Our technician Pete recently spent a chilly Friday morning in the Cotswolds cleaning two sofas, one cotton velvet & one linen. When this job was booked in, the customer was unsure if one of the sofas was indeed cotton velvet. The first step when arriving at the property was to pre-test the fabric so that our technician knows exactly what material he would be working with & could therefore determine which process to use to get the best results…
If you are unsure if your upholstery is cotton or synthetic velvet, you can also get a good idea yourself by wetting a small area of the fabric in an out of way area (usually low down of the back is a good place!) & press it firmly. If the pile dents/collapses, it’s cotton.
As this was found to be cotton velvet, Pete decided to dry-clean the sofa as this is a gentler method of cleaning & would avoid any damage that the amount of water used in a traditional rinse extraction may cause on such a delicate fabric.
Dry-cleaning has limitations as a cleaning method, compared to the deep cleaning that a traditional rinse extraction offers. It involves the application of solvent to the upholstery once it has been thoroughly hoovered. The solution used is a low volatility solvent, but still requires a well-ventilated room whilst the clean is taking place as well as for a few hours following the clean.
Despite the limitations of dry-cleaning, by working carefully & methodically a lot of soiling was successfully recovered from the sofa, leaving it fresher & sanitised.
However, some of the stains proved to be permanent in this instance. This is not uncommon with this type of fabric.
The second sofa that Pete was there to clean was also pre-tested & confirmed to be linen. The method used for cleaning this sofa was a traditional rinse extraction (sometimes called steam cleaning).
The sofa was thoroughly hoovered before any stain treatments were applied. An eco-sanitising pre-spray is then used before a gentle agitation to bring any dirt to the surface before it is rinse extracted.
Depending on the level of soiling, this final step is sometimes repeated.
As you can see from the side-by-side images above, the linen sofa responded well to the deep clean and either lifted the stains completely or made a marked improvement. Although the cleaning process is different to that of the cotton velvet sofa, both methods meant that the upholstery was cleaner, fresher & sanitised for the customer (who was very pleased with the results).
If you are interested in having your upholstery cleaned, then please do not hesitate to contact us today for more information or to book an appointment.