How to wash a faux fur blanket (fur blankets)

04/06/2017

Con­tent:

1. Why fur?
2. The art of com­fort: how to choose a fur blan­ket?
3. Machine wash­able: Can a faux fur blan­ket be washed?
4. How to wash faux fur blan­kets?
5. Hand wash: how to wash large blan­kets?

Why fur?

Nat­ur­al fur has been used for home fur­nish­ing since time immemo­r­i­al. Per­haps it was the skins of ani­mals that became the first inte­ri­or items of prim­i­tive man. They could serve at the same time as a blan­ket, and clothes, and a car­pet, and even an entrance door. Over time, fur prod­ucts were less and less com­mon at home, giv­ing way to things made of nat­ur­al wool, and lat­er syn­thet­ics. Unlike these light and durable mate­ri­als, warm but heavy fur bed­spreads and blan­kets required spe­cial care. But every­thing is chang­ing…

Recent­ly, tech­nol­o­gy has made it pos­si­ble to cre­ate incred­i­bly real­is­tic, light­weight and com­plete­ly hypoal­ler­genic faux fur blan­kets. They have become a lux­u­ri­ous attribute of home com­fort in a mod­ern way.

The art of comfort: how to choose a fur blanket?

If you are just plan­ning to get a fur blan­ket and are look­ing at the assort­ment in near­by stores, you should think in advance how to make it eas­i­er for your­self to wash and dry your fur blan­ket. To do this, you need to choose just such a blan­ket that you can take care of your­self:

1. Pay atten­tion to the length of the pile. The larg­er it is, the more care­ful­ly you will have to clean the sur­face of the blan­ket before soak­ing and wash­ing. Espe­cial­ly if you decide to wash the blan­kets in an auto­mat­ic wash­ing machine. Oth­er­wise, stuck specks will have to be pulled out along with the fibers.
2. The struc­ture of the fibers also plays an impor­tant role. If your blan­ket is a good imi­ta­tion of astrakhan or fine-fleeced sheep­skin, you will have to con­stant­ly put it in order with a rare stiff brush, oth­er­wise the “wool” will fall off even before you decide to wash the blan­ket.
3. Many blan­kets have a mixed com­po­si­tion. And it does­n’t have to be 100% syn­thet­ic. How to wash such a blan­ket? Often, cot­ton is added to poly­ester fibers to give a more nat­ur­al tex­ture to the prod­uct. This should be tak­en into account when choos­ing a wash­ing tem­per­a­ture; in too hot water, the prod­uct will sim­ply shrink and deform. Nat­ur­al wool, which requires spe­cial care, may well turn out to be an imi­ta­tion of fur.

Machine washable blanket: Can a faux fur blanket be washed?

Often, being afraid to approach a faux fur blan­ket, the own­ers pre­fer to give it to dry clean­ing. How­ev­er, even so, no one guar­an­tees that at the end you will receive an updat­ed prod­uct, and not a com­plete­ly dam­aged thing. If you have a suf­fi­cient­ly capa­cious wash­ing machine, you can try to wash the blan­ket your­self. How­ev­er, before you start the process, you need to clar­i­fy some­thing:

• How spa­cious is the drum of your auto­mat­ic assis­tant. You need to look not at the “car­ry­ing capac­i­ty” of the machine, but rather at the inter­nal vol­ume of the wash­ing com­part­ment. A blan­ket can weigh quite a bit, and take up plen­ty of space.
• What is on the prod­uct label? It is pos­si­ble that your blan­ket can­not be machine washed at all. It’s bet­ter to know about it in advance.
• Is the pile firm­ly fixed in the main fab­ric of the blan­ket? If there are doubts that the blan­ket will not “go bald” after the first attempt, it is bet­ter to refuse machine wash­ing alto­geth­er, oth­er­wise you will have to buy a woolen blan­ket, and send the fur blan­ket to live out its life in the coun­try.

The opti­mum tem­per­a­ture for wash­ing a faux fur blan­ket is 35–40 degrees. Water of this tem­per­a­ture does not wash out dyes, allow­ing the prod­uct to main­tain the bright­ness and inten­si­ty of col­or. In addi­tion, in slight­ly warm water, nei­ther nat­ur­al nor syn­thet­ic blan­kets are deformed, retain­ing their shape.

How to wash faux fur blankets?

Before load­ing, the blan­ket must be shak­en out, get­ting rid of lit­ter and dust, it is bet­ter to remove large specks by hand or comb them out with a rare stiff brush. If there are notice­able stains or heavy soil­ing on the blan­ket, before lay­ing in the machine, they must be treat­ed with a mild stain remover for col­ored items and left for some time to work. In com­bi­na­tion with liq­uid deter­gent, it is imper­a­tive to use ampli­fiers and con­di­tion­er. Here are some more prac­ti­cal tips on how to prop­er­ly care for a faux fur blan­ket:

1. Do not push the blan­ket into the drum at ran­dom. Gen­tly roll the fab­ric into a loose roll with the nap inward. This will pre­vent the fibers from rolling and tan­gling and will help keep the orig­i­nal shape of the prod­uct.
2. Instead of the usu­al pow­der, use gels, they are bet­ter washed out of the mate­r­i­al and do not leave marks after rins­ing. Wash­ing the blan­ket will go with­out prob­lems. If there is no liq­uid prod­uct at hand, then care­ful­ly dilute the pow­der in a small amount of warm water, with­out foam­ing.
3. Choose the “syn­thet­ic” mode and try not to use the auto­mat­ic spin or choose the low­est speed avail­able in the pro­gram. It’s best to just let the blan­ket flow nat­u­ral­ly over the tub. Wash­ing a faux fur blan­ket should be very gen­tle.
4. As for dry­ing with a faux fur blan­ket, it is best to dry the prod­ucts on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face. Creas­es may remain on the blan­ket from the clothes­line, the direc­tion of the faux fur pile will change, the prod­uct may stretch out.
5. Do not dry the blan­ket in the sun or in a poor­ly ven­ti­lat­ed area. Wet faux fur per­fect­ly absorbs any odors, just like a blan­ket made of nat­ur­al fibers. And fades quick­ly in direct sun­light.
6. After dry­ing, comb the blan­ket with a brush in the direc­tion of the pile and shake to give it its orig­i­nal vol­ume.

Hand wash: how to wash large blankets?

For hand wash­ing a faux fur blan­ket, most of the rec­om­men­da­tions already voiced are rel­e­vant. It is only worth remem­ber­ing. That such prod­ucts can­not be twist­ed or short­ed. You will have to use a bath as a con­tain­er for soak­ing and wash­ing, since the blan­ket must be com­plete­ly cov­ered with water with a deter­gent com­po­si­tion dis­solved in it. The soak­ing time should be increased to 40 min­utes (wash as a prod­uct made of del­i­cate mate­ri­als), and the num­ber of rins­es depends on the inten­si­ty of the wash­ing out of the pow­der or gel from the main body of the prod­uct. How can I wash a fur blan­ket by hand, while main­tain­ing the elas­tic­i­ty and vol­ume of the pile? It is not nec­es­sary to roll the blan­ket into a roll, just fold it in half with the right side inward.