Silk Rug Specialists since 1978
Silk Rug Cleaning. Cold Water. By Hand. The Way Silk Demands.
Qum, Hereke, Kashan, Nain, Isfahan. Every color dye-tested before water. Hand-washed by master craftsmen. Free pickup across the Bay Area.
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47+ Years Hand-Washing Silk -
Insured in Transit at Stated Value -
Free Bay-Wide Pickup -
Dye-Stability Tested First
Tell us about your silk rug
A silk specialist responds within 24 hours.
- 1978Family-owned since
- Hand-wash onlyNo machines, no shared tanks
- pH 5.5Silk-safe chemistry
- Stated valueInsured in transit
- Bay AreaTrusted by collectors & designers
What we see every week
Silk is a protein. Most cleaners treat it like wool.
Hot water shrinks it. Detergent strips it. A rotary scrubber crushes the knot and sends the sheen with it. Dyes — particularly the reds in a Qum or the blues in a Hereke — will bleed the first time water touches them if no one tests them first.
This is what walks through our door after the wrong shop has been near it.
Dye bleed
Reds into ivory, indigo into the field. Usually within 90 seconds of immersion. Usually irreversible.
Sheen loss
Hot water and alkaline detergent flatten the silk filament. The luster never comes back.
Shrinkage
A 9 x 12 Qum can lose two inches per side from a single hot tunnel-wash. The foundation puckers permanently.
Mechanical damage
Rotary brushes break the silk pile at the knot. You see it as a dull halo around foot-traffic lanes.
The silk protocol
Five steps. Cold water. No shortcuts.
Every silk rug we accept follows the same protocol. The variables are the dyes, the knot density, and the age — never the process.
Dye-stability test
Every distinct color is wand-tested in cold distilled water before the rug touches a tub. Fugitive dyes get a stabilizing pre-treatment.
Dry dust pass
Years of embedded grit, lifted out of the foundation without water. Silk is brittle when dry-dirty. This step is non-negotiable.
Cold immersion
Single dedicated tub. Under 60°F. pH-5.5 silk-safe chemistry. No silk shares water with another rug, ever.
Hand-soap with the nap
By hand, in the direction of the pile, with the master craftsman’s brush. No rotary equipment touches silk in our atelier.
Sealed flat dry
Seventy-two hours, climate-controlled, on a flat sealed bed. Vertical drying creates tidemarks. We never vertical-dry silk.
The silks we hand-wash
We know the difference. The wash plan does too.
Qum · Hereke
Fine Persian & Turkish silk
The highest-knot-density silk we handle — 800 to 1,200 knots per square inch. Single-tub immersion only. The reds in a Qum and the blues in a Hereke require the longest dye-stability test of any silk we wash.
Kashan · Tabriz silk
City-workshop silk
Medallion silks with cotton or silk foundations. Dye stability varies by decade — pre-1970 vegetal dyes behave very differently from later synthetic dyes. We test each color separately.
Nain · Isfahan
Silk-on-wool & silk-highlight
Often misread by other shops as “just wool.” The silk highlights and silk inlays need their own protocol. We treat the silk and the wool separately within the same wash.
What you receive
Documented at every step.
A silk rug is an asset. We treat it like one — and we give you the paperwork to prove it.
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Written condition report
Pre-wash assessment with photo documentation of weave, dyes, and any prior damage. -
Dye-stability results
Per-color test results before any water touches the rug. If a color fails, we tell you first. -
Photo doc, before & after
High-resolution photos of every quadrant, before immersion and after sealed flat drying. -
Stated-value transit insurance
Insured pickup and return, at the value you declare — not at a per-pound default. -
Certificate of hand-cleaning
Signed certificate documenting the protocol used. Useful for insurance and appraisal records.
Bay Area collectors & designers
Trusted with rugs worth more than the truck that picks them up.
“An antique Hereke runner my father brought back in the sixties. Three other shops would not touch it. ABC tested every color, told me up-front that two reds were borderline, and walked me through the plan before they took it. It came back the way I remembered it as a child.”
“A Qum we paid mid five figures for, with a red-wine spill from a holiday dinner. I had been told to write it off. ABC pulled it out cleanly. No halo, no tidemark, no shift in the field. They sent the dye-stability sheet with the rug.”
“A pair of Nain silk-wool pieces I sourced for a client in Atherton. The previous cleaner had returned them with a clear sheen loss on one. ABC explained exactly what had gone wrong, restored what could be restored, and was straight with us about what could not. That conversation is why I keep going back.”
Silk specialist estimate
Forty-seven years of cold-water silk work.
Send a photo and the origin. A silk specialist responds within 24 hours, with a written estimate and the dye-stability plan in plain language.
Free Bay-wide pickup · Stated-value transit insurance · (650) 675-8160
Tell us about your silk rug
A silk specialist responds within 24 hours.
The five questions silk owners ask
Straight answers about silk.
How much does silk rug cleaning cost?
Silk is priced per square foot, and the rate is higher than wool — because of the single-tub immersion, the per-color dye-stability work, and the seventy-two-hour sealed flat dry. Send a photo and the origin and we will return a written estimate within 24 hours. No obligation.
How do you guarantee no dye bleed on a silk Qum or Hereke?
We never guarantee what we have not tested. Every distinct color in the rug is wand-tested in cold distilled water before any immersion. If a color is fugitive, we stabilize it first, or we tell you the color cannot be safely washed. The test results travel with your rug and are returned to you in writing.
How long does a silk rug take?
Ten to fourteen business days, door-to-door. The seventy-two-hour sealed flat dry is non-negotiable — silk dried vertically picks up tidemarks. Pickup days fill up, so booking the slot early shortens the wait, not the protocol.
My silk rug has already lost its sheen — can it be restored?
Sometimes. If the sheen loss is from surface soil and a wool-grade detergent residue, a properly chemistry-matched silk wash will recover much of it. If the silk filament itself has been crushed by a rotary brush or flattened by hot water, it cannot be brought back. We will tell you which one you have before we accept the rug.
Do you accept silk-wool blends like Nain and Isfahan?
Yes — and we treat the silk highlights and the wool ground as two different fibers within the same wash. That is the part most factory cleaners get wrong. A wool-grade detergent on the silk inlays of a Nain is how the sheen disappears the first time.
Free pickup. Free estimate.
Bring it to a specialist.
Free Bay-wide pickup. Free written estimate. Stated-value transit insurance. Family-owned since 1978.