Wool Rug: Why Hand-Knotted Wool Outlasts Everything Else

Polypropylene and polyester are cheap and shrug off water, which makes them right for a patio. Indoors they flatten quickly and feel like what they are. Viscose, often sold as art silk or bamboo silk, is lustrous and soft, but water marks it permanently and the pile crushes. Cotton is washable and thin. Jute and sisal look handsome and feel coarse, and a spilled glass leaves a ring.

Wool asks more at the till and a little attention afterwards. In return it gives warmth, sound absorption and a working life measured in decades. It is also the only fibre in this list that improves with age. The pile settles, the colour mellows, and the rug gains a patina where others simply wear out.

Run your hand over the pile. Good wool is soft but has body. It is neither limp nor harsh like string. Push your fingers down to the base: the more closely the knots are packed, the harder it is to feel the foundation. Lift a corner. A good rug is heavy for its size, because there is a lot of wool in it.

Then turn it over. On a hand-knotted rug the design can be read on the back, knot by knot, and nothing is glued on. A tufted rug, hand-tufted included, has its yarn punched into a cloth and held by latex under a fabric backing. It costs less, but the glue dries out over the years, the rug begins to shed, and it cannot be washed through. The words wool rug on a label cover both, so the back is where you find out.

A new wool rug sheds. Short fibres left in the pile from shearing work their way to the surface and gather in small tufts. It looks alarming and means nothing. Vacuum once or twice a week with suction only, no beater bar, and within a few months it tapers off to almost nothing.

There may be a faint smell of wool at first, stronger if the rug has been wrapped for a while or the air is damp. It goes with ventilation. Creases from transport flatten out by themselves over a few days. None of this is a sign of poor quality, and none of it lasts.

Weekly vacuuming is nearly all it takes. Blot spills straight away with a white cloth and cold water, working from the outside in. Do not rub, and keep bleach, steam and strongly alkaline cleaners away from it. Turn the rug end for end twice a year so that light and footfall are shared out evenly.

Moths are the one real enemy, and they like dark, undisturbed places. Vacuum under the sofa and across the back of the rug now and then, and never store a wool rug rolled up in a cupboard unprotected. Every few years, have it washed by a specialist who washes hand-knotted rugs in water. The rugs on this page run from small pieces and runners to room-sized rugs. Delivery is free worldwide, duties and taxes included.