavy hand-knotted carpet across its own pile is a reliable way to damage the foundation.

Rug repair and restoration, and what we do not do

Cleaning and repair are separate trades and we are honest about the line between them. What we handle as part of a clean: minor fringe tidying, re-securing a loose edge binding, and dealing with small areas of loose pile. What we do not do in-house: reweaving, pile reconstruction, full re-fringing, or structural foundation repair on an antique.

For those we will tell you what the rug needs and point you toward a specialist restorer rather than attempting it. A badly executed reweave is permanent and visible, and it devalues a good rug far more than the original damage did.

One thing worth knowing: if a rug needs both, clean it first. Repairers work far more accurately on a clean rug, and dirt ground into a damaged area makes colour-matching for a repair much harder than it needs to be.

Pet accidents on a rug — be honest with us about this one

Urine on a hand-knotted rug is urgent in a way it is not on a fitted carpet. It passes straight through to the foundation, and the uric acid attacks both the wool fibres and the cotton warp, weakening the structure. It also causes dye migration — the classic bleed of a dark colour into a light one — which can become permanent in weeks rather than months.

Tell us when you book. A rug with urine contamination needs a full immersion wash with an enzyme stage, not a surface clean, and knowing in advance means we bring the right process rather than discovering it on your living room floor.

Rug cleaning Glasgow-wide — every postcode covered

We cover Glasgow city and the surrounding towns with no travel charge — from the West End and Southside out to Paisley, East Kilbride and Bearsden. Pick your area for local availability:

Before you book us

Worth a look first: the before and after gallery shows real Glasgow jobs shot from one position in the same light, our reviews are every one we have actually received, and about us explains who turns up, what IICRC training covers and why treatment-risk insurance matters more than public liability alone. Practical questions — dry times, moving furniture, pets and children — are answered on the FAQ page.

Other services you might need