Oriental Rugs - A Beautiful Addition to Your Home

In the dining room or in your study, on foyers or on stairs, Oriental rugs look natural wherever you place them. Geometric patterns or simple designs, bright colors or light tones, they enhance the beauty of your rooms.

Fragments of ancient rugs found in the Tarim Basin, which includes modern day northwestern India, East Turkmenistan, southern Russia, western China and Mongolia suggest that Asia was the first to produce rugs. Thus the term Oriental rugs refer to those created anywhere in Asia.

Buying an Oriental rug is quite a task, especially if you are buying it for the first time. There are various factors to be considered. To begin with the size of the room for which you are buying plays a pivotal role. For dining rooms the size of the table may be considered, while for bedrooms the area in front of the bed may to be considered. Quality of rugs depends on knots per square inch; higher number of knots will guarantee a clearer and sharper design. Quite the same manner in which you judge your digital photos by dpi. Some experts also suggest that you look out for imperfections in an Oriental rug to judge its authenticity. This may sound strange but it is said that weavers make intentional mistakes on a perfect rug, as they believe that only the Supreme Being can make something that is perfect.

Oriental rugs are more durable and environment-friendly than mass-produced machine-made rugs, as they are made of natural fibers like cotton, wool or silk that last longer and as these are handmade each strand has been tied individually for greater strength and consistency.

Weaving of Oriental rugs is a delicate and tedious process. Mainly two types of knots are used - the symmetrical Turkish knot or the asymmetrical Persian knot. The number of knots per square inch may vary from 16 to over 500. Horizontal or vertical looms are used to weave the rugs. Horizontal looms are preferred for weaving smaller rugs while the vertical ones are used for bigger ones. Depending on the quality and size of the rug it may take from only a month to several years to complete.

As Oriental rugs can be a costly affair it is important that you make sure that you are buying an original one. You may make use of experts while buying and some rug dealers also provide a certificate of authentication with their rugs.

Rory H. Hawkins writes about Oriental rugs and other interesting topics. Visit http://www.oriental-rug-shopping.info for more information.

Discount Area Rugs will ease your financial burden

Area rugs are a type of covering on the floor, which covers only a certain area and not the entire floor. The interiors of a room can be drastically changed simply by putting wonderful looking area rugs. Discount area rugs which are sold by many carpet dealers are perfect for using in your home. The entire look and feel of your home depends to a large extent on the way you house has been made up. Home is that special place where one wants to relax and enjoy after working the entire day. Area rugs are wonderful things that can be used for enhancing the look of not only your room but also of your entire house.

Discount area rugs are sold by many carpet dealers and all that you need to do for making your house look pleasant is to choose the proper area rugs. Making a wise choice about buying area rug is important. It is very well known that there will be numerous carpet dealers operating in your city, and all you need to do is find out that dealer who sells the best carpets, tiles and area rugs. To cover the floor of your house, you can make use of carpets, tiles and area rugs. It is up to you decide what will best suit your house and room. You must make sure that your commercial outlet is done properly in terms of both interiors and flooring.

It is not only your home that needs flooring, your office or commercial outlet also needs proper flooring to attract customers. It is very important that you do up the flooring of your commercial place properly as this can have certain consequences on your business prospects. If you have to do the flooring of your office, the kind for you would be to use carpets. Area rugs can be used, but only in certain places and not the entire office. Using carpet for the flooring of your office has certain advantages and the best advantage is that the sound of footsteps can be masked and one can do their work in a peaceful atmosphere.

For commercial places like hotel and restaurants, you can make use of laminated tiles for the purpose of flooring. Well, discount area rungs can also be a good option for you, but again you cannot use them in your entire hotel or restaurant. You must make a very good choice of the laminated tiles which you want to use in your commercial place. Make sure that the color is in perfect coordination with the color pattern of the wall in the restaurant. You will just have to go to a carpet dealer and he will provide you with professional who will come to your place and measure for you the exact amount of tiles required for flooring.

Also the professionals can give an exact amount which will be needed for buying carpets, tiles or area rugs. And if you get discount area rug, then you must consider yourself as really fortunate. After all it is not everyday that one gets discount area rugs to decorate their home, office or commercial outlet.

About the Author
Stephen Robins loves doing up and designing house interiors. He has been involved with advising people in finding out and using the best carpets for decorating their house and workplaces. If you want more information about Commercial flooring,Residential Carpet,Discount Area Rugs,commercial flooring in New York visit http://www.citycarpet.com

Rugs with pedigree

You admired hip designer Nanette Lepore's peacock-patterned dresses, but they were so three years ago. Now you can resurrect the pattern for your floor.

Lepore has joined a growing list of fashion designers -- Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborne (with Nourison), Oscar de la Renta (with elson & co.), Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, Diane Von Furstenberg, Lulu Guinness (with The RUG Company) -- all translating their passion for fashion design to floor coverings.

Lepore recently introduced a bold-patterned area rug with her peacock design for the Doris Leslie Blau carpet gallery in New York. The gallery also in early March unveiled two nautically-inspired rugs designed by Tommy Hilfiger (one blue with white anchors, the other navy with a red chain-link pattern).

In a phone interview, Lepore said she was approached by the carpet folks and is happy she did the project, especially since she now has one of her rugs in her own living room.

"The way it transformed my living room with color and a bold pattern, it would be fun to do more of that," the designer said. In fact, she's considering designing another rug for her pool table area that the public may see in stores some day.

What do those in the world of interior design think about fashionistas stepping in?

"I believe good design is good design and a good designer is a good designer," said Thom Filicia, best known as the design expert on the television series "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy."

Filicia, who has also designed for celebrity clients including Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony through his New York firm, Thom Filicia, Inc., said the important thing in interior design is understanding people's lifestyles, something fashion designers do well.

"A good designer can transcend from the area they are focused on into other areas and do it very successfully," Filicia said.

But would he recommend consumers start buying area rugs based on what's in their wardrobes?

Filicia said he wouldn't go that far. Still, he has a new show on the Style Network called "Dress My Nest" in which he will use fashion as a springboard to help folks figure out interiors.

"I do think there's a relationship. Saying you want to match your house to your clothes is too literal but clothes do indicate your point of view, your aesthetic," he said.

"Young and hip or traditional or conservative, you can tell when you see someone," Filicia added. "And you get color from people's wardrobes."

Filicia will also soon launch a series of seminars in U.S. cities as spokesperson for Karastan carpets. His big advice: Designing from the floor up is a good start.

"When they (his clients) don't know where to begin I tell them to start from the rug, in terms of colors and what sets the tone whether classical or modern, or whatever."

And yes, he foresees having his own rug line (in addition to furniture and bedding), but not for a year or two.

Designer Lepore said what was appealing to her about designing rugs was that rug patterns have a longer shelf life.

"People don't change their homes as much as they change their closets," she said.

As for the trend of fashion designers stepping into rug design, she said, it brings "a fresh eye" and new brands that will create more interest.

Julie Rosenblum, brand manager for Nourison, the manufacturer of the Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborn carpets, agreed.

"In this day and age people associate certain looks and concepts with fashion designers," Rosenblum said. "It's reaffirming to the consumer that the product has a point of view and they understand that point of few."

Rosenblum said she suspects more fashion designers will introduce area rugs, and that's a good thing. "It brings rugs to the forefront. They (the consumer) may not know who the manufacturer is. What they know is there's a line by that designer. It takes the business to a whole new level."

www.dailyrecord.com

Persian carpets exhibition opens

The Persian carpets exhibition began at InterContinental Hotel on Monday with over 2,000 varieties on display.

This eight-day exhibition, organised by Persian Carpets LLC, showcases many types of carpets from many countries.

Oriental rugs and carpets are an important part of many homes’ décor and it is supposed to be a life-long investment, says Khalid Gul Aga, director of Persian Carpets LLC.

Persian carpets are also known as Oriental rugs and has become universally accepted as referring to all hand knotted or hand-woven carpets from the ‘East’ in the regions of Iran and Central Asia.

The most famous of them are from Iran while the rest of them are sourced from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Caucaus, Kashmir, Turkmenistan and parts of Central Asia. The biennial exhibition being held for the past 11 years has some carpets which are more than 100 years old. Most of them are silk on silk or wool and sink with prices ranging between RO80 and RO8,000.

Khalid says that Qum carpets are the most exquisite of all and are in high demand as these rugs are woven out of pure silk.

Buying these carpets is not as easy as it seems and you may require assistance to purchase these carpets.

There are new, old and antique rugs some having simple and elegant looks related to the down to earth tribal and nomads with strong character, while others are more refined and artistic with a high degree of knottage.

Some of the tribal carpets go by the names of Bakhtiar, Senneh, Qashgai, Bijar, Yallameh, Caucasian etc while the city carpets are mostly (80 per cent) named after Iranian cities and these are Tabriz, Naeen, Qum, Isfahan (popular), Hereke, etc. Besides the carpets, handcrafted gift items, shawls, wall hangings, kilim (flat woven carpets) are also on display at the exhibition.

According to Khalid, the prices of these rugs are below the real value as each rug may take up to one-and-a-half years to produce.

All the rugs are hand made in cottage industries spread across many countries.

Khalid says that he personally visits most of these countries to source out the rugs. Persian Carpets showroom is located on the first floor of Al Wadi Commercial Centre in Qurum.