Carpet or rug

Berber carpet is a loop-pile carpet laid wall to wall, usually made from olefin, nylon or a wool blend, and named for the flecked look of North Africa's Berber wool. A Berber rug is a wool rug knotted or woven by hand in the Amazigh (Berber) traditions of Morocco, made as one finished piece with a cut pile and its own edges.

The name

The carpet borrowed the word. Berber weavers in Morocco and across North Africa have made wool rugs by hand for generations, often in undyed wool that reads as a light ground with darker flecks. When carpet mills built a loop-pile broadloom with that speckled, oatmeal look, the name came with it.

In a flooring store, Berber means a loop pile with darker flecks on a light base. From a rug maker, it means a heritage of handmade wool rugs. Same name, different object.

Loop against knot

Berber carpet is tufted by machine: yarn is punched through a backing in continuous loops and locked in with a second backing. The loop is left uncut. That gives it a firm, pebbly surface that resists crushing, and it is why flooring retailers warn that a loop caught by a pet claw or a vacuum brush can pull out of the backing.

A hand-knotted rug has no backing at all. Weavers tie each tuft of wool around the warp threads, then clip the pile to its height. The surface is cut yarn ends standing upright, and the pattern is knotted through to the back rather than printed or tufted on.

Our catalog shows it. In the folded shot of Tamment, every tuft ends in an open, cut tip of wool, rust, ivory and mustard side by side, with no loop anywhere. That is why a knotted pile feels soft and deep under a bare foot rather than firm and pebbly.

Is it wool?

Berber carpet can be wool, but often is not. It is sold in olefin (polypropylene), nylon, wool and blends; olefin and nylon are the everyday, lower-cost choices, and wool sits at the top of the range. On a carpet sample, Berber names the look, not the fiber.

A Berber rug from Morocco is wool by definition. Ours are 100% natural wool, dyed in our workshop with natural dyes. The case for wool against synthetic fibers is in wool against washable rugs.

Where each works

Berber carpet is the right call in its own territory.

1. Whole-floor coverage on a budget. For soft, warm floor from wall to wall in a basement, a playroom or a rental, a loop-pile broadloom costs less per square foot than a handmade rug.
2. Heavy, even traffic. A level loop holds its shape in hallways, family rooms and offices where the same paths get walked all day.
3. Rooms without a finished floor. Over a plywood or concrete subfloor, carpet is the floor.
4. Quiet texture. The flecked surface hides tracked-in dust and never competes with the furniture.

A Berber rug earns its place elsewhere: on wood, tile or stone you want to keep seeing, under a table or a seating group where it defines a zone, and in any room where the rug carries the color and pattern, and it moves house with you.

Side by side

Care and cost

Berber carpet asks for a vacuum without an aggressive beater bar, quick work on spills, and care with oily soil on olefin, which holds on to it; the maker's cleaning code says which cleaners it tolerates. A wool rug is cleaned in place: suction, blotting with cool water, a wool specialist every few years. The routine is in wool rug care.

Carpet is bought by the square foot or yard, so the cost scales with the whole room, plus pad and installation. A knotted rug is priced as a piece: the wool and the hours at the loom, in the size the furniture needs rather than the size of the floor. On our price tables, smaller rugs cost more per square meter and larger ones less, and a custom size follows the same scale.

Where ours fit

Every Zarbish design is a Berber rug in the plain sense: hand-knotted wool from our workshop in the Middle Atlas. Two collections carry the Berber heritage most directly, in grids and tiles rather than the ivory and charcoal lattice of what a Beni Ourain rug is.

The checkered Berber rugs of Dama work in blocks. Tamment sets rounded ivory blocks in a checker on a rust field, edged in mustard with slate-blue marks where the corners meet, and holds its own on terracotta tile: the rust answers the floor and the ivory lifts it. Sfifa stacks blocks of rust, forest green, slate navy and dusty rose in columns on a cream field, for a room that wants order more than softness.

The tiled Berber rugs of Mozaic read as tile. Arsa lines up royal-blue squares, each framed in sage around a small pink diamond, on an ivory field scattered with rust and navy dots. On herringbone parquet it adds pattern and keeps the wood in view.

Every design comes as a rug, a round rug or a runner, in any size and pile: see all rugs.

The grid logic behind Dama and Mozaic, with how to place one, is in Reading the grid.

• Tamment, Dama collection. `/product/tamment-rust-ivory-moroccan-rug`
• Arsa, Mozaic collection. `/product/arsa-blue-sage-moroccan-rug`
• Sfifa, Dama collection. `/product/sfifa-rust-green-moroccan-rug`