Guide · Updated October 2026
Before anyone wets a rug — you or a cleaner — the fibre decides everything: whether it can be steam cleaned, whether it will shrink, bleed or go stiff, and what it should cost. Here is how to tell.
Grit, stains and pet smells — lifted out of the rug, not covered up.
The short answer
Check the label on the back first; most machine-made rugs state the fibre. No label: look at the back — a hard latex or jute-scrim backing with uniform rows means machine-made, usually polypropylene or polyester; a soft back where the pattern shows through in knots means hand-knotted, usually wool. Feel: wool is springy and slightly oily, polypropylene is smooth and waxy, polyester is silky, cotton is matte, viscose is very shiny and goes limp when wet, jute is coarse and straw-like. Only synthetic, cotton and machine-made wool-look rugs should be hot water extracted at home.
Flip the rug. A stiff latex backing, often with a woven mesh showing through, is the signature of a machine-made tufted rug, and in Australia these are almost all polypropylene, polyester or nylon — the “wool-look” rugs from furniture chains and online stores are polypropylene. A flat woven back where the design is visible in neat machine rows is a machine-woven rug, usually polypropylene or a polyester blend, sometimes wool. A back where you can see the pattern in tiny individual knots, with fringe that is the continuation of the rug’s foundation rather than sewn on, is hand-knotted and almost always wool, sometimes silk. A flat, reversible rug with no backing is a flatweave — cotton (dhurrie), wool (kilim) or jute.
Pull a single loose fibre from the edge or the back — never cut the pile — and hold it in tweezers over a sink with a lighter. Wool smoulders, smells like burning hair and leaves a crumbly black ash. Cotton and jute burn quickly with a paper smell and leave soft grey ash. Polypropylene and polyester melt into a hard bead and smell chemical or sweet; nylon melts and smells like celery. Viscose burns fast like paper despite looking like silk. This settles most arguments in ten seconds.
Synthetic rugs and cotton flatweaves can be hot water extracted in your home with controlled moisture, and that is what we do. Machine-made wool-look rugs are synthetic and are fine. Real wool holds water, dries slowly, can shrink and felt, and its dyes can run — it belongs with a specialist rug laundry that washes it flat and dries it under control. Hand-knotted Persian, Oriental and Turkish rugs are wool or silk and should never be steam cleaned in place. Viscose should not get wet at all without expert handling. Jute browns permanently when soaked. If you tell a cleaner what the rug is made of, and they still want to steam clean a wool or viscose rug on your floor, find another cleaner.
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Common questions
No — it is a marketing term for a synthetic, usually polypropylene, made to imitate wool’s texture. It can be steam cleaned at home. Real wool will say wool on the label, feel slightly oily and springy, and smoulder with a hair smell in a burn test.
Not safely. Check the back, feel it and do a burn test on a loose fibre first. If it is shiny and limp (viscose), coarse and straw-like (jute) or hand-knotted, do not wet it. If you are still unsure, send a photo of the front and back to a cleaner before booking.
Each tuft of pile was tied by hand around the foundation threads, so on the back you can see the pattern in small individual knots and the fringe is the ends of those foundation threads. Hand-knotted rugs are almost always wool or silk, valuable, and should be cleaned by a specialist rug laundry.
A 2 × 3 m rug is $139 in Adelaide, cleaned in your home. 7 days a week.