What Is a Rug?
A rug is a loose-laid floor covering — woven on a loom, not fitted like a wall-to-wall carpet — made from wool, cotton, silk or plant fiber. A pile rug has knots tied and clipped onto a warp-and-weft foundation; a flatwoven kilim has none. Rugs are hand-knotted, loom-woven or machine-woven, and are named by region, pattern and size.
This page is the definition rather than the buying guide. It covers what the word means in English, how a rug is put together, the three ways one can be made, what it is made of, and how sizes and names work. The room-by-room advice lives on its own pages, linked at the end.
Rug or carpet? What the two words mean
They describe two different objects. A carpet is fitted — cut to the floor plan, stretched over gripper, and left behind when the house is sold. A rug is laid down loose: it can be rolled, turned twice a year, carried to the next flat, hung on a wall, sold or inherited.
Trade English blurs this. Auction catalogs still call a large loose piece a carpet and a small one a rug, which is why the same 275 × 365 cm (9' × 12') Oushak gets one name in a saleroom and the other in a living room. The distinction that matters to a buyer is the first one, and it is the reason this site says rug on every page: these pieces are woven to a size, not to a room.
Pile or flatweave: the two kinds of surface
Every rug has one surface or the other, and the difference is structural rather than decorative. A pile rug's face is made of cut yarn ends. Short lengths of yarn are tied around the warp threads row by row, beaten down with an iron comb, and then sheared level, so that what the foot lands on is many thousands of clipped fiber tips standing upright.
A flatwoven kilim has no pile at all. The pattern is made by the weft itself, packed tightly enough to cover the warp, so no yarn ends show and both faces are usable. A kilim is therefore thin, light, reversible and quick to fold; a pile rug is thick, heavy, and holds a layer of still air that muffles footfall and takes the chill off a stone or screed floor. Browse handwoven kilims to see the flat structure at close range.
How a rug is built, and how the knots are counted
Three sets of yarn, of which only one is visible.
- Warp. The threads strung vertically on the loom under tension. They are the skeleton of the rug and they emerge at either end as the fringe.
- Weft. The threads passed horizontally between the warps after each row of knots, locking the row down and holding the structure square.
- Pile. The yarn tied onto the warps and cut, forming the surface.
The technique long predates any of the countries that practice it. The Pazyryk rug, cut from a frozen Scythian burial mound in the Altai and now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, dates to the fifth century BC and carries roughly 36 knots per square centimeter. The oldest Anatolian group, large and boldly geometric, comes from the Seljuk thirteenth century and was found in the Alâeddin Mosque in Konya.
Knot density is the standard measure of fineness. Turkish weaving states it as two numbers — 26 × 33, for instance — where the first is the count of warp threads across 10 cm and the second the count of knot rows up 10 cm. The Turkish Ministry of National Education's vocational module gives the arithmetic plainly: multiply the two and the product is the number of knots in one square decimeter. So 26 × 33 gives 858 knots per dm², or 85,800 per square meter.
Density buys detail, not endurance. A high count lets a weaver draw a curve, a face or a line of script; it says nothing on its own about how long the rug will survive a hallway. Peer-reviewed work by Gupta, Goswami and Majumdar in the Textile Research Journal (2018) identified four variables governing durability in handwoven wool rugs — knot density, pile height, the number of plies in the pile yarn, and yarn twist. Knot type was not among them.
On knot type itself: the symmetrical knot wraps two warp threads and brings both ends out between them, while the asymmetrical knot wraps one warp fully and passes under its neighbor, which is what allows very fine curvilinear drawing. These are widely called the Gördes and Senneh knots, or the Turkish and Persian knots. The place names are unreliable — the Encyclopaedia Iranica notes that both knot types were used across the Near and Middle East — so the structural terms are the safer ones.
Hand-knotted, loom-woven or machine-woven
Three production methods, three price levels, three different objects.
| Method | How it is made | Character | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand-knotted | Every knot tied by hand on a vertical loom; three to twelve months for a medium rug | Dense and heavy, with the small irregularities of hand work | Long ownership, fine drawing, pieces meant to be kept |
| Loom-woven | Woven on a hand-operated loom with a controlled weave structure rather than tied knots | Even weight, consistent sizing, natural fibers still available | Buyers who want natural yarn and traditional pattern at a lower price |
| Flatwoven (kilim) | Weft-faced, no pile, reversible; weeks rather than months | Thin, light, packable | Layering, warm months, walls, small rooms |
| Machine-woven | Power loom, traditional patterns reproduced at scale in hours | Uniform surface, usually synthetic yarn, light to medium | Corridors, children's rooms, short-term use |
The quickest way to tell them apart is to turn the rug over. A hand-knotted back shows the pattern almost as clearly as the front, in rows that wander very slightly, and the fringe is the warp itself running out of the weave. A machine-woven back is a regular mesh with the pattern muffled, often with a backing applied, and the fringe is sewn on afterward. Compare hand-knotted rugs with machine-woven rugs and the difference is visible in a photograph of the reverse.
What rugs are made of
Fiber decides more about a rug than pattern does.
- Wool. The default pile fiber. It is springy, recovers after a chair leg is lifted off it, takes natural dye deeply, and holds a small amount of its own grease. See wool rugs, or the longer account of fleece and dye in the guide to handwoven wool rugs.
- Cotton. Used mainly for warp and weft, where its low stretch keeps the rug flat and square. Also woven as pile for a cool, crisp surface.
- Silk. The finest fiber in use, and the only one that changes value as you walk around it. It carries very high knot counts and belongs in rooms that are looked at more than crossed.
- Plant-derived cellulose. Bamboo and viscose yarns are regenerated cellulose with a silk-like sheen at a fraction of the cost. Tencel is a cellulose fiber made from eucalyptus pulp.
- Jute and hemp. Coarse, matte and structural, usually flatwoven or braided rather than knotted.
- Synthetics. Polypropylene, polyester and acrylic, spun for machine looms. They resist light and moisture well and flatten under sustained load.
Dye is the other half of the material question. Traditional Anatolian dyeing uses madder root for red, indigo for blue and cehri berry for yellow; these shift gradually along the length of a fiber and mellow rather than disappear. Chemical dyes give a flat, uniform color from tip to root. Neither is a fault — they are different products with different aging.
How rugs are sized and named
Rugs are sold by dimension, by area, by shape and by origin, and all four appear in the same product name.
- By dimension. The recurring Anatolian sizes are 80 × 150 cm (2'7" × 4'11"), 120 × 180 cm (3'11" × 5'11"), 160 × 230 cm (5'3" × 7'7"), 200 × 300 cm (6'7" × 9'10") and 240 × 340 cm (7'10" × 11'2").
- By area. Turkish retail sorts rugs in square meters, which is why the same piece is a 6 m² rug in Ankara and a 6'7" × 9'10" in London.
- By shape. Rectangle, square, round, and the long narrow runner — yolluk in Turkish — made for corridors and stair landings.
- By use. A prayer rug is woven with a directional niche at one end and is usually around 100 × 170 cm (3'3" × 5'7").
- By origin and pattern. Oushak, Hereke, Kayseri, Milas, Yağcıbedir and Yahyalı are weaving places, and each name carries an expected palette, knot and proportion. A house series name — Harem, Aren, Zade — identifies a design line rather than a village.
Size is chosen from the furniture, not from the floor. That reasoning, room by room, is set out in the guide to choosing a living room rug.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a rug and a carpet?
A carpet is fitted wall to wall, cut to the floor plan and fixed in place, so it belongs to the building. A rug is loose-laid and belongs to its owner: it can be rolled up, rotated, moved between houses, hung on a wall, resold or inherited.
What is the difference between a rug and a kilim?
A pile rug has a knotted surface of cut yarn ends standing upright on a warp-and-weft foundation. A kilim is flatwoven and has no pile at all, so it is thin, light, reversible and usable on either face, and it takes weeks rather than months to weave.
How is knot density measured?
Turkish weaving counts warp threads across 10 cm and knot rows up 10 cm, then multiplies the two to give knots per square decimeter. A 26 × 33 rug therefore carries 858 knots per square decimeter, which is 85,800 knots in a square meter of pile.
Does a higher knot count make a better rug?
No. Density buys fineness of drawing rather than length of life. Research published in the Textile Research Journal in 2018 found durability in handwoven wool rugs to depend on knot density, pile height, ply count and yarn twist together, and a dense rug in poor wool is still a poor rug.
What are rugs made of?
Pile is usually wool, sometimes silk, cotton, bamboo or viscose, and on machine looms polypropylene or polyester. Warp and weft are most often cotton, chosen because it barely stretches and keeps the rug square. Jute and hemp appear in flatwoven and braided rugs.
What size rug should a room have?
Measure the furniture rather than the floor, and decide whether the rug should sit under every leg of the seating group or only the front legs. The recurring Anatolian sizes are 160 × 230 cm, 200 × 300 cm and 240 × 340 cm, and a corridor takes a runner.
Related: hand-knotted rugs · handwoven kilims · wool rugs · how to size a living room rug