Carpet Washing in Johannesburg: Where to Take a Loose Carpet or Rug

If you are searching for somewhere to wash a carpet in Johannesburg, the short answer is that you do not need to take it anywhere. A loose carpet, meaning a rug, a runner or a mat, is collected from your door, washed at our own rug facility and brought back to you, and collection and delivery are part of the price. Most rugs are home again in 1 to 3 working days. A fitted carpet is never taken away at all: it is cleaned where it lies and is dry in 2 to 6 hours.

This guide explains the difference between the two, why the obvious do-it-yourself routes (the laundromat, the car wash, the hosepipe on the driveway) so often end badly, what a proper wash actually involves, and how to get a carpet or rug collected anywhere in Gauteng.

What “carpet washing” usually means

In South Africa, “carpet” gets used for two quite different things, and which one you have decides everything that follows.

• A loose carpet. Anything that is not fixed to the floor: a lounge rug, a dining room carpet that sits on tiles or wooden floors, a passage runner, a bedside mat, a kilim, a shaggy rug, a kids’ play rug. These can be rolled up and taken away to be washed, and that is the right way to clean them.
• A fitted carpet. Wall-to-wall carpet stretched over underlay and held on gripper strips around the edge of the room. It is never lifted to be washed, because lifting and relaying it damages the backing and the seams and costs far more than the clean. It is cleaned in place.

Most people who search for “carpet washing” or “where can I wash my carpet” have the first kind: a loose carpet that has got dirty, smelly or stained, and that is too big for the washing machine at home.

Why the laundromat, the car wash and the driveway go wrong

None of these are silly ideas. They just each miss a step that matters more than people expect, and the damage tends to show up a day or two later, when the rug is already dry and it is too late to undo.

The laundromat

A laundry machine is built for clothing. A rug, once it is wet, is far heavier than any load of clothes the drum is designed to spin, and the machine cannot spin enough water out of it. The rug comes home wet at its core, which is exactly the condition in which a cotton foundation browns and starts to smell. A wool rug can also felt and shrink under the tumbling action, and a rug with a latex backing (most hand-tufted rugs) can have that backing crack and separate in the wash. A small bath mat or a rug that is sold as machine washable is a different matter, and our guide to washing a rug at home covers which ones can go in a machine safely.

The car wash

A pressure washer drives water straight through the pile and into the foundation, which is the opposite of what a rug needs. It can fray the pile on the surface, force dye from one colour into its neighbour, and leave a large rug soaked through with no way of drying it quickly. Car wash detergents are also formulated for paintwork, not textile, and they are not rinsed out of a rug the way they rinse off a car.

The hosepipe on the driveway

This is the most common route, and the problem is rarely the washing. It is the rinsing and the drying. Washing-up liquid and household detergents foam, and a rug needs a great deal of clean water to rinse that foam fully out of the pile. Whatever is left behind stays sticky, and sticky residue is what makes a rug get dirty again within weeks. Then the rug has to dry, and a rug folded over a wall or lying on the lawn dries from the outside in. The surface feels dry by evening while the foundation stays damp for days, which is how a rug ends up with brown tide marks, a musty smell, or colours that have run into the cream areas.

Wool, viscose (sold as art silk or bamboo silk), jute and sisal should never be hosed down at all. Viscose loses much of its strength when it is wet and browns as it dries, and jute and sisal shrink and stain with water. Our guides to cleaning a viscose rug and cleaning sisal, jute and seagrass explain why.

What a proper rug wash actually involves

Washing a rug well is less about the water and more about everything around it. At our facility, every rug goes through the same sequence, and the method in the middle is chosen by what the rug is made of.

1. Inspection and fibre identification. The rug is checked, the fibre is identified, and any existing damage, old stains or weak areas are noted and photographed before it leaves your house, so you know in advance what will and will not come out.
2. Dye testing. The colours are tested before any moisture is applied, so a rug with unstable dyes is never put into water.
3. Dusting. Dry grit is vibrated out of the foundation first. A rug holds a surprising amount of fine sand, and washing it before it is dusted turns that grit into mud. There is more on this in what rug dusting is.
4. Washing, by the right method for the fibre. Everyday synthetic rugs are machine washed for the deepest clean, and delicate rugs are washed by hand for the gentlest. Viscose, sisal, jute and rugs whose dyes fail the test are dry cleaned instead, with controlled low moisture rather than a wash.
5. Rinsing. The rug is rinsed until the water runs clear, so no detergent is left in the pile to attract dirt.
6. Spinning and drying. The bulk of the water is spun out in a centrifuge, and the rug is then dried flat under controlled conditions and checked until it is dry right through, not just dry on top.
7. Grooming and a final check. The pile is groomed, fringes are straightened, and the rug is checked once more before it comes home.

None of that is possible on a driveway, which is the whole reason a rug leaves the house to be washed. We have written about it in more detail in why a rug should not be cleaned in your home.

How to get a carpet or rug collected in Gauteng

We collect from homes and businesses across Johannesburg, Pretoria and the whole of Gauteng, from Sandton, Fourways and Randburg to Midrand, Centurion and the East and West Rand. Getting a rug collected takes a couple of minutes:

1. Measure it. Length and width in metres is all we need, because rugs are priced by area. Our pricing page lists the price for each size, with one price for synthetic rugs and another for delicate ones.
2. Take three photographs. The front, the back and a corner, in daylight. That tells us the fibre and the construction, and lets us tell you which method your rug will get before it is collected.
3. Book a collection. Use the quote form or send the photos on WhatsApp, and we will arrange a day.

If you have fitted carpets too, they can be cleaned on the same day the rugs are collected. Fitted carpet is priced per room, by the size of the room, and the details are on our carpet cleaning page.

What about mats and small rugs?

A bath mat or a small cotton or polyester rug that carries a care label allowing machine washing can usually be washed at home on a cold, gentle cycle and dried flat, and there is no need to send it anywhere. Anything that does not have that label, anything larger than your machine can hold loosely, anything with a rubber or latex backing that is starting to crack, and anything made of wool, viscose, jute or sisal is safer sent out. If in doubt, send us a photo of the label and the back and we will tell you honestly whether it is worth our while or yours.

How fitted carpet is cleaned instead

Because a fitted carpet cannot be taken away, it is cleaned in a sequence that does the job of a wash where it lies. The carpet is vacuumed thoroughly first to lift dry soil. A pre-spray is then applied and left to dwell, so the chemistry has time to loosen the soil, and the pile is agitated to work it through. Only then is the carpet rinsed and extracted, with the wand flushing clean water into the pile and recovering it in the same stroke. Because all the chemistry is in the pre-spray and the rinse is clean water, nothing sticky is left behind. The pile is groomed, furniture is set back on protective tabs, and the carpet is dry and ready to walk on in 2 to 6 hours. The full sequence is set out on our process page.

Common questions