Protect your oriental rugs from the sun! they fade!

Protect Your Oriental Rugs from the Sun! They Fade!

The sun is your oriental rug’s natural enemy. Discover how to protect your rug from harmful UV rays.

Sunlight, just as much as moths and beetles, is a great danger to your oriental rug. As much as sunlight makes a room warm and inviting, especially on a warm spring day when all you want to do is curl up in a chair and read a book, it can seriously harm your rug.  It does not matter which direction the sun comes from, when it comes through the window or even if the rug is synthetically or naturally dyed. Sunlight will fade a rug, cause it to dry out and become brittle over time.

It’s really that simple. Sustained sunlight (UV light) will fade and ruin a rug.

So, how do you prevent damage to your rug due to sunlight?

Well, the easiest way to prevent sun damage to your oriental rug is to keep it in a cool, dark place with no sunlight, but that isn’t really practical, is it? You want to enjoy your rug, not keep it like a treasure that cannot be exposed to air or light.

So, you might consider implementing a more practical version of protection. Keep the curtains drawn when the room is not in use. Rugs degrade and fade from repeated exposure over a period of time. Also, make sure to take into account the fact that the sun shines in from different angles over the course of a year as seasons change, and if you have a skylight, make sure the glass is UV filtered.

That brings us to the next, slightly more involved option: coating your windows with Mylar. Mylar is an invisible film that filters out UV light, the primary culprit behind faded rugs. It can also make your home more energy efficient by reducing the amount of heat transferred from the the sun through your windows. So, it might be worth the investment. I would say that it depends on how much you want to protect your oriental rugs.