A hand-made rug: sizes, care, and how to choose one for an interior

The most common mistake is the rug “for the coffee table”: a small rectangle floating in the middle of the room. A rug should hold the furniture group together, not lie next to it. For a living room the rule is simple: the front legs of the sofa and armchairs stand on the rug — better still, the whole group does, with a 20–30 cm margin around.

In a dining room the rug is sized from the table: add 60–70 cm on each side to the length and width of the top, so that a pushed-back chair does not slide off the rug with its back legs. In a bedroom the rug either goes two-thirds under the bed and extends 60–80 cm at the sides and the foot, or lies as two runners along the bed.

For a typical living room that means sizes in the order of 250×350 and 300×400 cm — larger than the catalogue suggests. Mohebban’s finished rugs come in standard size runs, but the mill also weaves to order: any size and proportion for your room, including round and irregular shapes. That is the way to go when the layout is fixed and the room is an awkward shape.

Wool is the basis of most hand-made rugs. It is resilient and warm, hides dirt, repels water naturally thanks to lanolin, and holds the shape of its pile for decades. A wool rug can go in a living room, a dining room, a hallway — anywhere people walk. In the first months a new wool rug sheds a little — this is normal and passes.

Silk adds lustre and precision of drawing: the silk yarn is finer, there are more knots, and the detail of the ornament becomes jewel-like. Rugs with silk in the pile, or all-silk rugs, are for a bedroom, a study, a zone without through traffic: silk dislikes grit from shoes and heavy furniture legs. It changes shade with the direction of the pile, like velvet, and looks different from different sides of the room.

Viscose is a plant fibre with a silk-like sheen at a noticeably more accessible price. It is beautiful and suits quiet areas, but it is sensitive to water: blot a spill at once, never rub, and show it to a specialist as soon as possible, or a mark will remain. Bamboo silk and banana silk belong to the same family — cellulose fibres with the sheen of real silk. Most Mohebban Milano rugs in our catalogue are woven from exactly these: bamboo silk, banana silk and viscose, hand-made, sizes to order. Blended rugs — wool with viscose or silk in the pattern — are the most practical compromise: a durable ground and sheen where it is wanted.

A rug is chosen after the floor, wallpaper and curtains, but before everything is in place: it either gathers the colours of the room or becomes the one coloured object on a neutral ground. In the first case the rug repeats two or three shades already present in the upholstery and drapes. In the second the room is calm, and a rug with a large pattern gives it character.

A large faded damask or oriental motif in a muted palette sits well with contemporary furniture — the classic pairing on which half of Italian interiors are built. A plain or abstract rug, on the other hand, supports classical furniture and does not argue with patterned wallpaper.

Light — the same as with wallpaper. A rug with pile of varying height or with silk changes depending on where the light comes from; look at a sample by your window and under evening lamps. Mohebban rugs can be seen in the showroom in Astana — by appointment, so that sizes and compositions for your layout are ready for the visit.

Once a week — a vacuum without the turbo brush, in the direction of the pile. A turbo brush pulls out fibres and frays the fringe; for a hand-made rug an ordinary head is enough. Every six months the rug is turned 180 degrees so that sun and traffic wear it evenly.

Spills are dealt with at once, blotted with a white cloth from the edge of the stain towards the centre, without rubbing and without hot water. Wool forgives a great deal; silk and viscose do not — for them it is better to call a specialist straight away. Deep cleaning of a hand-made rug is done only in a workshop, once every few years, by a wet method without harsh chemicals.

An underlay goes beneath the rug: it stops it sliding on tile or parquet, protects the pile from abrasion against the floor and makes the rug softer underfoot. Heavy furniture stands on cups under its legs, and once a year it is shifted slightly so that the dents in the pile recover.

Size by the furniture, not by the catalogue. Material by the traffic: wool where people walk, silk and viscose where they sit. Pattern by what is already in the room. And time: a rug made to order takes several months to weave, so the size and composition are best confirmed when the layout is clear and the renovation is still under way.

We order directly from the mill — on direct factory contracts, with a known lead time. In the showroom we will choose the size and material for your room; if the standard size run does not fit, we will calculate a rug to order.