Please enjoy perusing our Glossary of Carpet and Area Rug Terms:

All Over Design
A repeated pattern that full covers the field of a rug.

Arbrash
A change in the shade of a color within a rug which usually appears in a horizontal line.

Backing/Backing Material
To protect the back of hooked rugs, heavy fabric is secured with latex glue.

Border
The design which forms the outside edge of a rug and surrounds the field.

Braided Rug
Yarn or fabric is braided to form a continuous rope or braid which is sewn in a spiral to form a reversible rug.

Cartoon
A colored drawing on graph paper that a weaver follows to craft a rug design.

Carving
Hand-held carving tools are used to accentuate details of hooked, tufted, and handknotted rugs.

Chemical Wash
Produces an overall luster by reacting to the dye stuffs in the design and by removing short staple yarns from the face of the rug.

Chenille Braid
Fabric is first woven, then cut into strips which are braided.

Chrome Dyes
A quality feature because these synthetic dyes use potassium bichromate to form a permanent bond between the dye and the rug’s fiber.

Cross-woven
This refers to a rug woven horizontally on a Wilton loom as opposed to vertically, which is more common.

Delustered
A fabric treatment which washes the shine from the yarn, producing a softer overall appearance in an Oriental rug.

Denier
In reference to yarn size, the lower the denier, the smaller the yarn size; the higher the denier, the larger the yarn size.

Density
This measure of quality in a rug is determined by the amount of yarn and the pile height in a given area of the rug.

Dhurrie
Called a flat woven rug, dhurries are usually made of cotton or wool in India using the warp-sharing, kelim method.

Field
The part of a rug’s design surrounded by the border. The field may be solid or contain medallions, or an overall pattern.

Foundation
The combination of warps and wefts in the body of a rug.

Hooked Rug
Yarns are pushed through canvas cloth and form a design.

Kelim
A tapestry-like flat woven rug.

Latex
This glue is used to secure a heavy cloth backing to hooked rugs, and to secure face yarns.

Medallion
If a design has a large enclosed portion, usually in the center, it is called the medallion. Typical shapes are diamonds, octagons, and hexagons.

Pile
The surface of the rug, it is sometimes called the “nap” or “face.”

Ply
One or more yarns are twisted together to form a larger piece of yarn. Ply counts the number of individual yarn pieces comprising the whole.

Polypropylene
A synthetic fiber that is colorfast, mold and mildew resistant, stain resistant, with excellent wearability and is easily cleaned.

Printed Rugs
Solid or multi-colored pile rugs on which a design has been stenciled.

Tufting
A form of hooking. Yarns are pushed through the foundation of a rug to form a pattern with an electric tufting gun.

Variegated
Using multiple colors.

Vegetable Dyes
Natural dyes produced from berries, roots, and bark. They are not as colorfast as chrome dyes.

Warp
Forming the backbone of a rug, warp yarns are attached to a loom and run the length of a rug.

Weft
Yarns that are woven horizontally across the warp of a rug.

Worsted
Before wool is spun into yarn, it is combed, then worsted to improve its quality by leaving only longer pieces of fiber for final spinning.