Rug Identification Guide —
Identify Any Rug Before You Sell

To identify a rug, answer four questions in order: is it handmade or machine-made, where was it made, what is it made from, and how old is it. The back of the rug holds most of the answers — the knots, foundation, fringe and design together reveal both origin and age. Work through the four steps below, and you will know far more about your rug than most sellers ever do.

You do not need to be an expert to make real progress. A good light, a look at the reverse and a few minutes with this guide will tell you whether you own a mass-produced floor covering or a genuine hand-woven rug with real value — and roughly where and when it was made. For the pieces that matter, a specialist can then confirm the detail. This guide is deliberately broad: it covers rugs of every major origin rather than a single country, so whatever you own, you can place it.

A rug's country of origin is read from the combination of knot type, foundation, palette and design. Persian rugs favour the asymmetric knot and flowing floral patterns; Turkish rugs the symmetric knot and bold geometry; Caucasian rugs sharp geometric medallions; Moroccan Berber rugs thick tribal wool. The table below sets out the tell-tale features of each major weaving country.

Use this as a starting point rather than the last word — regions borrow from one another, and India and Pakistan in particular weave close copies of Persian and Turkish designs. Once you have narrowed the origin, our dedicated pages go deeper: Persian, Turkish, Caucasian, Afghan, Moroccan and Chinese rugs each have their own identification and valuation notes. For Persian pieces specifically, our detailed guide to identifying a Persian rug breaks the country down city by city.

Materials tell you both quality and origin. Most handmade rugs have a wool pile on a cotton or wool foundation, while the finest have silk. Wool feels warm, matte and springy; silk is cool to first touch, lustrous, extremely strong and shifts colour in the light. A cotton foundation usually signals a workshop city rug; a wool foundation more often points to a tribal or village weave.

Handling the rug tells you a great deal. Rub the pile and feel its weight; look at the fringe and warp threads, which reveal the foundation. Be cautious with anything sold simply as "silk" — much so-called art silk is mercerised cotton or rayon, which is far less valuable than true silk. If you suspect real silk, our notes on fine silk weaves such as Persian city and Qum rugs explain what to look for, and any specialist can confirm the fibre safely from close photographs.

Some rugs carry extra clues in the weave. A woven cartouche may name a workshop, a master weaver or a town, and occasionally a date; an old retailer's label sewn to the back can hint at where and when a rug was sold. Both can support an identification — but both must be treated with care, because signatures can be copied and labels moved between rugs.

Where a signature is genuine and belongs to a respected workshop, it can add real value; where it is a later addition, it can mislead. The same applies to inscriptions and dates woven into a border, which may follow the Islamic (Hijri) calendar rather than the Western one. Read them as supporting evidence alongside the weave itself, never as a substitute for it. Our guide to rug labels and signatures explains how to interpret these marks.

Getting your rug identified is simple: send clear photographs and measurements through our quote form, and our specialists identify origin, materials, construction and approximate age, then reply within 48 hours with a free valuation. There is no obligation to sell — many people simply want to know what they own.