This week Gustavo was assisting our client Sarah for her move out cleaning. She had some deep depressions in her carpeting from a table that had been sitting in the same place for a number of years. She removed that piece of furniture and it left some pretty significant indents in the carpeting, so she asked Gustavo how she could remove those indentations. She told him that she had tried everything she could think of to remove them.
There are a few different industry terms we use to describe these: pile distortion, pile damage, texture distortion, furniture marks, furniture indentations. As with everything else in life, there are different levels of imprint and different levels of damage. Placing a very large and heavy piece of furniture in a room with wall-to-wall carpet can cause issues beyond just the dents or impressions it leaves behind. As with most materials used in building, carpet needs room to contract and expand with the levels of heat and moisture present in the environment. When you place a heavy piece of furniture on wall to wall carpeting that is designed to have some tolerance, it will hinder the move and flex in the areas just underneath the furniture, yet all of the fibers around it are still flexible. Over time the carpeting under stress is broken and bent and the backing under the carpet becomes compromised. Wall to wall carpets have a hard latex backing to keep them rigid and stretched nicely across the floor. This latex backing, when compromised, loses its structure and integrity. The glue starts to deteriorate.
So to answer Sarah‘s question about whether or not we can remove furniture marks from your carpeting:
- The cleaning will help to lift the pile. So in some cases, it will reduce the appearance of the indentations.
- We have had limited success in the past using a hand steamer. This helps to lift and reset the pile.
- In most cases, we find that the furniture indentations are permanent.
Obviously the answer is not to completely avoid putting furniture in your home, but for things like a console table or a settee that has a small footprint but quite a bit of weight, you need to either disperse the weight by using a coaster under the feet, or reduce the footprint by using something that will pass the piles and prevent the crushing of the pile.
We vote for the second option to lift the weight off of the pile.
Happy Cleaning!!
