A handmade rug is built to outlive the room it was bought for. Wool that has been hand-knotted or hand-woven will take decades of foot traffic without complaint — but it rewards a little routine. Everything below applies to every rug we make.
Every week
Vacuum with the beater bar switched off. A rotating brush chews at hand-knotted pile and drags loose knots out of the foundation. Suction alone lifts the grit that actually does the damage — sand sitting at the base of the pile cuts the fibres every time someone walks across it.
Vacuum in the direction of the pile, not against it. Run the nozzle over the fringes rather than pulling them through the machine.
Every six months
Rotate the rug 180°. Sunlight and footfall are never evenly distributed across a room. Rotating twice a year spreads both, so the rug ages as one piece instead of developing a bright half and a worn path.
Wool fades gently and evenly — that soft mellowing is part of why old rugs look the way they do. Uneven fading is the thing to avoid.
Use a pad
A felt or felt-and-rubber underlay is the single cheapest thing that extends a rug’s life. It absorbs the compression of every footstep before it reaches the knots, stops the rug creeping across hard floors, and lets air move underneath.
Avoid solid plastic or adhesive-backed pads — they trap moisture and can mark a timber floor.
Spills
Blot. Never rub. Press a clean white cloth straight down and lift. Rubbing forces the spill into the foundation and distorts the pile.
Work from the outside of the spill inward so it does not spread. Lift as much liquid as you can with plain cold water, then let the rug dry fully with air moving over it. Skip the household carpet chemicals — most are alkaline and will strip the natural lanolin out of wool, leaving a patch that soils faster than everything around it forever after.
Professional washing
Every three to five years in a normal home, more often in a hallway or a hospitality setting. A proper rug wash is a full immersion and controlled dry — not the hot-water extraction used on wall-to-wall carpet, which leaves a handmade rug wet in the foundation and risks dye migration and rot.
Use a specialist rug plant. Ask them whether they wash by immersion; if the answer is vague, go elsewhere.
Moths and storage
Moths eat wool that sits undisturbed in the dark — under a bed, behind a sofa, in a sealed store room. Regular use and regular vacuuming are most of the defence.
For storage: clean the rug first, roll it around a tube with the pile facing outward, wrap it in breathable cloth or acid-free paper, and keep it somewhere dry. Never seal a rug in plastic, and never store it folded — a fold becomes a permanent crease and eventually a crack in the foundation.
Things people worry about that are normal
- Shedding
- New wool rugs shed loose fibre left over from weaving. It settles within a few months of regular vacuuming and is not a fault.
- Sprouts
- An occasional loop standing proud of the pile. Snip it level with scissors. Never pull it — you are pulling on a knot.
- Abrash
- Bands of slightly varying colour across the field. This is the signature of hand-dyed yarn changing subtly between batches, and it is the mark of a hand-made rug rather than a printed one.
- Two-tone appearance
- A rug looks lighter from one end and darker from the other. That is pile direction catching the light, not a colour difference. It reverses as you walk around it.
Specifying rugs for a client or a contract space?
Construction, fibre and pile height all change how a rug wears. Our trade portal carries full specifications for every piece, alongside sizing and trade pricing.