The Benefits of Dry Cleaning
Alterations: Professional dry cleaners are full-service clothing care specialists. Alterations are one of the many services they may offer in addition to drycleaning your clothes.
Buttons: Dry cleaners repair loose buttons or sew on new ones, if necessary.
Convenience: All you have to do is drop your clothes off and pick them up. Your cleaner takes care of the rest. Why waste hours doing laundry and ironing when you get quality and convenience with drycleaning?
Drycleaning, the process itself: Drycleaning uses fluids to remove soils and stains from fabrics. Among the advantages of drycleaning is its ability to dissolve grease and oils in a way that water cannot. Natural fibers such as wools and silks dryclean beautifully, but can shrink, distort, and lose color when washed in water. Synthetic fibers like polyester also respond well to drycleaning, whereas 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 change of texture or finish.
Expertise: From fashions and fabrics to stain removal to the latest cleaning technologies, drycleaners have the expertise to clean your clothes right. Why do it yourself or settle for a second-rate job from a so-called "home drycleaning kit" when you could trust it to an expert?
Finishing: Thanks to special pressing equipment, professional finishing gives garments a crisp, wrinkle-free, like-new appearance that can't be beat. There are no rumples or creases out of place. Plus, by taking your clothes to the drycleaner, you don't have to spend your weekend standing over an ironing board and a hot iron.
Stain removal: Dry cleaners use complex procedures and special stain removal chemicals to remove stains. Stains are divided into two major categories: solvent-soluble stains and water-soluble stains. Different stains require different treatments, which stain removal technicians are trained to administer. Why risk a disaster using an over-the-counter "all-purpose" stain removal product or trying a "home remedy" when you could rely on your drycleaner's expert stain removal abilities?
Technology: Dry cleaners are on top of the latest cleaning and fabric technologies.
Inspection: Before they return a garment to you, quality cleaners conduct an inspection to make sure your order has met their own and your expectations. If they spot a problem, the garment gets sent back to receive further attention. Safeguards like this help ensure that your clothes will look their best when you come to pick them up.
Just right: That's how your clothes will look when you pick them up from your drycleaner.
Knowledge of fabrics and fashions: You may know what rayon, silk, and cotton are, but what about angora, faille or seersucker? There are numerous fabrics and fibers that drycleaners must know about in order to care best for the clothes they receive. Each fabric can respond positively or negatively depending on the treatment administered.
Laundry: Dry cleaners also have commercial laundry departments where they process shirts, cotton pants, and other items. With the convenience and superior level of pressing that comes with commercial laundry, it won't just be your dryclean-only clothes that look like a million bucks. Your business casual and casual attire will look their best, too.
Value: A good value is what dry cleaners provide their customers through quality work, excellent customer service, and the extra free time to do the things they'd rather be doing instead of washing and ironing clothes.
Wetcleaning: Wetcleaning is a gentle form of cleaning that cleaners may choose to process sensitive textiles such as wool, silk, rayon, and linen. It gives dry cleaners more flexibility in processing items that may not withstand a drycleaning process or that have soils that would be better removed in water. For example, many items, such as wedding gowns, are often trimmed with plastic beads or sequins that may dissolve or discolor in drycleaning but generally perform well in wetcleaning. Items with large water-soluble stains are also more likely to come clean in a wetcleaning process.
eXtend the life of your garments: Contrary to the belief of some, frequent cleaning does not damage clothes. Frequent cleaning extends the life of a garment by removing stains and ground-in dirt and soils that can cause fiber abrasion.
Yellowing: Frequent cleaning removes stains that, if left untreated, could oxidize and cause yellowing. Exposure to heat or the passage of time can cause stains from food, beverages, and other oily substances to oxidize and turn yellow or brown, much the way a peeled apple turns brown after exposure to air. Once they become yellow or brown, these stains become much more difficult to remove and often cannot be removed.
Zip in and out: That's how long it takes you to drop off and pick up your drycleaning. Again, convenience is paramount to good drycleaning.
