“Synthetic” gets used for every rug that isn't wool, cotton or silk, but the fibers under that word behave very differently once they're wet. A polypropylene runner can be hosed down and left to dry. A viscose rug with a silky shine can come out of a careless wash with brown marks and a pile that never lies flat again. So before you clean one yourself, or pay someone else to, it helps to know which one you have.
Start with the tag
Turn over a corner and look for a sewn-in label on the back. Rugs sold new in the US are supposed to list the fiber in the face, meaning the pile you walk on. The backing often isn't listed. The words on the label don't always match what people call the rug in a store, so here's how they line up:
| Label says | Fiber |
|---|---|
| Polypropylene, olefin, PP | Polypropylene. “Olefin” is the generic name the FTC uses for it, so it's the same fiber. |
| Nylon, polyamide | Nylon |
| Polyester, PET, recycled PET | Polyester. Rugs made from recycled bottles are still polyester. |
| Viscose, rayon, art silk, bamboo silk | Viscose, a fiber made from wood or bamboo pulp. It looks like silk, it isn't silk, and it isn't really a plastic either. |
| Acrylic | Acrylic, a soft fiber made to feel like wool. Less common in rugs. |
| A blend, like 80% polypropylene / 20% polyester | Plan around the fussier of the two fibers. |
“Bamboo silk” trips up a lot of people. It sounds natural and it's priced like a mid-range rug, but it's viscose. The bamboo is only the raw pulp, and the FTC has spent years going after sellers who label rayon made from bamboo as plain “bamboo.”
No tag? Feel the pile, then look at the back
Tags get cut off. You can usually get close by hand:
- Polypropylene feels slightly waxy or plasticky and is light for its size. A lot of low-priced flatweaves and machine-woven rugs, including many indoor-outdoor rugs, are polypropylene.
- Nylon feels firm and springs back quickly when you press it with your thumb. It's the fiber in most wall-to-wall carpet, and it shows up in tufted area rugs too.
- Polyester is very soft, often plush or shaggy, and the colors tend to be bright. Walkways go matted and dull.
- Viscose is cool and slippery, with a shine that changes as you walk around the rug. Brush your hand against the pile and the color shifts sharply. It sheds, and traffic leaves what look like bruises.
Then flip the corner. If the back is a sheet of fabric or felt glued over the whole rug, the rug is tufted: yarn was punched through a base cloth and held in place with latex glue. That glue matters as much as the fiber. Latex breaks down with age and heat, and the signs are a fine powder on the floor when you lift the rug, a crackling sound when you fold a corner, or a back that has gone stiff. Washing doesn't fix failing latex, and getting it wet can make it crumble faster. If you see the pattern clearly on the back in neat rows, the rug was woven, and there's no glued backing to worry about.
The burn test, if you really want to know
Textile people identify fibers by burning a few strands. Pull two or three strands of pile from a spot near a corner where it won't show. Don't use the fringe: on many rugs the fringe is cotton even when the pile isn't, so you'd be testing the wrong thing. Hold the strands with tweezers over the kitchen sink and touch them to a lighter flame.
| Fiber | How it burns | Smell | What's left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Polypropylene | Shrinks and melts | Candle wax | Hard, pale bead |
| Nylon | Melts and drips | Faintly like celery | Hard, tan bead |
| Polyester | Melts, black sooty smoke | Sweetish, chemical | Hard, dark bead |
| Viscose | Catches fast, like paper | Burning paper | Soft grey ash |
| Wool, for comparison | Smolders, puts itself out | Burnt hair | Black ash that crushes |
If you get burnt hair, the rug isn't synthetic at all, and our wool rug cleaning page is the better read.
What each fiber means for cleaning
Polypropylene
It barely absorbs water, and the color is added to the plastic before it's spun into fiber, so juice and coffee have a hard time staining it. That's why these rugs usually wash up well. The two things a wash won't change: polypropylene holds onto oily dirt, which is why the path from the kitchen or the front door turns grey, and once the pile has been crushed flat in a walkway it doesn't stand back up. Cleaning takes out the dirt, not the flattened path. It also melts at a fairly low temperature, so keep it away from radiators and don't drag heavy furniture across it.
Nylon
The toughest of the group, and the best at recovering from foot traffic. The catch is that most nylon is dyed after the fiber is made, which means other dyes can bind to it the same way. Red sports drinks, fruit punch and some children's medicine can leave a mark that is really a new dye, not dirt. A wash removes soil, but a set dye stain may only get lighter. Our rug stain removal page covers which stains are worth mentioning when you book.
Polyester
Like polypropylene, it attracts oily soil. Shag and plush polyester rugs also tangle and mat, and a wash will brighten the color more than it will bring back a matted walkway.
Viscose
This is the one to be careful with. Viscose loses a lot of its strength when it's wet, it water-spots, and it can turn yellow or brown if it stays damp too long or gets a spill that soaks through. The bruised-looking traffic lanes are the fiber itself breaking down, and no cleaning reverses that. Nobody can honestly promise a viscose rug comes back exactly as it left. At home, blot spills with a dry towel instead of scrubbing, skip the spray spot removers, and don't put a rental carpet machine on it. There's more on fine and delicate rugs on our silk and antique rug page.
Why washing a big rug is hard in an apartment
A 3 × 5 polypropylene mat can go in the bathtub. Above that size, the hard part is drying, not washing. A soaked 5 × 8 is a two-person lift, it has to dry flat or hung with air reaching both sides, and slow drying is what leaves a musty smell (and, on viscose, brown marks).
In New York City the usual workarounds mostly don't work. Most apartments have no yard and no hose. The fire escape has to stay clear under the fire code, so it can't be a drying rack. And heat season starts on October 1, so it's tempting to drape a damp rug near the radiator, which is the worst place for polypropylene and for latex backing. A rental carpet machine sprays water into the rug and sucks most of it back out, which is fine for a quick freshen-up but leaves dirt and moisture down in the backing. Our page on rug steam cleaning vs. whole rug washing goes through the difference.
Two things are worth doing at home for any synthetic rug. Vacuum the front, then flip the rug over and vacuum the back, which shakes loose grit that has worked its way down. And use suction only, with the beater bar off, on viscose and shag.
Is a synthetic rug worth paying to wash?
Enter your measurements to see your rug’s cleaning total before booking. Pickup and return are free when the cleaning subtotal is $250 or more, and $50 below that.
| Size | Area | Cleaning | Pickup & return | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5 × 8 ft runner | 20 sq ft | $130 | $50 | $180 |
| 3 × 5 ft | 15 sq ft | $97.50 | $50 | $147.50 |
| 5 × 8 ft | 40 sq ft | $260 | Free | $260 |
| 6 × 9 ft | 54 sq ft | $351 | Free | $351 |
| 8 × 10 ft | 80 sq ft | $520 | Free | $520 |
Plenty of machine-made polypropylene rugs cost less new than it costs to wash them. If yours is one of those and it's just generally dirty, buying a new one may be the cheaper answer. Washing makes more sense when the rug cost more than the cleaning, when you couldn't easily replace it (a size or color that took you months to find), when it has sentimental value, or when you have a few rugs that clear $250 together. Every rug in one booking counts toward that $250, so a runner and a 3 × 5 together come to $227.50 plus $50 for pickup, and adding a second 3 × 5 makes all of it travel free.
Before you book
Measure the rug edge to edge without the fringe. Our guide on how to measure a rug for the rug cleaning calculator covers inches, crooked edges and furniture in the way. If you know the fiber, or you've found powdery backing, a viscose shine or a set stain, write it in the rug notes box when you book. That box is there for materials, stains, pet odor and existing damage. For pet accidents, the pad and backing are usually the real problem, even on a fiber that doesn't soak anything up, and our pet urine and odor page explains why.
We pick up in New York City and nearby parts of Long Island, Westchester, North Jersey and southwest Connecticut. Our synthetic rug cleaning page has the short version of all this.