How to Buy Rugs

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Rug making is a tradition for 3,000 years. Here are some guidelines to help you choose your quality carpets to treasure for a lifetime.

It's in the Details


A good rug lies flat and straight on the floor and is reasonably regular in its shape. It has lively, lustrous wool or fiber. The colors are in balance - neither faded nor bled. It has been intelligently "finished" so that it is not washed out, unnaturally shiny, or unpleasantly bright and harsh. Most important of all, the rug should have a certain sophisticated quality, an evidence of having been made by skilled artisans.

Buy Rugs Made By Adult Artisans

Rugs of exceptional quality are the least likely to have been made with child labor. The rugs that are likely made from illegal child labor are the cheapest Indian, Nepalese and Pakistani rugs. Look for the GoodWeaveTM label for assurance that your rugs aren't made by child laborers.

How to Find a Quality Rug

The best rug dealers will encourage you to take rugs home on approval without obligation. They are very concerned about child labor in the rug industry and carefully avoid rugs made under suspect conditions. Trust your instincts. If you feel uncomfortable with a dealer, move on.

Do Prep Work

First, measure the area the rug will cover. Remember, you should probably have a border of flooring all the way around the rug. Allow for a range of sizes; the greater the range, the more choices you will have. Consider whether you prefer traditional rugs or those with contemporary designs. To guide your decision, one option is seek an interior designer. Designers can be wonderful allies in finding the right rugs. But remember, they usually focus on "the look"  while the rug dealer focuses on quality. Yours will be on what you like. Listen to all, but the last say is still yourself.

In addition, there are also questions that are more controversial, more subjective or more difficult to answer.

Are Finely Knotted Rugs Better?
Rugs are available in myriad densities, typically ranging from up to 30 knots per inch (very coarse) to 290 knots per inch (very fine). Finely knotted or finely woven rugs are usually the most desirable. Curved lines in a rug’s design can be "drawn" more smoothly and gracefully in a rug with many knots per square inch, just as a lot of pixels in a television screen allow for more natural looking lines. And rugs that are very finely knotted have such dense surfaces that light is attractively reflected from them.

Modern or Traditional?
If you are thinking about a traditional Persian or Tribal rug designs, you may consider getting your antique rug purchase through a respected dealer. However, you may also find new rugs that look old, at a lower price. Contemporary designs are widely available, many of which have been adapted from old techniques and styles.

Hand-Knotted, Hand-Tufted or Flat-Weave?
Hand-knotted rugs is usually higher in quality because of the intensive labor required. Hand-tufted rugs, that involve stenciling a pattern on the backing of the rug and then threading yarns into the design, are lower in price. Flat-weave rugs are also less expensive because they require less labor.

Natural or Synthetic Dyes?
In antique rugs, natural dyes are more desirable than synthetic. Natural dyes add roughly 30 percent to the cost of a rug,also add to its charm and its value. But, the synthetic dyes used today are available in a wide array of colors and shades and hold their color well over time. It is impossible without expensive laboratory analysis to be certain whether a given dye is natural or synthetic.

Hand-Spun or Machine-Spun Wool?
Most collectors and connoisseurs value the effect produced by hand-spun wool, though some prefer the uniformity of machine-spun wool. When spun by hand, yarn absorbs more dye where it is loosely spun and less dye where it is spun tightly, producing pleasant variegation in the colors of a rug.

Can You Judge Quality by Height of the Pile?
Sometimes, inexperienced rug buyers mistake a thick pile for quality. The truth is, the finest rugs often are the thinnest. Still, if a rug is going to take significant traffic, it should have plenty of body.