I love the looks of custom-made rugs with both multiple pile heights and different fibers or weaves but there are some downsides also.
Today, designers look for rugs to enhance a room as well as flow well with different colors, textures, and feel of a room. One way they achieve this is with custom-made area rugs that have different weaves to create multiple heights of the pile and often using either different color yarns or even different fibers to achieve this look.
Whether it is all wool, wool, and silk or perhaps wool and linen. They all give a different look as you glance across the rug. Some fibers may have a little shine to them compared to the other fibers and sometimes it is just a different weave used to form a distinction.
New, they look beautiful. The problem comes down the road as the rug starts to show wear. Like all rugs, wear can and will take its toll on the appearance of a rug. The problem here though becomes premature wear. Anytime you have multiple pile heights, the fibers that are raised receive most of the wear and become very noticeable in traffic areas extremely quickly. Those raised fibers meant to give a different appearance suddenly disappear and the distinction is lost as well as that original overall look you tried to achieve is lost for good.
Besides the raised fibers prematurely wearing, the entire rug will also. Due to the difference in pile heights, any time you vacuum the rug a tremendous amount of suction is lost compared to vacuuming a flat, even pile nap on a rug. This loss of suction causes the rug to be inadequately vacuumed and resulting in deposits of soil still in the rug as the base of the fibers. As we walk on the rug, these remaining soil particles wear and eventually cut the fibers at their base. This results in fiber loss. The more fiber loss, the more the traffic pattern shows due to the rug matting down from being a less dense rug in those areas. Being aware of the deficiencies from vacuuming, will help the person in charge of housekeeping to make a greater attempt at vacuuming with several additional passes over the rug when vacuuming.
My conclusion is not to avoid these rugs because they do have such a positive effect. Instead, carefully plan the location of these rugs. Putting them in rooms less used.
As always, with over 50 years of experience, I try to take my experiences and share them with consumers to help them make better choices with carpet selection and the care required. Always feel free to contact me at Alec’s Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning LLC. You can either visit our website http://www.Alecscarpetcleaning.com or call our office directly at 781-871-1415.