Handmade Rug Prices in Pakistan, by Size

A hand-knotted rug in Pakistan is priced by the square foot. At Loomish the rate runs from Rs 4,000 a square foot for a three-ply Bokhara to Rs 10,000 for a Suzani, and the price of any piece is simply its area multiplied by its rate: a 5 by 8 foot Bokhara is forty square feet, and forty square feet at Rs 4,000 is Rs 160,000.

In Lahore a rug has always been sold by the foot. The only question is whether anyone tells you the rate.

Why rugs in Pakistan are priced by the square foot

Walk through any carpet market in Lahore or Karachi and the conversation turns to the rate within a minute. It is the convention of the trade here, and a sensible one: a hand-knotted rug is made knot by knot across its whole surface, so its cost follows its area far more closely than it follows its name, its age, or the adjective attached to it.

The difficulty is that the rate is usually spoken rather than written, varies with who is asking, and disappears the moment a total is quoted. A rug offered at a round number tells you nothing you can compare. The same rug described as so many rupees a foot tells you everything, because you can carry that figure to the next shop and ask the same question there.

So here is ours, written down, the same for everyone who reads it.

The rates, family by family

The spread is not arbitrary. Bokhara sits lowest because it is the house's own specialism and is held in depth: the drawing is a repeated gul, and the rhythm of the work is settled. Kazak, Ziegler and Agra ask for larger drawing and closer attention to colour. Mamluk is constructed with compass and straight edge and forgives nothing. Suzani, drawn from embroidered textiles, carries the highest rate the house sets, and one look at the field explains it.

What each common size costs

Multiply the size by the rate and round to the nearest five hundred rupees. That is the whole method, and it produces this:

Two honest qualifications. Hand-knotted rugs are almost never an exact size, so the price of a real piece follows its measured area rather than the rounded feet in its name. And not every family exists in every size. Bokhara is held in depth across most of them, which is why it is the only family the runner row applies to; the single-piece families exist in whatever sizes their pieces were woven, and the table shows what one would cost, not a promise that one is waiting.

The arithmetic, on real pieces

Every figure above can be checked against the floor. A Bokhara Gul at 2.6 by 4 feet is Rs 41,000. A Bokhara Tekke at 5.4 by 8.1 feet is Rs 176,500, and the Tekke at 8.2 by 10.3 feet is Rs 338,000 — both priced at Rs 4,000 a foot on their measured size, which is taken in centimetres and is why the arithmetic on the rounded feet in a title can drift by a few rupees. The longest Gul runner online, 2.6 by 12.6 feet, is Rs 128,500.

Beyond Bokhara, a Kazak Monolith at 5.6 by 7.8 feet is Rs 288,000. A Ziegler Tracery at 8 by 10.3 feet is Rs 544,000. A Mamluk at 5.8 by 8.5 feet is Rs 393,000. The Suzani at 7.9 by 10.2 feet, the dearest rate in the house, is Rs 807,000.

What moves a rug's price in Pakistan

How it was made. This matters more than anything else, and it is where most confusion in the market begins. A hand-knotted rug, a hand-tufted rug and a machine-made rug can hang side by side in the same shop under the same word, and their prices belong to different worlds. A tufted rug is made in days with a tufting gun and glued to a cloth backing; a machine-made one is woven on a power loom in hours. Neither is a lesser version of a hand-knotted rug. They are different objects, and a rate per foot only means something when you know which one you are being quoted. Turn it over and the answer is usually on the back.

The yarn. Three-ply means three strands spun together before a knot is tied. It builds a denser, heavier pile that keeps its depth instead of flattening, and it costs more than two-ply for the same reason it lasts longer. Our Bokhara is knotted in three-ply New Zealand wool.

The drawing. A repeating field is steadier work than a free floral or a constructed geometry of the same density. That is the difference between the first line of the rate table and the last.

The size. Setting up a loom, preparing the warp and finishing the ends cost roughly the same on a small rug as on a large one, so across the wider trade a larger rug tends to cost less per foot. The longer version of that argument is worth reading before any large purchase.

What the price includes

Delivery within Pakistan is free. A piece held in Lahore is dispatched within two to four working days of the order being confirmed, travels by courier with tracking, and the tracking number reaches you the moment it moves. If a piece is not right, you have fourteen days from delivery to tell us; the returns policy sets out exactly how that works.

The price is in rupees and it is the same figure for every visitor. That is the point of writing it down. Trade, project and quantity orders are a different conversation, quoted against the brief; the rates here are the price of a single piece.

Buying from outside Pakistan

The rupee price is the same wherever you read it from. Delivery abroad is arranged individually, because a rolled rug is billed on its volume rather than its weight and a fixed rate would be wrong for almost everyone; the house quotes each one, door to door, before anything is committed. The shipping policy explains the reasoning, and it is worth the two minutes.

Before you pay for any rug

Ask for the measured size, not the nominal one. Ask for the rate, and divide the price yourself to confirm it. Ask to see the back. Ask for a photograph in daylight and another in the evening, because colour in a showroom and colour in your room are different conversations. None of these questions is difficult, and any house worth buying from will be glad to answer all of them.

Then measure the room. A rug priced honestly at the wrong size is still the wrong rug, and the size guide will settle that before the money does.