Glossary
The working vocabulary of upholstery and carpet care — cleaning codes, fibre behaviour, methods and the faults that follow from getting them wrong — defined and cross-linked to the pages that use each term.
Most upholstery problems are vocabulary problems first. A cleaning code is four letters that decide whether water is safe on a fabric. Wicking, browning and pile distortion are three different faults with three different causes, and calling them all “a mark that came back” loses the information needed to fix any of them.
The terms below are grouped by what they belong to.
Cleaning codes and labels. Cleaning code — care label — fire safety label
Methods. Hot water extraction — low moisture cleaning — solvent cleaning — water-based cleaning — dwell time
Fibres and how they behave. Aniline leather — colourfastness
Stain groups. Protein stain — tannin stain
Faults that follow from the wrong method. Over-wetting — wicking — cellulosic browning — pile distortion
That last group is the one worth reading before touching anything. Over-wetting causes wicking and browning; both appear a day or two after the cleaning looked successful, which is why the person who caused them usually believes something else did.
Full A–Z
A
- Aniline leather
- Leather dyed through with no pigmented surface coating. Soft, natural-looking, and highly absorbent — it takes up spills and stains within seconds. 2 pages
C
- Care label
- The standardised pictogram label stating the most severe treatment a textile will survive without irreversible damage — a ceiling, not a recommendation. 7 pages
- Cellulosic browning
- Yellow-brown discolouration appearing after cleaning, caused by lignin dissolving out of cellulosic fibres and wicking to the surface as the item dries. 4 pages
- Cleaning code
- The single letter — W, S, WS or X — on an upholstery tag, stating which class of cleaning agent the fabric was tested against and found to tolerate. 9 pages
- Colourfastness
- The resistance of a fabric's dyes to migrating when wetted with a cleaning product. Tested by blotting an inconspicuous area onto white cloth; any visible transfer is a fail. 7 pages
D
- Dwell time
- The period a cleaning product is left in contact with soil before removal. Part of the treatment rather than a delay before it, and part of any valid colourfastness test. 4 pages
F
- Fire-safety label
- The permanent label required on domestic upholstered furniture supplied in the UK, recording compliance with the ignition-resistance requirements of the 1988 Regulations. 1 page
H
- Hot-water extraction
- Injection of heated cleaning solution into a textile followed by immediate vacuum recovery. The deepest common method, and the one that puts the most water into the item. 7 pages
- house-dust-mite
- definition pending 2 pages
L
- Low-moisture cleaning
- Cleaning systems using a fraction of the water extraction requires. Encapsulation crystallises soil for later vacuuming; bonnet cleaning transfers it to an absorbent pad. 6 pages
O
- Over-wetting
- Introducing more moisture into a textile than can be recovered and dried promptly. The root cause of browning, wicking, prolonged drying and microbial growth in upholstery. 9 pages
P
- Pile distortion
- Uneven flattening or misalignment of a pile fabric's fibres. The resulting patch looks like a stain but is an optical effect — flattened fibres reflect light differently from upright ones. 4 pages
- Protein stain
- Blood, milk, egg, dairy and bodily fluids. Set irreversibly by heat, because heat denatures protein — the same reaction that turns an egg white solid. 4 pages
S
- Solvent cleaning
- Cleaning in which a water-free organic solvent is the medium. Effective on oils, greases and waxes, and the only permitted wet route on an S-coded fabric. 6 pages
T
- Tannin stain
- Tea, coffee, wine, fruit juice and beer. Treated with acidic chemistry — the mirror image of protein stains — and set or darkened by the alkaline products people usually reach for. 2 pages
W
- Water-based cleaning
- Cleaning in which water is the solvent. Effective on polar soils — sugars, salts, most food residues, perspiration — and the source of shrinkage, ringing and browning risk. 6 pages
- Wicking
- The upward movement of moisture along fibre surfaces during drying, carrying dissolved soil back to the visible face. Why a successfully cleaned spot reappears two days later. 4 pages