What a Thousand Long Island Rugs Taught Us: A Field Guide for Interior Designers
Sep 9th, 2026
Pat Santoro Jr., Master Textile Cleaner and Owner of ATC Rug Washing
I’m the third generation of my family to make a living cleaning up after Long Island. My grandfather started in 1978 with a janitorial van. My father kept it going. I run the rug plant in Farmingdale now, and between the three of us, we’ve washed more rugs than I’ve bothered to count.
But somewhere past a thousand rugs, you stop seeing rugs. You start seeing patterns.
The same damage, over and over, in the same kinds of rooms, from Oyster Bay to Greenport. The same fibers failing the same ways. The same phone calls, the same photos taken at reassuring angles, the same five minutes of bad advice that turned a small problem into a write-off.
This is the field guide. Not a whitepaper — nobody needs a whitepaper. It’s what the wash floor teaches, written for the people who see rugs before we ever do: interior designers and decorators. Because the truth of this business is that most of what ruins a rug happens between the install and the phone call. And you’re in the house long before we are.
First, the Good News
Before the damage report, this needs to be said: rugs are tougher than they look.
A hand-knotted wool rug that’s been washed regularly and treated like the textile it is will outlast the client, the designer, and probably the house. We wash rugs older than I am that came in healthy and left beautiful. Wool wants to survive. It’s held up for a few thousand years of human spillage without our help.
Almost everything in this guide is preventable. That’s the part that keeps me writing instead of just washing.
What Actually Walks Through Our Door, Ranked
In rough order of how often we see it, and how much it costs when we do.
1. Pet urine, by a wide margin
The undisputed champion. Here’s the part most people miss: urine is a contamination, not a stain. It doesn’t sit in the pile where a machine can reach it. It goes through the rug — face fibers, foundation, backing, sometimes the pad under it. The spot the client can see is usually the smallest part of the problem. And the smell that “keeps coming back” every humid July never left. It’s dried salt in the foundation, waiting for moisture in the air to reactivate it.
The designer lesson: when a client tells you their dog had an accident, treat it like a plumbing leak. Time matters. Blotting is fine. Spraying things on it is not.
2. The DIY casualty
Second place isn’t a spill. It’s what happened after the spill.
The rental machine from the hardware store, run over a hand-knotted rug. The enzyme spray meant for carpet. The vinegar-and-baking-soda ritual from the internet. Each one is somebody trying to solve the problem, and each one makes our job harder — driving soil and chemistry deeper, destabilizing dyes, leaving residue that attracts the next round of dirt.
I’ve lost track of the rugs where the original spill was minor and the treatment was the real damage. So has every rug washer I know.
The designer lesson: you’re the first call. A short version of the right advice — blot it, don’t spray it, call somebody — is worth more to the rug than any product on a shelf.
3. Moths
The quiet one. Adult moths don’t eat rugs — their larvae do, and they eat animal fiber: wool, silk, cashmere. They don’t like light and they don’t like disturbance, so they seek out exactly the conditions a lot of Long Island homes offer: dark rooms, undisturbed corners, rugs under furniture that never moves, and houses that close up from November to April.
The damage is quiet too — missing pile that reveals bare warp, often discovered at the edges and under sofas. By the time anyone notices, the larvae have been eating for a season.
The designer lesson: dark, still, and unused is moth habitat. Rugs in second homes and formal rooms need inspection and air. Regular washing matters too — moths prefer soiled wool, and a clean rug is a harder target.
4. The classic spills
Wine, coffee, tea, gravy, the odd martini. Real, common, and — caught early — mostly recoverable. This tier is really about response time. A spill blotted in the first minute and a spill worked over with a paper towel for an hour are different jobs entirely.
5. Humidity and the closed-up house
Mildew, musty odor, dye bleed, browning at the edges. This one isn’t the client’s fault, and it’s heavily concentrated in waterfront homes and houses that sit dark and sealed for months. Moisture does its work slowly and without supervision.
The designer lesson: the houses that close for winter need their textiles off the floor or in a climate-controlled space before they do.
6. Renovation and construction damage
Drywall dust ground into wool pile under contractor boots. Paint. The tarp that was supposed to protect the rug and instead trapped moisture against it for six weeks. Every gut renovation on this island orphans a rug somewhere, and it’s rarely treated kindly.
The Fibers, Ranked by Forgiveness
A ranking no fiber directory will print.
Wool: the professional
Resilient, cleanable, dye-stable when treated right, forgiving of ordinary life. It sheds, it can felt under abuse, and it will absorb a spill into the foundation faster than people expect — but it takes a genuinely bad day to ruin a wool rug. Spec it with confidence.
Silk and wool-silk: the talent with a temper
Gorgeous, and genuinely durable in the right hands — but the right hands are professional ones. The silk in a blend is usually the first casualty of a bad cleaning decision. These rugs reward a client who calls early and punish improvisation.
Viscose: the beautiful liability
I’ll be straight with you, because you already suspect it: viscose is the fiber we see fail most, and it fails in ways no other fiber does. It’s cellulose processed to look like silk, and it’s dramatically weaker when wet — some testing puts it at 50 to 80 percent weaker. Water alone — no spill, just water — can swell the fibers, distort the pile, and leave browning and streaks that don’t come out.
I’m not telling you never to spec it. It photographs beautifully and clients love it. I’m telling you that a viscose rug in a house with dogs, kids, or cocktails isn’t a question of if it comes to us. It’s when, and in what condition.
The honest move: viscose for the rooms that get looked at, not lived in. And fiber protection on it from day one.
Undyed creams and naturals: the honest ones
Jute, undyed wool, pale cottons. No dye to hide behind, so every spill, every yellow tinge from pet residue or sunscreen, every season of soiling shows. Cleanable, but they need cadence — they can’t coast.
What a Rug Actually Holds
Here’s the number that changes how people see their rugs: the soil in a typical rug is roughly 75 to 80 percent dry particulate. Grit. Dust. Whatever tracked in on shoes and paws and worked its way down through the pile with every footstep.
That grit doesn’t just look bad. It cuts. Every step on a soiled rug grinds that particulate against the fibers like fine sandpaper. This is why an old rug can wear out from the bottom up while looking acceptably clean from above — and why proper dusting, before anything wet touches the rug, is half the job.
A rug can go years looking fine while quietly holding pounds of this. The cleanest-looking rug in the house is often the dirtiest thing in it.
The designer lesson: the maintenance conversation is not cosmetic. A washing cadence — every one to three years depending on the household — is how a five-figure rug stays a five-figure rug.
The Calendar of Damage
Damage has a season here, and it’s worth knowing if you schedule installs or maintenance.
Spring is discovery season — moth damage found at spring cleaning, musty rugs pulled out of closed houses, the winter’s secret spills finally surfacing. Summer is the season of urine and humidity: pets inside in the heat, odor reactivating in the damp air. Fall is preparation season — the last window to wash, treat, and store before the houses close. Winter is the quiet season, when small problems sit in the dark and compound. And late November through New Year’s is the spike: red wine, parties, houseguests, and the rug in the dining room that was never designed for forty people’s worth of Cabernet.
If you take one scheduling insight from this whole piece: fall is when your clients can still buy back their rugs’ summers. The phone call is cheap in October.
If I Had Five Minutes With Every Designer on Long Island
The distillation. Everything above, reduced to what actually changes outcomes:
– Match the fiber to the household, not the mood board. Viscose in a house with a golden retriever is a scheduled loss.
– Recommend fiber protection at install, not after the first incident. It buys the blot window that saves rugs.
– Teach the blot script before the accident: white towel, press, repeat, call. Never scrub, never spray.
– Build a washing cadence into the maintenance plan — every one to three years by household. It’s not an expense. It’s the difference between a rug that lasts decades and one that doesn’t.
– Get rugs out of the house during renovations. A tarp is not a plan.
– For second homes and closed-up houses: inspect in fall, store textiles properly, and remember dark and still is where moths and mildew do their work.
– And when a client texts you a photo at a reassuring angle, take it seriously — then call somebody who washes rugs for a living. Early calls are easy ones.
FAQ
How often should a fine rug be professionally washed?
For most households, every one to three years depending on traffic, pets, and children. Rugs under dining tables, in entries, and in pet households sit at the short end of that range. The rug will tell you too — gritty pile, dull color, persistent odor.
Can a rug that's been urine-contaminated be saved?
Usually, yes — if it reaches us reasonably early. Odor and contamination in the foundation respond to proper decontamination washing. Bleached or dye-burned areas generally don’t reverse. The variable is time.
Is viscose really that fragile?
In moisture terms, yes. It’s dramatically weaker when wet and can be damaged by water alone — browning, distortion, streaking. It’s cleanable by professionals, but it belongs in low-consequence rooms: looks, not load-bearing life.
How do I know if a client's rug has moth damage?
Look for missing pile that exposes the foundation’s warp lines, especially along edges and under furniture — larvae feed on the wool, not the cotton foundation. Damage found early is often repairable; a full season of it usually isn’t.
Does professional washing damage old or antique rugs?
Not when the rug is identified and tested first — fiber, construction, and dye stability dictate the process. That’s the entire reason rugs come to a facility instead of getting cleaned where they lie. Age itself is rarely the risk. Improper process is.
What's the single most common mistake you see?
A client treating a fine rug like carpet — machine over it, spray on it, hope. Fine rugs are textiles. They respond to textile care. That mindset, more than any product or accident, decides which rugs come back year after year and which ones don’t.
About the Author
Pat Santoro Jr., Master Textile Cleaner and Owner of ATC Rug Washing
Pat Santoro Jr. is a third-generation cleaning-business owner and owner of Around The Clock (ATC) Rug Washing in Farmingdale, New York. ATC provides dedicated rug washing and specialty textile care for homeowners, interior designers, and businesses throughout Long Island
Pat’s work focuses on textile identification, rug construction, cleaning chemistry, dye behavior, pet urine decontamination, professional dusting, controlled washing, extraction, drying, and fiber protection. ATC approaches each rug individually rather than relying on a generic in-home carpet-cleaning method.
He is also a founding member of the Textile Cleaning and Restoration Education Institute (TCREI), an organization focused on advancing education, research, and professional standards in textile cleaning and restoration.
