The Interior Designer's Rug Specification Checklist (2026)

When a custom rug arrives and the client says it is not what they approved, the argument is almost never about quality. It is about a line that nobody wrote down. Pile height measured before washing rather than after. A tolerance that was assumed rather than agreed. A border width that existed in the rendering and in nobody's specification. The rug is exactly what the factory was told to make, and it is not what the designer meant.

A rug specification is the one document that converts intention into something a weaver can execute and a buyer can check. It does not need to be long. It needs to be complete, and it needs to be attached to the purchase order rather than living in an email thread.

The list below is what we ask for when a designer briefs us, and what we send back as a signed specification before anything is woven. Our commissioning guide covers the conversation around it, and the curation flow collects most of it if you would rather answer questions than write a document.

Copy this into your own project template. Every line is here because its absence has cost somebody time, money or a client relationship.

Pile height after washing, not before. Wool relaxes and lifts in the wash, and clipping happens afterwards. A pile height quoted before finishing is not the pile height that arrives, and the difference is easily two or three millimetres, which is enough to foul a door.

Tolerance. Handmade rugs are woven under tension by people, not cut by a machine, and every house works to a tolerance. Around plus or minus 3 per cent is standard. If it is not written down, then the first rug that measures 3045 mm instead of 3050 mm becomes a negotiation instead of a delivery.

Motif placement relative to the room rather than the rug. A centred medallion is centred on the rug. If the rug sits under a bed or against a fireplace, the visual centre of the room is somewhere else, and the design should be drawn to the room, not to the rectangle. Say which you want.

Edge treatment. Binding, serging and fringe are the details a client touches when deciding whether something is expensive. They are also the cheapest thing on this list to get right and the most conspicuous to get wrong.

Colour is where most custom rug projects lose their tempers. A render on a calibrated screen, a fabric swatch under a showroom light and dyed wool under a north-facing window are three different colours by the time they meet. The way through is physical references and a signed tuft card, not more adjectives.

Supply the physical thing wherever possible: the paint chip, the stone sample, the fabric. Where you must work from a code, name the system and the code, and say what it is describing, since a Pantone reference chosen for print rarely reproduces exactly in dyed wool. Then ask for a tuft card in the actual fibre, assess it in the actual room if the room exists, and sign it. The signed card, not the email, is the reference the weaver dyes against.

For multi-colour work, ask for a colour sequence chart before the strike-off. It costs a few days and prevents the single most expensive error in this business, which is discovering at final inspection that two tones you specified as distinct read as one.

Specify from the furniture plan, not from the room dimensions. In a seating group, the usual decision is whether all legs, front legs only, or no legs sit on the rug, and each produces a different size from the same room. In a dining room, the rug must extend far enough beyond the table that a pulled-out chair stays on it, which is typically 600 to 750 mm on every side. In a bedroom, the rug should reach far enough past the bed to land under a bare foot.

Corridors and runners have their own rule: leave a consistent margin of floor on both long sides, and resist making the runner as wide as the corridor, which reads as fitted carpet rather than as a rug. Our size and fitting guide has the numbers, and the sizing guide for buyers and designers works through the common layouts.

Where the plan is complex, send it. A floor plan with the furniture on it, marked with the intended rug rectangle, removes more ambiguity than any amount of written description, and a manufacturer who works from drawings will do exactly that.

A signed specification restating every line above in the manufacturer's own words, so that any misreading surfaces before the loom is warped rather than after. A tuft card or a strike-off, physically, in the fibre and colours specified. A stated lead time measured from your approval, not from the enquiry. And a written tolerance, because the tolerance is the definition of a correct delivery.

If a supplier will not restate your specification back to you, that is worth noticing. It usually means the document has gone to a weaving unit unchecked, which is exactly the point at which a 10 mm pile becomes a 12 mm pile.

We send that restatement as standard, and where a project needs it we will also confirm in writing what certification exists today and what would have to be arranged for your order. Our position is on the standards page: CEPC registration is what we hold, and the rest is arranged per order.