Collection: Wool Rugs

Wool is the floor you notice with your feet before your eyes. Warm in a way no synthetic quite manages, quiet to walk on, and it holds colour with a depth you can see from the other side of the room.

Four out of five wool rugs here are made by hand, on a loom or with a tufting gun, by people who do nothing else. That is why this is the part of the collection we are proudest of.

We have been choosing rugs since 1907. Free EU delivery on every order, and in our showroom near Antwerp you can put your hand on the difference between a handwoven and a hand-tufted surface, which is usually the moment people decide.

What Wool Gives You

Three things, and you notice all three in the first week.

It springs back. Wool fibre has a natural crimp, so a rug that has carried a sofa for a year does not stay flattened. Move the furniture and the pile recovers. That one property is why a wool rug still looks like itself long after a synthetic one has gone tired and shiny along the walkways.

It shrugs off spills. The fibre carries lanolin, the same oil that keeps a sheep dry, so liquid sits on the surface for a moment instead of sinking straight in. Blot it and most things are gone. Nobody enjoys testing this, and everybody ends up grateful for it.

It is warm and it is quiet. Wool holds air, which makes a room feel warmer and sound softer. In a space with a hard floor and a lot of glass, a wool rug does more for the atmosphere than another lamp or another cushion ever will.

Handwoven or Hand-Tufted

This is the real choice, and it is about feel rather than quality. Both are made by hand and both are excellent.

A handwoven wool rug is made on a loom, with the wool interlaced into the structure itself, so there is no backing and no glue. The surface is lower, firmer and pleasingly irregular, and it changes as the light moves across it during the day. If you want a floor that looks woven rather than laid, this is yours.

A hand-tufted wool rug has its pile worked into a backing and secured, which allows a deeper, denser, more even surface. It is the softer of the two and the more immediate: you feel it the moment you step on. If comfort underfoot is the point, take this one.

Alongside them are machine-woven wool rugs with a very even surface that suit a room in constant use, and a small number of hand-knotted pieces made by the oldest method there is.

Plain, Tonal and Full of Texture

Nearly half the wool here carries no pattern at all, and that is not a shortage of choice. It is what people come to wool for.

A plain wool rug is never really plain. Wool takes dye unevenly by nature, so one colour arrives as a field of slightly different tones that shifts with the light through the day. That is the difference between a plain wool rug, which looks like something, and a plain synthetic rug, which looks like nothing.

Tonal and mottled surfaces take this further and are the easiest thing in the world to live with. They sit happily under any furniture, they hide the traffic of a family room, and they do not date.

And if you do want pattern, wool is where pattern looks best. A geometric, a floral or a sweeping abstract drawn in wool has depth in the pile as well as in the drawing, which is why the same design in a synthetic never quite lands.

Which Room, and How Much Pile

Wool suits every room in the house. The only thing that really changes is how much pile you want.

The living room is where most of these rugs go and where wool is at its most convincing: tough enough for daily life, soft enough to sit on the floor with a coffee. A medium pile is the sweet spot.

The bedroom is the one room to choose purely on feel. Deep wool pile first thing in the morning is one of the small reliable pleasures of a house, and a bedroom sees too little traffic to spoil it.

Under a dining table, go low. A flatwoven or short-pile wool rug lets chairs slide instead of catch and stays flat under the weight of a table. The same goes for a hallway or a kitchen, where a short, mottled wool surface is both the practical answer and the handsome one.

Wool belongs indoors. For a terrace or an open balcony you want a different fibre, and that lives in another part of the collection.

Made by Hand, and Often Made to Order

A large share of the wool here is woven or tufted for the customer rather than taken off a shelf.

That means you choose the colour and the size and the rug is made for your room. It takes longer than a rug in stock, and what arrives is the rug you pictured rather than the nearest available approximation. For most people who go that route once, it becomes the only way they buy a rug afterwards.

It is also the answer when a room refuses to fit a standard size, which happens more often than the size charts suggest.

Living With Wool

Three things worth knowing, and none of them is a drawback.

A new wool rug sheds a little. Loose fibres left from production work their way out over the first weeks and disappear with normal vacuuming. It is a sign of real wool rather than a fault, and it stops.

Vacuum on suction, without a rotating brush bar. Blot spills instead of rubbing them. A professional wool clean every few years keeps the colour where it belongs. That is the whole routine.

Wool works over underfloor heating, with attention to thickness. A short pile or a flatweave passes heat through easily. For a thicker wool rug, look for a thermal resistance under 1.5 to 2.5 tog, and leave some floor uncovered around the rug so the system can breathe.

Finding Your Size

Wool exists in every size we sell, from a rug beside a bed to twelve square metres under an open-plan seating group.

Measure the room before you fall for a colour, and when you are between two sizes take the larger one. That single rule prevents most of the disappointment there is in buying a rug.

And when the room falls between two sizes, have it made. A great deal of the wool collection is available made to measure in any width up to 400 cm and any length, which is the answer for a long narrow living room or a bedroom with an awkward corner.

Order online with free EU delivery, or come and see us in our rug shop and showroom in Willebroek, in the Antwerp region, easily accessible from Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen and Sint-Niklaas. Tell us the room and bring its measurements, and we will put three wool rugs in front of you that suit it.