Textile Cleaning doesn’t have to be stressful. We wanted to share some easy-to-follow guidelines for cleaning your client’s clothes.
Here’s our Clean Dozen: Kreussler’s Golden Rules of Textile Cleaning!
1. “Keep your true colors.”
Sort garments by bright/dark color and heavy/light material.
2. “Don’t ruffle my fur.”
Sort all leather and fur garments as well as textiles with leather or fur applications separately.
3. “Stay silky and smooth.”
Treat silks and acetates separately. If wet cleaned, use a silk program with short and gentle extraction and short, low-temperature drying.
4. “Keep that sparkle alive.”
Preferably wet clean textiles with paillettes, pearls, plastic trims, PVC, PU-coatings or flock print.
5. “Don’t max out.”
When wet cleaning, load only 50–60% of machine capacity in weight, and load maximally 60% of the view glass of the machine in volume.
6. “Pleats, please.”
Prefer dry cleaning for plissé pleated skirts.
7. “Here comes the bride.”
Prefer dry cleaning for silk wedding dresses slightly soiled.
8. “Take double care with double-face.”
Be extra careful with double-faced fabrics: Reduce mechanical action and take care to use gentle cleaning and gentle extraction.
9. “Be a protector.”
Use protectors or wrap with aluminum foil to avoid damage in buckles, stones, bigger metallic parts or delicate buttons which can break.
10. “Puttin’ on the glitz.”
Be careful with mechanics treating lurex and textiles containing metal fiber. Use very careful low-speed extraction or hang dry after wet cleaning.
11. “Stain away from me.”
If a “dry clean only” garment is all over heavily stained with water-based stains, a careful wet cleaning process might be better with a lower risk than dry cleaning and local stain removal.
12. “Check your labels.”
As a rule of thumb, wet cleaning is possible for labels like washable, handwash, W in the circle, P normal and usually also P underlined.
