For a whole lot of people, the world of Oriental carpeting is sort of mysterious and overwhelming. My family has been in the business of dealing with oriental rugs and carpet since 1938. Here are a couple of valuable pointers that we would like to pass along to our customers on buying an Oriental rug.

Where does one start?

Before you go looking for Persian rugs for sale, you should first consider some things. These things you should think about include the size of the rug that you are interested in buying and the colour. Knowing this in advance will help to save an individual on a lot of time and aggravation when they are in the showroom. Get a rough sketch done of your room with all the dimensions noted, and where the furniture is placed or will be placed. If you are shopping around for a dining room rug, do make sure to know the dining table’s particular size; this way, the chair won’t go falling off the edge of the rug whenever you decide to back away from the table. If it is stair runners you are looking for, do make sure to count the proper number of available risers. The risers are the steps and each tread that they do have. Each step has a riser and a tread. Many new rugs come available in sizes from two feet by three feet to 10 feet by 14 feet. Some do come available in much larger sizes than the ones given here. Runners are commonly about 30 inches wide.

If one were to listen to conventional wisdom, it would dictate this, and that is that the starting of decorating a room does begin with the Oriental rug. This is because the Oriental rug does come in a wide array of endless choices. These endless choices in fabrics and paints make for a well-chosen Oriental rug that will usually outlast almost everything else in the room. This advice is well and fine if you are starting out from scratch. More often though, a new rug is chosen more than anything else because there is an open spot that needs to be covered. It is an Oriental rug that can do the trick. The established colour and style are something that should be followed to the letter. Therefore, it is highly advisable if a person does carry some samples along with them when they go Oriental rug shopping. If one can take some photos of the rooms, this is also a big help, and this is because of one fact. This one fact is that there are lots of colours and designs in Oriental rugs to decide on than ever before.

Once you have determined the space’s size that needs a rug and have some colour samples tucked under your arm. You can get some nice ideas here. The next step is to ask yourself some much bigger questions. What are these bigger questions? Just how much will this Oriental rug cost you? How do you go about judging quality? Where do you go on from there?

What should you look for?

The price of an Oriental rug is based on certain things. What are these certain things? They are this:

• The overall quality of the rug itself
• The country from which the rug does originate
• The age of the rug
• The condition of the rug
• The specific decorative demand of the rug

There are a good many people out there who do literally “get tied up in knots” at the very thought of trying to judge the overall quality of an Oriental rug. Counting just how many knots are on an Oriental rug is not the way to go. The best way to judge the quality of an Oriental rug is by examining the weave of the rug itself. The weave is something that should be fine enough in detail to clearly express the motifs of design on it. An Oriental rug that has a bold design should only contain about 100 knots per square inch in number. If the Oriental rug has a detailed floral pattern on it, it should then only have about, say 300 or more knots per every square inch. The tightness and regularity of the weave is something that is important. Nonetheless, what is more important is this, and that is the quality of the wool itself. The quality of the wool does determine the resilience of the Oriental rug. The very same can be said about the lasting patina of the rug too. Another thing that is just as equally important is does include the quality and fastness that the dyes do possess.

One should look at the personality of the Oriental rug and not the nationality of it. Traditionally, rugs from Iran (Persia) was the source for the finest of all rugs and was the benchmark by which all other rugs did come to be measured. Nevertheless, in the last 20 years, the quality of rugs from other countries has improved so much that they now can rival the rug wonders that come from Iran (Persia). Some of these countries that do have leading rugs do include China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Nepal, and Tibet.