Persian Rug Quality Guide - How to Determine The Quality of Your Persian Carpet
The quality of a Persian rug is one of the most important factors when deciding how valuable, attractive, and durable a Persian carpet might be. A higher quality rug lasts much longer than a cheaper quality rug, has more vibrant colors to make it more attractive, and it is also worth more! Below you will find criteria that you should consider when evaluating the quality of a Persian rug that you might be interested in. Some of these measures may be hard to evaluate when purchasing a rug online. However, if you make sure your seller offers a reasonable return policy, that shouldn't be a problem.1. Is the rug hand-made or machine made?
A lot more work went into a hand-made rug than a machine- made rug. With a hand-woven rug, each individual knot is tied by hand, which means it could take the weaver months if not years to weave an average sized Persian carpet. The hand-woven rug also lasts longer, much longer. By much longer we mean the average hand-woven rug can last 4-5 generations whereas the machine made one can only last about 20 years. A hand-made Persian rug can last you a lifetime!
You can clearly witness the visual difference between the hand-made rug and the machine made rug in the picture shown above.
2. The Knot Density measured in knots per square inch (KPSI)
Knot density is another measure used to determine a rug's quality. It simply refers to the number of knots that have been tied in every square inch of a piece of carpet. The higher the KPSI, the less pixelation the rug will have and less pixelation not only makes the rug's patterns and design look more attractive and appealing to the eye, but it will also prevent aging and add to the life of the carpet. Below is a chart to evaluate the quality of Persian rugs based upon KPSI.
KPSI | Quality |
| 82 or less 82 118 | Very poor Poor Acceptable |
161 329 474 654 843 1066 1144 or more | Medium Good Great Excellent Superb Masterpiece Museum quality |
The material which the Persian rug is made from is also an important indicator of its quality. Wool is generally considered to be the best material when it comes to Persian rugs. One of the highest-quality wools come from New Zealand. But even with wool there is quality wool and cheap wool. When you run your hand back and forth against the top of a carpet made from wool, you should not see any fuzzy fibers appear on the surface of the rug or on your hand. If you do, be careful; the wool is cheap-quality wool which will not last very long.
Silk is another material that is not as commonly used for making Persian rugs because of its expensiveness. Silk can be much stronger than wool.