Why You Should Never Wash Lined Drapes at Home

The failure mode is mechanical, not chemical

A lined drape is at minimum two fabrics sewn together — a face fabric and a lining, sometimes with an interlining between them. Those fabrics have different fibre contents, different weaves, and different shrinkage rates.

Put them through a domestic washing machine and each shrinks by its own amount. The panel comes out puckered, twisted along its length, and shorter. Nothing about that is recoverable, because the two fabrics are now permanently mismatched in size.

Length is what people notice. A floor-length panel that now clears the floor by four inches reads as wrong immediately, and there is no letting it back down.

Dry cleaning is not automatically safe either

Solvent cleaning avoids the water-shrinkage problem but introduces others. Some interlinings and header tapes do not tolerate solvent. Certain pleating and heading treatments relax. And drapery that has taken years of sun exposure may be structurally weakened in ways that only reveal themselves under mechanical handling.

A dry cleaner accustomed to garments is not necessarily equipped for a twelve-foot lined panel, and drapery is heavy when handled as a single piece.

Related: drapes & curtain cleaning.

Cleaning in place, and when it works

Many panels can be cleaned hanging, using a low-moisture method that lifts soil without saturating the fabric. It avoids taking down hardware, avoids the shrinkage risk almost entirely, and avoids the rehanging problem.

It suits lightly to moderately soiled drapery, sheers, and anything where the risk of handling outweighs the benefit of a deeper clean. It does not suit heavily soiled panels or anything with an odour problem, where the soil is genuinely embedded.

The choice is made after looking at the panels rather than in advance, and it is one of the reasons drapery is quoted on inspection.

More on this: upholstery cleaning.

Taking them down properly

Where panels do come down, the hardware is the overlooked risk. Traverse rods bend, and brackets fixed into plaster twenty years ago do not always come out and go back cleanly. A rehanging job nobody quoted for is an unwelcome surprise for everyone.

We note how hardware is fixed before anything is removed, and if a bracket looks marginal we say so rather than discover it under load. Panels are labelled by window as they come down, because drapery that looks identical rarely is once it is off the rail.

See also: Garden City.

Sun damage is not soil

Fabric that has faded or gone brittle along the leading edge has taken UV damage. Cleaning does not reverse fading, and aggressive handling can finish off a panel that is already weakened — the fibres have lost tensile strength and will tear rather than flex.

This matters most on the vertical edge nearest the window and on the lower portion, which take the most direct exposure. We check for it before agreeing to clean, because a panel that disintegrates during cleaning was going to fail regardless, but nobody wants that to be a surprise.

Sheers are fragile and often just old

Sheer and voile panels yellow with age rather than with soil. Some of that yellowing lifts; the portion caused by UV degradation of the fibre does not.

They are also structurally delicate, and an old sheer can come apart in handling. We are straightforward about which category a set of sheers falls into, because replacing sheers is comparatively inexpensive and cleaning something that will not improve is not a good purchase.

Worth reading: Roslyn.

Maintenance that extends their life

Vacuum panels with an upholstery attachment two or three times a year, working from the top down. Drapery collects a remarkable amount of airborne dust that never becomes visible because it settles evenly, and removing it regularly extends the fabric's life considerably.

Where a window gets strong direct sun, a sheer or a blind behind the main panels takes the UV damage instead of the expensive fabric. Replacing a sacrificial sheer every few years costs a fraction of replacing lined drapery.

Open and close them using the wand or cord rather than by grabbing the fabric. Hand oils on the leading edge are one of the most common localised soiling problems on otherwise clean panels.

Where this comes up most

The older homes across Garden City, Roslyn and the North Shore villages have a great deal of custom lined drapery, frequently made for the window it hangs in and effectively irreplaceable at anything like its original cost.

That is the category where the home-washing mistake is most expensive, and where cleaning in place is most often the right answer. If a panel was made for that window, the priority is preserving it rather than getting it as clean as physically possible.

Also useful: carpet cleaning.

Roman shades, valances and the rest

Roman shades are usually cleanable in place and frequently should be, since removing them from their mechanism and returning them correctly is fiddly and the cords and rings are easily disturbed.

Valances and pelmets collect a surprising amount of dust because they sit high, out of sight, and never get vacuumed. They are often the dirtiest soft furnishing in a room and the last one anyone thinks about.

Blackout linings deserve a mention. The coating that provides the blackout can crack or separate if handled roughly or cleaned aggressively, and once it does the panel is finished. They need the gentlest available method.

Linked in this article: drapes & curtain cleaning · upholstery cleaning · Garden City · Roslyn · carpet cleaning