How to wash fur

Soon­er or lat­er, fur own­ers come to the con­clu­sion that things need to be cleaned. And here sev­er­al ques­tions arise — how to wash fur, can it be done at all, can a wash­ing machine be used for this, or is it nec­es­sary to use only hand wash­ing? Let’s start with the fact that expen­sive items made of nat­ur­al or arti­fi­cial mate­r­i­al are rec­om­mend­ed to be dry-cleaned, their pro­cess­ing should be car­ried out only by pro­fes­sion­als who have the skills, expe­ri­ence, spe­cial­ized clean­ing prod­ucts and equip­ment. If you wash a fur coat, short fur coat, vest at home, they can become deformed and shrink. If it is not pos­si­ble to take the prod­uct to dry clean­ing, you can try dry clean­ing at home, lat­er in the arti­cle we will dwell on this top­ic in more detail. Col­lars, detach­able cuffs, nat­ur­al fur trim can be washed by hand or in a wash­ing machine. How­ev­er, you must strict­ly observe the cor­rect wash­ing tech­nique so as not to spoil the thing. It’s bet­ter not to risk it and trust the pro­fes­sion­als, but if you pre­fer doing your own laun­dry, we will tell you how to do it as safe­ly as pos­si­ble. Regard­ing faux fur prod­ucts, they can be safe­ly washed both in an auto­mat­ic type machine and man­u­al­ly. Man­u­fac­tur­ers of such clothes just focus the atten­tion of con­sumers on the fact that their prod­ucts are com­pat­i­ble with machine wash.

How to wash real fur by hand

Experts once again warn, wash prod­ucts made of nat­ur­al fur only if you are con­fi­dent in your abil­i­ties. So, the sequence of actions:

1. We unfas­ten met­al ele­ments, decor details, inserts, in gen­er­al, every­thing sol­id that can be removed from the object.

2. We col­lect warm water in the wash­ing con­tain­er, dilute in it a spe­cial­ized deter­gent for wash­ing del­i­cate fab­rics, or bet­ter, baby sham­poo, the best option is ani­mal sham­poo (vet­eri­nary). The last rem­e­dy is best, since in the­o­ry it does not con­tain aggres­sive chem­i­cals that have a neg­a­tive effect on fat­ty pro­tec­tion, if it dis­ap­pears, the base (mez­dra) will loosen, the vil­li will begin to fall out. After pour­ing the sham­poo, beat the foam with your hands.

3. Immerse the item in water. We don’t wrin­kle, we don’t press, but only with light move­ments we stroke the fur, wipe it in the direc­tion of pile growth.

4. Gen­tly comb the fur using a brush with rare teeth.

5. We take out the prod­uct of their soapy water, col­lect new water, add a few table­spoons of ordi­nary 9% vine­gar to it. Immerse the thing in water, let it lie down for 2–3 min­utes.

6. We change the water again, this time we pour cold water, since rins­ing is rec­om­mend­ed at low tem­per­a­tures, because cold water clos­es the hair scales, as a result, the fur will shine after dry­ing. You need to rinse the prod­uct in as many changes of water as nec­es­sary, so that as a result the water is com­plete­ly trans­par­ent and with­out a hint of foam.

7. Care­ful­ly wring out the thing with your hands, do not twist.

It is rec­om­mend­ed to dry nat­ur­al fur on a flat sur­face, in a hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion, after lay­ing a ter­ry tow­el under it. Dry­ing should take place in a ven­ti­lat­ed room with well-cir­cu­lat­ed air, away from heat sources (includ­ing it is strict­ly for­bid­den to use a hair dry­er to speed up dry­ing). There should be no strong-smelling objects around, oth­er­wise the smell may be absorbed into the fur. After the thing has dried com­plete­ly, gen­tly comb the pile, mov­ing in the direc­tion of its growth.

Washing in a washing machine

Wash­ing real fur in the wash­ing machine is even more risky than wash­ing by hand. But if you decide on this, there is noth­ing com­pli­cat­ed in the pro­ce­dure. We set the most del­i­cate mode on the pan­el of the machine — for silk and wool or down prod­ucts. Or you can sim­ply set the tem­per­a­ture to 30–40 degrees, the pro­cess­ing time is 30 min­utes, with­out spin­ning, it is pos­si­ble with an addi­tion­al rinse. We place the prod­uct in a spe­cial mesh or a fab­ric bag made of white cot­ton fab­ric, load it into the machine (we do not wash any oth­er things at the same time as the fur). After the process is com­plet­ed, we wring out the prod­uct, straight­en it, let it dry on a ter­ry tow­el.

Features of washing products from different types of natural fur

Let’s dwell on how to wash or clean clothes made from the fur of dif­fer­ent ani­mals. Fea­tures of the pro­ce­dure:

1. 
   Rab­bit. Before wash­ing, always make sure that the prod­uct is in good con­di­tion and will with­stand the clean­ing pro­ce­dure. To do this, pinch a small bun­dle of wool in your fin­gers, pull it slight­ly. If there are a lot of hairs left in your hands, then you can­not wash the prod­uct your­self, it is bet­ter to take it to pro­fes­sion­als. Every­thing else is stan­dard.

2. 
   arc­tic fox. Such prod­ucts are strict­ly not rec­om­mend­ed to be washed either in a type­writer or by hand. The inside of the thing should not get wet. It may come into con­tact with water a lit­tle, but a sig­nif­i­cant ingress of mois­ture to the area near the roots of the vil­li and to the inside of the prod­uct is detri­men­tal to it. There­fore, in order to some­how clean the prod­uct, restore shine and vol­ume, you can car­ry out dry or wet clean­ing. Dry is done with tal­cum pow­der or crushed cler­i­cal chalk. The prod­uct is laid out, sprin­kled with absorbent, it must be washed, then shak­en and combed with a brush. To obtain the desired result, you may have to repeat the pro­ce­dure up to 3–4 times. Wet clean­ing is car­ried out with plain water, water and ammo­nia, water and sham­poo. Pour any of the list­ed mix­tures into a spray bot­tle, spray the prod­uct onto the fur so that it becomes wet, but not wet, wipe the pile with a cot­ton or gauze swab. After that, you can take new tam­pons, moist­en them with clean cool water and wipe until com­plete­ly cleansed of the deter­gent.

3. 
   Rac­coon. Such fur, as well as fox fur, is extreme­ly demand­ing to care for and incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to clean. It must be dry cleaned using grat­ed chalk or tal­cum pow­der. It can also be wiped with a damp swab, but only on top. Dur­ing the clean­ing pro­ce­dure and in the process of dry­ing, the rac­coon fur must be con­stant­ly combed using a hard brush with met­al teeth, since the den­si­ty of the rac­coon pile is increased.

4. 
   Fox. Experts also do not rec­om­mend wash­ing prod­ucts made from the fur of this ani­mal, since mois­ture should not fall on the mezra. Accept­able clean­ing meth­ods are dry and wet, by wip­ing the fur with a solu­tion of water and pet sham­poo.

Dry cleaning

Obvi­ous­ly, most fur items can­not be washed in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. And if some things can be washed, then pro­fes­sion­als should do it, home pro­cess­ing can lead to dam­age to the prod­uct. How­ev­er, you can still clean clothes with dry or semi-dry clean­ing meth­ods. Above, we already wrote that for this you can use chalk and talc, sham­poo dilut­ed in water for dogs. Con­sid­er what oth­er means can be used for such pur­pos­es. But first, advice — before you start clean­ing, shake the prod­uct well, knock out the dust from it, vac­u­um it using a spe­cial noz­zle for uphol­stered fur­ni­ture.

Addi­tion­al prod­ucts for dry and semi-dry clean­ing of fur items (it is bet­ter to car­ry out the pro­ce­dure in the open air or in the bath­room, so that you do not have to car­ry out a gen­er­al clean­ing of the premis­es lat­er):

1. Flour.

2. Grind­ed oat­meal in a blender or cof­fee grinder, meat grinder.

3. Water with hydro­gen per­ox­ide.

4. Sand.

5. Starch.

6. Small saw­dust.

Keep in mind that food prod­ucts (flour, oat­meal, etc.) used in clean­ing may attract the atten­tion of insects, in par­tic­u­lar moths. If such an impro­vised clean­ing agent is not com­plete­ly removed from the pile, insects can dam­age both the core and the pile.

How to clean natural fur from yellowness

Over time, the fur on the prod­uct may turn yel­low. This does not add to the attrac­tive­ness of the thing, so many own­ers of fur clothes try to return the nat­ur­al col­or to the pile. This can be done using a tool that is pre­pared accord­ing to a sim­ple recipe — mix in half a glass of water one table­spoon of ordi­nary table salt and half a table­spoon of ammo­nia (we work in a res­pi­ra­tor so that the smell of ammo­nia does not irri­tate). Then we take a soft cloth, prefer­ably white cot­ton, dip it into the solu­tion and wring it well, it should remain bare­ly damp. We wipe the fur with a cloth, espe­cial­ly care­ful­ly treat­ing the yel­lowed areas. In this way, we remove greasy con­t­a­m­i­nants that give the fur an ugly shade. After that, shake the fur prod­uct, straight­en the vil­li, leave to dry.

Expert Tips

Experts in the field of fur care give sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions to help you car­ry out the clean­ing pro­ce­dure effi­cient­ly and safe­ly:

1. Nev­er use dry deter­gents for wash­ing. Also do not use any house­hold or home­made stain removers or bleach­es.

2. Nev­er twist wet fur things, as you harm both the core and the pile.

3. Fur should not be dried in the sun or near heat­ing appli­ances.

Well, the last rec­om­men­da­tion — the fur is nev­er ironed, even from the inside out, so you should not do this either.

How to wash faux fur

Syn­thet­ic fur prod­ucts are washed by hand in the same way as things made from nat­ur­al mate­ri­als. Wash­ing in a machine on a del­i­cate cycle is also allowed, but only if the length of the pile does not exceed three to four cen­time­ters. You can dry clothes in the stan­dard way — on a hor­i­zon­tal sur­face, on a ter­ry tow­el, in a room that is well ven­ti­lat­ed.

When is the best time to call the professionals?

Of course, experts rec­om­mend con­tact­ing a dry clean­er when­ev­er you need to wash or oth­er­wise clean a prod­uct made of nat­ur­al fur, espe­cial­ly such expen­sive species as arc­tic fox, mink. But if your clothes are heav­i­ly soiled, you can’t do with­out the ser­vices of pro­fes­sion­al dry clean­ers. When to con­tact the experts:

1. If the clothes have dirty smudges from pre­cip­i­ta­tion (snow, rain).

2. If on the prod­uct, espe­cial­ly on the hem, there are traces of reac­tive salts that pub­lic util­i­ties sprin­kle roads and side­walks in win­ter.

3. If things have stains of unknown ori­gin, traces of cos­met­ics and oth­er for­eign sub­stances.

4. If the prod­uct is heav­i­ly soiled, it can­not be cleaned by your­self at home.

Experts advise to dry-clean clothes made of fur at least once a year, the opti­mal time is spring. Pro­fes­sion­al clean­ing will not only restore the aes­thet­ic and attrac­tive appear­ance of the prod­uct, but also pre­vent the occur­rence of moths, which, as you know, can eas­i­ly ruin the most expen­sive fur prod­uct. The cost of dry-clean­ing things made of nat­ur­al or arti­fi­cial mate­r­i­al depends on sev­er­al fac­tors, in par­tic­u­lar, the loca­tion of the com­pa­ny, its rep­u­ta­tion, the length of the thing and the com­plex­i­ty of its cut, on aver­age it is about 50 dol­lars. But, you see, a fur coat or oth­er prod­uct costs much more, it is bet­ter to pay for pro­fes­sion­al care than to ruin the thing and face the need to buy a new one.