Does your apartment have floor to ceiling window walls?
Does your apartment have window walls? Does it have large panels of ripple fold drapery and sheers that need to be cleaned?
You are not alone if you own or represent an apartment in one of Manhattan's window walled buildings and need to have the drapery and sheers cleaned. Often the window treatments have been hanging for years collecting soot and dust and now that you are renovating, painting or buying an apartment with existing window treatments, the need to remove and clean drapery takes on new urgency. Dust related allergies are often another motivator for customers to contact us as they understand that maintaining a clean indoor environment requires periodic cleaning of their window treatments.
Manhattan's air, while improving, still carries high levels of vehicle pollutants which are a leading contributor to the city's soot problem. Even if your windows are rarely, if ever opened, soot and dust will still enter the apartment and will embed itself in your sheers and drapery. We ideally recommend cleaning every year or two. If it has been 5-10 years or possibly more, no need to worry, we have cleaned older heavily soiled sheers with excellent results.
The first step to safely having the drapery and sheers cleaned is having them professionally removed BEFORE any dirty work begins. When cleaning the drapery is an afterthought, contractors may unthinkingly mishandle your valuable window treatment by stuffing them into garbage bags – as can be seen in the job below. These pictures come from a duplex in Chelsea that is in the midst of a major renovation. We were called to the job after the contractors were well into the renovation and the drapery was grossly mishandled. Remember, the ideal time to remove the drapery is either before or after the movers but always BEFORE any dirty work starts!
When we remove the drapery and sheers we tag each panel so when we return to reinstall it we know exactly where each panel came from. We properly fold the fabric and transport it in bags designed specifically for this purpose. By properly folding and transporting the fabric we can avoid having to contend with a crumpled mess and possible damage to the fabric. It is easy to see why contractors should be left to do what they do best and leave the drapery to the professionals at NY Drapery Care.
What's the best way to clean?
There are different methods for cleaning drapery and sheers. The most important variables for deciding the appropriate method is whether the fabric is sheer or lined, synthetic or natural fiber and whether the window treatment can be removed. Motorized solar and blackout shades are cleaned onsite unless a window treatment motorization specialist is brought to the job to handle both the removal and reinstallation.
Our approach to cleaning is to do the most effective job possible while not risking shrinking or otherwise damaging the fabric. Very wide panels of synthetic sheer fabric are always best cleaned by hand in our workroom where we can use a series of specially designed cleaning and rinse tubs to thoroughly rid the fabric of the soot and dust that has been filtering through them for years. The sheers are then rehung in our workroom to air dry and steamed by hand to remove wrinkling. When the sheers are rehung at the apartment they are given a final touch up steaming so the sheers can look their best.
Air drying sheers in the workroom
Solar shades and blackout shades are also popular window treatment choices for glass walled apartments. Motorized shades are generally cleaned onsite, however if the shades are manually operated and heavily soiled we always recommend that they are cleaned in the workroom. A proper cleaning would involve immersing the shades and then cleaning them by hand on specially designed wash/rinse tables.
Over the past 15 plus years we have successfully cleaned enormous drapery and sheer panels that were installed in apartments in some of the most iconic window walled buildings in Manhattan including Herzog & de Meuron’s "Jenga Tower" at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca with its cantilevered asymmetrical apartments.
An excellent article by City Realty addresses the aesthetics as well as practicality of drapery and sheers in window walled buildings.