Carpet photobleaching

Scorpio59

Hi can anyone help please?
We had a new wool carpet fitted throughout our house.
In a nutshell every time we placed something as simple as a cardboard box on the carpet it left a shading of two colours.
A decorator laid a protective sheet and when it was taken up that also left a stripe where it had been.
We have had the manufacturers out to look at it and they say it is a common phenomenon called photobleaching!
I’ve had wool carpets all of my life and never heard of this.
The stair carpet now looks striped but there is nothing they will do about it as it’s not classed as a fault! How on earth are we expected to live with it.
Can anyone help?

[Deleted User]

Scorpio59 wrote: »

How on earth are we expected to live with it.

You make it sound as if it's life threatening.

Silvertabby

I've never heard of it either (our carpets are all wool mix). The quote is from an American site, but seems to apply here? Is your carpet a pale colour? The way I read it, the rest of your carpet will eventually fade as well, but of course I don't know how you'd feel about that...

Photobleaching of Carpets

Scoured wool fiber has a natural cream color due to naturally occurring pigments within the fiber. When wool fiber is dyed, the dyer takes into account the base color of the fiber and applies dyestuffs to achieve the desired shade.
Occasionally the wool will contain a natural pigmentation which is light fugitive (i.e. loses color when exposed to light). This effect is referred to as yellow fade (i.e. loses yellow) or red fade (i.e. the carpet becomes redder due to the loss of green-yellow pigment).
This yellow fade or photobleaching is affected by light in the visible or near visible region of the spectrum (blue and violet light – not ultraviolet). This light can be natural light through window glass or fluorescent lighting with a high output in the blue end of the visible spectrum.
Photobleaching, when it occurs, generally occurs rapidly and spontaneously upon exposure to the above forms of light, bleaching only the natural pigmentation, not the dyestuffs. The color will then be stable. It is generally most noticeable in pastel colors. Photobleaching, while bleaching out the small amount of green-yellow pigment present, may consequently alter the overall carpet shade but will not affect the durability or performance of the carpet in any way.

Fosterdog

Are you sure it's not just the pile going in different directions? From the description of photobleaching it would need a light source to cause it and would affect the whole area the light has reached rather than just the area things have been lied on top of the carpet.