Are you using a rug pad?
I have a beautiful all wool area rug that (I thought) was emitting a horrible smell.
I went crazy.
Cleaned it, vacuumed constantly, cleaned it again, turned it over and cleaned it, etc. and it only seemed to get worse.
I finally figured out it was the rug pad and removed it.
Now there is absolutely no smell at all.
I still don't get it.

I don't know your exact budget but a flat weave style of hand-knotted rug will cost a lot less.

I think that they are beautiful and have the bonus of being reversable. They are still a little higher than hand-tufted, but you won't get that awful smell.

We had the same problem with our inexpensive wool rug and this is what my husband did: After checking for color fastness, he took the rug outside (it was sunny and warm at the time), washed and scrubbed it on both sides with dishwashing liquid and rinsed it thoroughly over and over again. He then put the rug on several lawn chair backs and left it outside for four or five days until it was thoroughly dry and aired out. We've had the rug back inside now for some months and there is no odor at all. Problem solved. I realize at this time of the year and where you live this technique might post some logistical complications. If you had a warm basement to dry the rug that might be an idea although I imagine drying outside would be best. I hope this is of some help to you.

Ingrid

Ingrid, if I had a rug cleaning company that would do that in their facility, do you think that would work?

Shelly, if it's warm enough where you live, put it outside over a fence or something. Even if you can't wash it. Sun and fresh air does wonders. You could do this in the day then roll it up at nigght and bring it in, then keep doing it until the odor is gone.

I know when our cars get an odor in them, I read to put them in the sun all day with the windows rolled down, and the smell is gone!

Shelly, I haven't investigated this but the rug cleaning company might charge much more than you'd want to pay for an inexpensive rug. I would try oakleyok's idea first. I remember when I went camping and sat by the wood fire for several evenings my jacket would be reeking of wood smoke. I'd hang it outside for several days and the odor would be completely gone. Why not try something simple like this first before you go to any more trouble?

I had the same problem with a wool rug. The smell actually got worse with each professional cleaning (we had it cleaned twice). I was wondering if the cleaning accelerated the breakdown of the glue in the backing (It was hand tufted). We finally had to move it to the basement because the smell was too overwhelming.

Try Overstock. they have a bunch of well priced wool rugs and a large selection. Shipping is always $2.95 or less and there are always 10% off coupon codes online.

I also had good luck with RugsUSA. They're always sending me coupon codes for 20% or 30% off and their shipping is free.

The colors aren't always the most accurate on the monitor, so I'll buy the small 2x3 version 1st to check out the colors and quality (as well as if it has a smell). I will then return it and buy the larger one if it works. Mailing the small rug back costs betweek 8 and 16 dollars, a lot less than if i bought the large rug from the start and it didn't work out.

I have had this happen to two rugs. We took one up to the attic and the attic smelled so horrible after a few weeks we had to get rid of it. The second one (recently) I thought I could lay the rug in the garage to catch bad weather crud from our shoes - nope the smell comes into the house thru the open door. The smell got worse with each of these rugs as they got older and with each cleaning. I had read somewhere to lay the rugs outside on a hot day and let the sun bake it to get rid of the odor - nope- made it worse. I also did not want an unsuspecting person buying them from a donation, so I tossed them curbside. I am sure the garbage man thinks he got a great find!
No more wool rugs for me from the bargain places, which were still expensive rugs. I loved the one rug, but I finally couldn't stand the smell. It was hard to get rid of it, but now that it is gone, and no more odor - I think I was crazy to keep it so long, no matter how well it matched everything (like the custom window treatment). I feel (smell) your pain.

What is the smell like?

shelly I have a rug cleaning business & I've dealt with a lot of off-gassing in wall to wall carpets. I get quite a few calls for this sort of stuff, because my business focuses on green cleaning & I have a number of environmentally sensitive customers. Usually, with wall to wall carpets, the culprit is the glue - either in the backing or the pad, but a good cleaning & time to air out will solve it.

Recently I've had a couple of situations concerning Wool area rugs from China, that did NOT have a backing on them, hence, no glue. Just woven. Not a noticeable odor until it gets laid out in an enclosed room, or you put your nose right up to it, but people were getting sick from the odor. One owner was told that the odor was from an insecticide that is required to be sprayed on the rug before it's imported - I suspect this was the case on both of these rugs. It's not always easy to get direct answers about this, because no one wants to own up to the fact that people really are getting sick because of their products. :(

In both of these cases was able to get rid of the odor with the method I use (although one of them required 2 cleanings) - I hope it's kosher to share the method I use here, especially since I'm really not looking for more business right now! - which is Host - it's a dry extraction method, (some moisture is used) & involves scrubbing the carpet with a natural cellulose (sponges), trapping the soil (or odors) in the sponges, & vacuuming it up once it's completely dry. It could be expensive to have it cleaned professionally, depending on your location. If you want to DIY the cleaning before giving up & tossing it, you could certainly try hosing it down, if you have someplace to dry it out thoroughly. Please be VERY sparse on any soaps you use - personally, I wouldn't use any at all if I were to do that.

FWIW, carpet manufacturers still deny that there is any problem with any glue used. Or anything else they use. uh huh.

& you're welcome to email me if you want more information on the method I use, &/or would like to see if there's a Host cleaner in your area. :)

Good luck - I hope you can save the rug :)

Moonkat - I used the dry extract method on the area rug that I loved the most and tried to keep. A good friend owns a commercial cleaning company and loaned me the machine & taught me how to use it. It really was a last ditch effort on my part. It did clean the rug beautifully - but the stink remained. I even cleaned the woven back. Both my rugs did not have glue to my untrained eye. I do not believe the origin of my rugs was China in either rug.
I was told by a rug dealer the smell is from less than hygienic surroundings in the rug making process - and probably what they use to treat them to import them to the USA to kill the mold and critters - the smell is always there in these rugs and gets worse with age. I did buy a rug from him - it has never had that smell, but it was way more expensive and a hand down to the next generation rug.
For others not familiar with the odor - it smells a bit like burning, musty rubber. Put you nose against rugs hanging on display at various stores, and I am sure you'll find a few with that smell.

Moonkat, I found your post to be most illuminating.

I ordered an 8' round Safavieh rug and spent an extra $1,000 on it because I like hand-knotted and didn't want the odor from a tufted rug. When I recieved it, it was the wrong color and had some issues with the fringe. It was supposed to be copper and was a pinky rose.

The oddest thing, however, was the stench that it emitted. It was from China and Safavieh called the wool it used a "tween" yarn that was supposed to add softness and luster.

The rug went back and I replaced it with another 8' round from Pakistan. My LR rug, I just bought, is a wool and silk Oushak from India (also hand-knot). Neither of them have any odor.

Glad I found this post. I've been searching stores and the Internet to buy an 8x10 area rug for my dining room in a reasonable price range of $500 or less.

Is there any types of rugs I should stay away from because of this stink issue? What should I look for or not look for in regard to this issue? I'd hate to spend that money only to find months or 2 years down the road I have to get rid of it due to stink.

Anyone know how long the stink smell comes out once the rug is in its resting place?

I have just gone around and smelled ALL of my area rugs LOL. None seem to be especially odoriferous to my nose.

None of my rugs are less than a year old, so I hope I am in the clear. My wool rugs have a soft cotton backing, my more expensive synthetic rugs (but none over $1000) and my cheaper rugs have a natural fiber backing. All smell perfectly fine. The only problem I have ever had with rugs is from the jute backing, when my dog use to have accidents. Cleaning the rug made them smell worse then the original odor (or as a friend said "smell worse than cat pee.) This was from the water reacting with the jute. Even after they were dry, they still smelled IMO. I ended up getting rid of those rugs after our house fire. Not because of the "cat pee" smell, but because the smoke smell never came out after they were cleaned twice.

We had this problem with a beautiful tufted rug from India that we bought from a small local rug store. It was a large rug in pastel colors, very unusual design, that we put in our bedroom. The smell was barely noticeable in cold weather, but as soon as the weather got warm, it pervaded the entire house. The store agreed to take it back and give us half of our money back (after a year and a half! but we had bought several nice rugs from them). I don't know what they did with it.

We have a large woven wool rug from China and a couple of small Persian rugs that we bought from the same store and they have no odor. We also have a couple of woven machine-made wool rugs that we bought over the Internet and those are fine as well.

My understanding is that the smell is related to the tufting process -- perhaps the glue, as someone else said -- and there's nothing that can be done about it.

About 10 years ago, I bought a tufted rug for the kitchen from Tuesday Morning. I had 2 suede chairs that sat on it in a little reading area. After a few years, I began to detect an odor similar to old foam rubber. I thought it was the suede chairs. I moved and the chairs and rug went into separate areas.

I noticed then that is was the rug smelling, not the chairs. Then I noticed that the rug was lumpy. I assumed the lumps were wool fuzz. I turned it over and made a tiny slit in the backing where one of the lumps was. It wasn't a fuzz lump, it was a pile of fine white powder. I called the Tuesday Morning corporate offices since we had moved. I got a very nice woman who did a little research and explained to me that the rugs are backed in latex to hold the tufted stitches, and that the latex backing had disintegrated on mine.

TM gave me 1/2 my money back which I thought was quite generous considering I had no sales receipt and had had the rug for a couple of years.

Even though TM was helpful and generous, I will never again buy a rug that I cannot see the back of.

As bad as you have described the problem, you have nothing to lose by taking the backing material off and seeing what is under it. Perhaps it is a substance that can be cleaned off.

I have had this problem with several rugs. The most heartbreaking one was a very expensive, well made, dense fiber, gorgeous, beautiful rug. But there was a smell. I thought it would eventually outgas and be gone. But no. I tried everything to get rid of it. Finally started researching. Found a post from a person who went around the world buying rugs. He said a lot of dealers in countries like India and Turkey, etc., display their rugs in a big pile outdoors --where people drive their camels up and park them. And like dogs and cats, camels seem to think a rug seems like a good place to pee. Apparently it doesn't make a stain. So if it strikes you as "worse than cat pee" it may very well be camel pee. I gave up on my beautiful rug and when I went to take it back to the store, the store was gone. I gave the rug away. If it is just a chemical or glue, you'll probably have better luck getting rid of the smell with one of the methods described here in other posts.

But what makes me pretty sure that rug buyer was right is that the smell was familiar to me from early childhood when I used to lay on by grandmother's living room rug. It was the same smell. That was in 1960 and the rug was probably at least 20-30 years old then. Which means dreaded Smell has been around for at least 80 to 100 years! Her rug had to be wool or it wouldn't have lasted that long. And I'm really pretty sure it wasn't made in the USA. I think it came from a place where camels roam. ... And my grandmother never, ever had a cat or a dog in the house.

Ruth, thank you for that explanation. At the moment a stunningly beautiful 9x11 rug from Turkey is rolled up in the basement as I ponder whether to unroll it in the driveway and saturate it with enzymes specifically for neutralizing skunk spray or if I should put it on the curb and let someone else have a go at it. DH and I agree that the odor is reminiscent of an old barnyard full of livestock despite the efforts of a Middle Eastern rug specialist in DC to remove it via enzyme/chemical bath, ozone treatment, and a month of exposure to warmth and moving air (sort of like a convection oven). None of his treatments knocked back the odor even a little. We couldn't live with it the way it is now, but a houseful of heavy smokers might get years of use out of it.

I would suggest a polypropylene rug from esalerugs. They have no backing and are not hand tufted (a misnomer because that is the worst kind of rug to get). If they get dirty they're easy to clean and you can even take them in the back yard and hose them off. Here is one from esalerugs in my dining room. Absolutely no smell, and there is no glue or anything else that would cause a smell. I've bought quite a few rugs from this company, both wool and pokypropylene, all without the slightest hint of a smell. Even better, you can return a rug you don't like free of charge. I'm sorry to say I made my husband pack up and ship back three rugs before I bought the three I have now. Here is a 9 x 12 rug in the dining room that I believe cost around $450.

We just bought a hand tufted rug from Overstock (made by Safavieh) and it too emits a strong chemical smell. I contacted the maker and the rep denied that their rugs could smell like that. I told him about this blog and he said that he couldn't address "hearsay". This is nuts. The rug was totally wrapped in plastic, the smell came with it, it didn't pick it up along the way. Safavieh also said that it had nothing to do with "3rd party sales". Really? It's YOUR product, Safavieh! I didn't ask to return it, I asked if there was a way to get rid of the odor, and the Safavieh guy wanted nothing to do with it. Nice way to treat a repeat customer. I also contacted Overstock for suggestions, waiting to hear back.

I got a Safavieh area shag rug and it came with a very strong chemical smell. It also has a greasy feel when you run your fingers through it. It also makes my eyes burn, Ive had it about 3 weeks and some better now but still irritates my eyes and smells strong, plus I dont want it in my granddaughters room. Stay away from these rugs. Most made in China. If I had known that would never have bought one. No telling what toxic chemical is on it!

Hi, we bought two rugs from this company (also another one with no problems) and both had such a strong chemical smell that we had to put them on the porch. I eventually bought this granulated stuff that removes odors, you shake it on, let it set for a few hours, thenvacuum it up. Did this twice and eventually there was no odor at all, but still dumb that you'd have to do this at all. I called Safavieh and a rather snooty man insisted that their rugs don't have this problem. Called a second time and a very nice woman was empathetic and said she knew what I was speaking of. These stinking rugs are made in China, no idea why they have to smell like they do, a very strong chemical smell that permeated out entire apartment.

THE RUGS I RECEIVED OUTGAS. QUESTION IS, WHAT IS THE CHEMICAL?

Edit: Since posting this I found a web page on Overstock that explains it. Search for "overstock how-to-get-rid-of-new-rug-smell"

I bought a polyester Savahieh rug from Amazon.com and returned it, and today received a wool Savahieh rug from Overstock.com. I returned the polyester one because it filled the room with a mildly disgusting 'sweet' smell of some kind, a volatile compound. It seems like the rug must have been soaked in or sprayed with during manufacturing. The wool rug I bought as replacement was received today. Sadly, it has the same issue. I'd hoped it was just the polyester rug that had the problem. This time I took it outside to air immediately. Now I will look into products that might remove the chemical that causes the smell, because the rug is otherwise nice (and a hassle to return).

There is, as other posts in this discussion mentioned, a distinct sort of oil/silicone/teflon feeling when you rub your hand over the top or bottom of the rugs. It leaves enough residue on your hands that your fingers will be a bit slippery against the palm, but it washes off easily with soap and water and odor goes with it.

I want to know what that chemical is, what the rug is sprayed, soaked or coated in. I want figure out if it is a toxicity issue for us or, our cat. I definitely had the burning eyes, which at least one other poster in this discussion mentioned. That tells me there is a definite volatile irritant, and if it turns out to be toxic that would be worth reporting.

I hope someone can clear up what it is as I'm forced to keep digging for information. The eye burning and mild upper respiratory irritation that I experienced showed up after a few days of the rug outgassing; and that was in spite of running a fan in the room multiple times daily, as an exhaust fan in the doorway venting to the outside. Although it didn't move out as much air as I'd hoped. The eye burning went away quickly after removing the rug.

It is discouraging to read that the vendor is denying this. People have a right to know if we're being poisoned by these products or being exposed to carcinogens. I'm not saying that's exactly what's happening, but we need to find out and the vendor should cooperate and also advise on what if anything can be done about it by the consumer and or their company. We need to know if this is a consumer safety problem or not.