What is professional clothes cleaning?
You bring your clothes to your professional cleaner, drop them off with the person at the counter, and a few days later you return to pick them up looking as good as new. But what happens to your clothing in between? To many people, professional cleaning is a mysterious process and you may be surprised to learn that professional cleaning is a lot more than one process. In fact, your cleaner might employ a number of techniques to give your garments that "like new" appearance. Basically, professional cleaning can be broken down into three general categories - drycleaning, wet cleaning, and laundering. Let's take a look at what's involved with each process.

Drycleaning
Drycleaning uses fluids to remove soil and stains from fabric. In fact, the term "drycleaning" is misleading; it is called drycleaning because the fluid contains little or no water and does not penetrate the fibers as water does.

Among the advantages of drycleaning is its ability to dissolve greases and oils in a way that water cannot. Natural fibers such a wools and silks dryclean beautifully, but can shrink, distort, and lose color when washed in water. Synthetic fibers such as polyester also respond well to drycleaning, while they can retain oily stains after washing. Drycleaning helps to return garments to a "like-new" condition using precautions to prevent shrinkage, loss of color, and fabric distortion.

The drycleaning process begins with the pretreatment of spots and stains using special cleaning agents. The garments are then loaded into a machine resembling an oversized front-loading home washer. It produces similar mechanical action to loosen embedded dirt. Throughout the cleaning process, the fluid is filtered or distilled to ensure its clarity. Distillation is the key to dry cleaning.

Today, the solvent used by almost 90 percent of all drycleaners is perchloroethylene, commonly known as "perc." Introduced to the drycleaning industry in the late 1930s, perc offers many practical and environmental benefits which have led to its popular use as a cleaning agent. It is completely non-flammable and non-combustible, of relatively low toxicity, and can be efficiently reused and recycled. This is what Stan Ley Cleaners uses.

Wet cleaning
Based on the care label instructions and your professional cleaners's expertise, wet cleaning might be the best method selected for some garments. Since the 1972 Care Label Rule requires that clothing manufacturers only list one method of proper care even if other methods can be used safely, garments labeled "washable" may or may not dryclean satisfactorily.

Like in the drycleaning process, wet cleaning starts with the pretreatment of spots and stains using special cleaning agents. Wetcleaning is the professional process of removing soils from garments and other textile items through the use of water and additives (such as detergents) and using precautions to prevent shrinkage, loss of color, and fabric distortion.