Hand-knotted, hand-tufted or hooked? How to tell what kind of handmade rug you have before it's washed

“Handmade” on a rug tag can mean three very different things. It can mean someone tied every knot by hand over months. It can mean someone shot yarn through a cloth with a tufting gun over a couple of days and glued a backing on. Or it can mean loops pulled through a canvas with a hook. All three get sold as handmade wool rugs, and all three react differently to water, soap and drying. Five minutes with the back of the rug will tell you which one you have.

Flip a corner over first

Pull a corner back so you can see the underside in good light. What you find there sorts most rugs straight away:

The last row trips people up. Machine-made rugs show the pattern on the back too, so a visible design isn't proof of handwork. The giveaway is regularity. On a hand-knotted rug the rows wobble a little, the knots aren't all the same size, and the outlines of shapes look a bit soft. On a power-loomed rug every line is ruler-straight and the back feels hard and uniform.

Check the fringe and the sides

On a hand-knotted rug the fringe isn't decoration. It's the ends of the warp threads, the vertical threads the whole rug was knotted onto. Part the pile right where the fringe meets the rug and you'll see the fringe run straight into the body. On tufted and most machine-made rugs the fringe is a separate strip sewn or glued onto the end, and you can usually see the seam.

The long sides tell you something too. Hand-knotted rugs have sides wrapped by hand in wool or cotton, and the wrapping is often a little uneven. Machine-made rugs have a serged edge: tight, identical machine stitches the whole way down.

One more test for knotted rugs: fold the rug back on itself with the pile facing out, along the width, so the pile parts in a line. You'll see the base of each knot sitting in rows, wrapped around the warp threads. A tufted rug folded the same way shows yarn coming straight out of a cloth.

The four handmade types, and what each means for cleaning

Hand-knotted

This is what most people picture when they say Persian or Oriental rug, though the same construction comes out of Turkey, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and China. There's no glue anywhere, which is good news for washing: a wool hand-knotted rug in sound condition is usually the best candidate there is for a full, thorough wash, because there's no backing to come loose.

The things that can go wrong are specific:

• Dye that runs. Reds and dark blues are the usual suspects, especially on newer rugs. Dampen a white cloth, press it on each color for a few seconds, and see whether anything transfers. If it does, say so when you book.
• Dry rot in the foundation. Most knotted rugs have a cotton foundation, and cotton that's been damp for long stretches, say under a plant pot or rolled up in a basement, rots from the inside. Fold a corner over and listen. A crackling or snapping sound, or a stiff, brittle feel, means the foundation is weak. Washing can't fix that, and handling can make it worse.
• Brown edges after drying. If a cotton foundation dries slowly, it can wick a brownish stain up into light-colored pile. This is one of the main reasons not to hose a wool rug down on a driveway and leave it to dry on the grass.
• Fringe that won't go white. Cotton fringe yellows with age. A wash gets the dirt out, but old fringe often stays ivory.

Our Persian and Oriental rug cleaning page and the wool rug cleaning page go into more detail on these.

Hand-tufted

Tufted rugs are made by punching yarn through a cloth stretched on a frame, then coating the back with latex to lock the yarn in and gluing a second cloth over it. That's the plain canvas you see when you flip it. A lot of the wool rugs sold by furniture stores and catalogs are tufted, and the tag will often say “100% wool, hand made” or “hand-tufted.”

The wool pile cleans well. The latex is the weak point. It breaks down with age, heat and repeated soaking, and when it goes you'll notice fine powder on the floor when you lift the rug, a crunchy feel when you fold a corner, or the canvas peeling away from the back. A rug in that state is near the end of its life, and a wash won't bring it back. Tufted wool rugs also shed for months after they're new. That's loose fiber from the shearing, not dirt, and cleaning doesn't stop it.

Hand-hooked

Hooked rugs are built like tufted ones, except the loops of yarn are left uncut, so the surface is all small loops. Many have the same latex-and-canvas backing. The loops catch on things, so keep vacuum beater bars off them and don't let pets dig at a pulled loop, because it can unravel a row. Cut a pulled loop level with the pile instead of yanking it.

Flatweaves: kilims and dhurries

No pile at all, just a tightly woven face. Kilims are usually wool. Dhurries, mostly from India, are often cotton. Both are reversible, so turning them over every few months spreads the wear. Cotton dhurries tend to shrink and bleed more than wool, so don't try the washing machine on anything bigger than a bath mat. Some kilims have small vertical slits where two colors meet. That's how they're woven, not damage, though a slit that keeps getting longer needs a few stitches.

Things not to do while you wait

• Don't run a beater bar over the fringe of a knotted rug. It chews the warp ends, and once they're gone the knots at the end start coming loose. Vacuum up to the fringe, not across it.
• Don't put a steam cleaner or carpet extractor on a tufted rug. Hot water pushed into the back is hard on the latex. Our rug washing vs. steam cleaning page explains the difference in method.
• Don't scrub a spill on wool. Blot it with a white towel and cold water, working from the outside in.
• Don't store a rug rolled up in a damp basement or garage over the summer. That's how dry rot and mildew start.

A note for Westchester homes

In a Westchester house, the rug that takes the worst of winter is usually the one in the front hall or by the mudroom door. Road salt from driveways and sidewalks gets ground into the pile near the door and leaves a white crust or stiff patches. Salt also pulls moisture out of the air, so an entry rug full of it can feel damp even when nobody has spilled anything. Vacuum those rugs often through the winter, and plan a wash for spring rather than letting a season of salt sit in the fibers.

For pickup, the useful details are practical ones. Tell us whether the rug is in a house with a driveway or in a building with a service elevator, and where a rolled rug can be handed over. If the rug is under a dining table or a bed, the optional furniture service ($50 flat) means we move the furniture, take the rug, and put it back when it's returned. More on local pickup is on our Westchester rug cleaning page.

What it costs

Enter your measurements to see the cleaning price for your rug before booking. Pickup and return are free when the cleaning subtotal is $250 or more, and $50 total below that. If you're not sure how to measure, here's how to measure a rug for cleaning.

You can add up to 10 rugs to one booking, and the $250 threshold uses the combined cleaning subtotal. So that hall runner on its own is $180, but booked together with a 6 × 9 the cleaning comes to $481 and pickup and return are free. We pick up within 48 hours of booking unless you ask for a later date, and rugs normally come back 7 to 10 business days after pickup.

You don't need to know your rug's construction to book. But if you found running dye, a crackling foundation, powdery latex or an old repair while you were checking, put it in the order notes so it's on record with the rug. If your rug turned out not to be wool at all, our guide to telling synthetic rug fibers apart picks up from here.