When Ruggable invaded my social media with ads, I suspected it was simply a matter of time before I begged them to take my money. Washable rugs? With my majestic (drooling, dirty) doberman underfoot? Yes, please. Their low profile and relatively low cost were icing on the cake. You didn’t even need a rug pad, as it was built into the rug. I imagined constantly clean floors, and thus bought three with swooping citrus patterns.
I often recommend Ruggable to friends (especially dog-owner friends), but with some caveats. It’s now three years later, and I certainly wouldn’t return them, but there are things I wish I’d known beforehand.
You won’t wash a Ruggable rug as often as you think
Rugs, I remembered after the first wash, exist under things. Coffee tables, couches, ottomans, tables. To wash a rug, you have to first move everything on top of it, and then put it all back. If there are two adults in the home, perhaps it’s a bit easier, but as one person, it sucks. I added casters to my coffee table after the first few times, which was a marked improvement, but in reality, every time I wash my living room rug, I have to lift couch legs, and dog crates to get it out, and then do it all in reverse.
As such, I vacuum and let it get a little dingy, and wait for a major spill before doing the sweat-inducing work of getting it into the washer.
It’s hard to get the two pieces back together
Ruggables are made of two parts: a base layer, which acts like the rubber rug pad most rugs need, the top of which is something like Velcro. Then, you have your rug—a thin top layer in any design you want, that attaches to the base layer. It is a smart design; it’s also a pain to marry them back together, because in order to wash them, you have to separate them. (The base layer stays put; you just wash the top.)
Which is not to say the base layer doesn’t get dirty, or rather…crumb-y. It doesn’t vacuum well, so you’ll eventually just want to shake the whole damn thing out. And if it gets really crumb-y, like Velcro, the top layer won’t fully stick to it and will roll away at the edges. In my hallway, where I have a long, narrow runner, I can never get it on really straight: There are often “bubbles” in the rug, or you often see a little edge of the rug pad sticking out. I try to ignore this and focus on the cleanability of the rug.
My real mistake, though, was purchasing two circular rugs; imagine for a moment how hard would be to get the top circle back on the bottom circle while also under obstacles like a couch. The reality is that the couch hides the side that isn’t aligned as well. What I’ve personally found works best is folding your circular rug in half, folding the pad in half, and then marrying them in the middle and rolling them out.
Some washable rugs we like:
The ends can fray and not all stains can be washed out
I think a lot of people like low-profile rugs because they have robot vacuums milling about. And those robots do love a lower-profile tuft, and probably get my Ruggable cleaner than a rug with more pile to it—but it often catches on the embroidered edge of the rug, so much so that one of them began fraying just over a year after purchase, (aka just outside of the warranty period). To be fair, after some haggling, Ruggable did replace the rug (they had no way to fix the edge). But I became a lot more conscious about it after that.
After a few years, I can also see what I can only imagine are oil stains (where did the dog get oil?), as well as some dirt that just won’t budget. And the colors of the rugs themselves are, of course, lightly faded from all the washing.
Should you get a Ruggable?
If you’re going to have rugs, and you or your pet are messy, it makes sense that those rugs should be washable, and Ruggable rugs are certainly more affordable than many rugs I’ve seen. In fact, the real bonus is that you can easily replace the top layer and keep the bottoms, so you save money in the future.
And despite everything I’ve said, my rug situation would be worse with a non-washable rug or a regular washable rug: I have a regular-sized machine, but I don’t think it would accommodate a rug of these sizes with a regular backing. So, whether you tend to drop food, enjoy crafting, or have pets, a washable rug of this nature is a good thing.
But, if your expectations are that it’ll be supremely easy to clean and realign, and will remain brilliantly colored and completely stain-free, Ruggables will be a letdown. It’s simply easier to manage than a regular rug.
