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The Color Specification behind every color name in the shop — where each color begins and ends
Color Specification 1.1 · effective September 14, 2026 · CIELCh(ab), D65, 2° observer (ISO/CIE 11664-4); sRGB IEC 61966-2-1 input
Choose three colors and change their proportions. Watch the pattern shift, then see how the same rules used in the shop would name your palette.
Red
Main colors: the family that covers the most of the visible pile, plus a second family when it covers at least 60% as much as the first — and at least 20% of the pile. The first family names the rug in its title.
Accent colors: up to 3 further families that each cover at least 5% of the pile — the outlines, small motifs and details that catch the eye without carrying the rug.
Read all the naming rulesEvery carpet in the shop is described with one or two of fourteen color names. Names are only useful if they mean the same thing to you and to us, so this guide defines each one in numbers: a region of the CIELAB color space, the system textile laboratories use to measure color. Any color a camera can record falls into exactly one region, and the guide shows you where the borders run.
It also shows what the numbers cannot: how the light in your room, the screen you are reading on and the fibre of the rug itself change what you see. Use the disc to explore, the probe to test any color, and the lighting simulator to preview a color under your own lamps.
One slice of the color space at a time: hue runs around the disc, chroma — how far from grey — runs outward, and the slider sets the lightness. The lines are our boundaries; the pills name the regions. Hatched areas are colors your screen cannot display, shown as the nearest color it can.
Hatched: colors a standard sRGB screen cannot display, shown as the nearest it can.
Slide to see how names change as a color darkens or lightens.
A single color has exactly one name. A rug has many colors, so the second half of the specification says how they add up to the names on its page.
| Palette (share of the pile) | Main colors | Accent colors |
|---|---|---|
| A beige ground with red and blue motifs and green detailsBeige 45%Red 20%Blue 20%Green 15% | Beige | Red, Blue, and Green |
| A red rug whose blue and beige details are equal in sizeRed 60%Blue 20%Beige 20% | Red | Beige and Blue |
| A red and blue rug in equal measure, with beige and green detailsRed 35%Blue 35%Beige 15%Green 15% | Red and Blue | Beige and Green |
| A red rug with blue, beige and green detailsRed 70%Blue 12%Beige 10%Green 8% | Red | Blue, Beige, and Green |
| Red, blue and green in equal thirdsRed 34%Blue 33%Green 33% | Colorful | Red, Green, and Blue |
Each card gives the definition generated from the rules below — the same rules the probe and the disc use — followed by what the family covers in everyday words and which families it borders. Grey covers every grey, from pale grey and silver to charcoal, warm or cool, and colorful is a verdict about a rug, not a color.
Sand, tan, camel, khaki, oatmeal, wheat and champagne: light, warm colors with little chroma. Paler, quieter tones — ivory, off-white — are cream; a deep tan tips into brown.
Crimson, burgundy, maroon, rust, brick and terracotta. A faded rust or a brick red is still red; a dull, dark red-orange becomes brown.
Forest, olive, sage, mint, lime and emerald. Olive belongs here: a yellow that dark has lost its yellow identity.
Navy, royal, cobalt, denim, sky and slate. Navy is blue however dark, unless it is so dark and so muted that it reads black.
Orange, coral, apricot and burnt orange. A light, quiet orange is beige; a dark, dull one is brown; a saturated dark one is red.
Gold, mustard, saffron, lemon and goldenrod. Dark yellows become olive greens or browns; pale, quiet yellows become beige.
In filters, titles and search: Black
Very dark colors of any hue, and dark greys. Persian off-blacks — deep indigo, aubergine — are black by this rule, which is why a rug’s details and this guide say off-black; filters, titles and search keep black.
Every grey: pale grey, silver, taupe, greige, charcoal and steel.
Violet, lilac, mauve, plum, aubergine, magenta and indigo. The line to blue runs at 310°; the line to pink at 340°.
Saddle brown, coffee, chocolate, umber, ochre and copper: dark, warm colors that are neither saturated enough for red or orange nor light enough for beige.
Rose, salmon, hot pink, dusty rose and blush: the light and vivid magenta-reds. A pink that darkens becomes red or purple.
In filters, titles and search: Cream
Cream, ivory, white and the palest tints: the colors of undyed wool, which is what a cream rug means. Undyed wool is seldom pure white, so a rug’s details say off-white; filters, titles and search say cream.
Teal, turquoise, aqua and cyan — the whole blue-green family, from a deep teal to a pale aqua.
A rug with no dominant color: at least three families in near-equal measure. When its individual colors are also recorded as accents, the rug appears in the filters for those colors too.
At least three color families each covering 15% of the pile, with no family reaching 40% and no two together reaching 70%
A grey sofa is the easiest sofa to choose a rug for: grey is a cool neutral, so the rug decides the room’s temperature. Warm the room with beige, cream or a classic red — the direction most living rooms want, because the undertone of wool is already warm — or stay cool with blue or green and let texture carry the depth. Settle that one question, warm or cool, and the shortlist below almost writes itself.
Beige and cream warm a grey room at once and keep it calm — the safest pairing there is, and the hardest to get wrong.
A classic red Persian rug is the plain grey sofa’s counterweight: warmth, pattern and a focal point in one.
Blue stays inside grey’s own cool family — tone-on-tone harmony that reads as quiet; navy adds depth without adding heat.
Green keeps the scheme cool and brings something living into it — strongest next to light grey and pale wood.
A soft pink flatters light grey in particular: gentle contrast that does not break the calm.
If the rest of the room is plain, a colorful rug turns the sofa into the frame and itself into the picture.
Depth matters as much as hue. A light grey sofa can take a darker, patterned rug beneath it; next to dark anthracite, a lighter rug keeps that corner of the room from sinking. A grey rug with a grey sofa works only when the two greys clearly differ — tone on tone flattens a room faster than any color clash does. And a hand-knotted rug rarely carries one color alone: a red Persian field brings its own beige, blue and green along, which is exactly why it sits so naturally beside plain upholstery.
Every color name above links straight to the rugs we actually have in that color — and the palette studio at the top of this page shows any family next to your own floor and wall tones, so you can see the pairing instead of taking our word for it.
Color in a traditional hand-knotted rug usually sits in layers: the field, the border that frames it, the medallion’s ground where there is one, and the accent colors of the motifs. Once furniture stands on it, the rug’s place in the room decides which layer you see most — and which color should guide your choice.
Each strip walks across one boundary in equal steps, with the coordinate that changes under every swatch. The rule between two swatches marks the hand-over: the last of one name, the first of the next.
The rules are read from the top; the first that matches a color gives its name. The three curves make the table honest where a flat threshold would lie.
| # | Family | Condition | Captures |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Off-black | any hue, chroma C* below 30, and lightness L* below 20 | Very dark colors of any hue: the Persian off-blacks (deep indigo, aubergine), near-black browns. |
| 2 | Off-black | any hue, chroma C* below the neutral ceiling Cn(L*), and lightness L* below 30 | Dark greys. |
| 3 | Grey | any hue, chroma C* below the neutral ceiling Cn(L*), and lightness L* below 90 | Every grey, warm or cool: pale grey, silver, taupe, greige, charcoal. |
| 4 | Off-white | any hue and chroma C* below the neutral ceiling Cn(L*) | Light neutrals: cream, ivory, white, and the palest tints such as lavender. |
| 5 | Red | hue from 340° to 54°, chroma C* at least 30, and lightness L* below the warm ceiling Lw(h) | Red, crimson, maroon, burgundy, sienna, rust — a faded rust is still red. |
| 6 | Red | hue from 54° to 60°, chroma C* at least 60, and lightness L* below 58 | Terracotta and brick: saturated dark orange-hues read as rust. |
| 7 | Purple | hue from 340° to 360° and lightness L* below 52 | Dusky dark magentas: eggplant, plum. |
| 8 | Brown | hue from 0° to the yellow–green line Hyg(L*) and lightness L* below the warm ceiling Lw(h) | Every remaining dark warm color: saddle brown, coffee, umber, ochre. |
| 9 | Pink | hue from 340° to 30° | Light magenta-reds: pink, hot pink, rose, dusty rose. |
| 10 | Orange | hue from 30° to 42° and chroma C* at least 60 | Tomato and orange-red at high lightness. |
| 11 | Pink | hue from 30° to 42° | Salmon, light coral. |
| 12 | Beige | hue from 42° to the yellow–green line Hyg(L*) and chroma C* below 40 | Light, warm and quiet: khaki, tan, sand, camel, wheat, champagne, peach. |
| 13 | Orange | hue from 42° to 75° | Orange, coral, sandy brown. |
| 14 | Yellow | hue from 75° to the yellow–green line Hyg(L*) | Yellow, gold, mustard, goldenrod. |
| 15 | Green | hue from the yellow–green line Hyg(L*) to 170° | Green, olive, forest, sage, mint, lime. |
| 16 | Teal | hue from 170° to 218° | Teal, turquoise, aqua, cyan. |
| 17 | Blue | hue from 218° to 310° | Blue, navy, midnight, royal, sky, slate. |
| 18 | Purple | hue from 310° to 340° | Purple, violet, indigo, magenta, lilac, mauve. |
Color names are not flat boxes. How much chroma a grey tolerates, where yellow gives way to green, and how light a warm color must be before it turns pink, beige or orange all depend on lightness or hue — so three published curves take the place of three fixed numbers.
Every color on this page is defined for daylight — CIE illuminant D65, the white of a calibrated screen and of our studio. A lamp with a lower color temperature sends more red and less blue light at the rug, and the light the rug reflects shifts the same way. Choose a lamp to see the reference swatch of every family, and your own probed color, under it.
Each tile shows daylight on the left and the chosen lamp on the right.
We compute the shift with the Bradford chromatic-adaptation transform, the method color management uses: the color is converted to CIE XYZ, expressed as three cone-like responses, each response is scaled by the ratio between the lamp’s white and daylight white, and the result is converted back for your screen. “Camera” shows the full shift, as a photograph balanced for daylight would record it. Your eyes, however, re-balance to the room within minutes and cancel about nine tenths of it — a degree of adaptation of 0.9 for ordinary living-room brightness in the CIECAM16 model — and “Eyes” applies that correction. It is the honest prediction of what you will perceive: whites and beiges warm slightly, blues and teals lose a little life under a 2700 K bulb, reds gain some.
The simulation assumes a lamp of normal color rendering (CRI 80 or better) and ignores the individual spectrum of the lamp and of the dyes — two dyes that match under one light can part under another, an effect called metamerism. Read it as a tendency, not a measurement.
No two screens show a color the same way. Brightness, color range, a night-shift mode or a yellowed panel all move what you see, and none of it is under our control. The check below tells you whether your screen is hiding detail at the dark or light end.
Every step should be distinct from its neighbours. If the darkest or lightest steps merge, your screen is hiding detail at that end.
#000000#050505#0a0a0a#101010#ffffff#fafafa#f4f4f4#eeeeeeColor range your browser reports: not reported
If neighbouring greys merge at either end, the same detail is missing from our photographs on your screen: the darkest reds and blues of a rug will look blacker, the palest ivories whiter. This is a self-test, not a calibration — a color-managed browser on a calibrated display is the reference the specification assumes.
A rug is not a flat, matte swatch. Its colors come from its dyes and fibres; the material changes the color you see, and time slowly changes the color it is.
In a hand-knotted rug the wool is dyed as spun yarn, before knotting, with natural or synthetic dyes. Most of the classic colors of a Persian rug come from plants: madder root for reds and terracotta, indigo for blues (the blue forms as the dye oxidizes in the air), walnut husks for browns and pomegranate rind for yellows. A rug may be mostly naturally dyed and still carry a synthetic shade or two. Some colors need no dye at all. Sheep grow white, brown, grey and near-black fleece; spun undyed and blended, it gives a natural Gabbeh its palette. How dye and wool age is covered under Abrash and under Patina and fading, below.
Wool absorbs light and gives a deep, even color that barely changes with the angle of view. Silk reflects it: a silk rug, or silk highlights in a wool one, shifts from vivid to pale as you walk around it and can read as a different family from two ends of the room. Weavers reserve that silk for the finest details of the design, so the passages that flash and fade as you move are usually its most intricate work. Both are the same dye; the sheen is the difference.
A good wool rug stays richly colored for decades, because wool takes up dye readily and holds on to it. The yarn matters too: hand-spun wool is finer, softer and shinier than machine-spun, though even a lustrous wool changes far less than silk as you move around the rug. And no two fleeces carry quite the same natural oil and fat, so the same dye on different wools ages at slightly different speeds — a second root of abrash, alongside the dye batch (see Abrash, below).
Knotted pile leans one way — the nap. Looking against it you see the sides of the fibres and the color appears darker and richer; looking with it you see the tips and the same color appears lighter and cooler. Turning a rug by 180 degrees can change its apparent lightness by several units of L*. We name and photograph every rug viewed against the nap, its deeper side; lay a rug both ways at home before judging its color.
Hand-dyed wool is dyed in small batches, and no two batches match exactly. The result is abrash: gentle horizontal bands where one batch gives way to the next across a field of the same color. It is a signature of hand-knotted rugs and of natural dyes, not a defect — and the years tend to sharpen it, because each batch softens at its own speed. It is why a color on one of our rugs is a family, not a single value.
Antique and older pieces have lived with light. Sunlight softens dyes over decades — reds towards rose, blues towards grey-blue — and the change is uneven, deeper at the exposed end. It also grades down the pile: natural dyes mellow gently and evenly, while a sharply pale tip over a darker root betrays a synthetic dye — one of the cues experts use to date a rug to the late nineteenth century or later. We describe such rugs as they are today, and note the condition on the product page.
Every rug is photographed in our studio under daylight-balanced lighting of 5000–5600 K, white-balanced against a neutral grey card in the frame, looking into the pile, then checked by eye against the rug itself before publication. Color names are given by a person looking at the rug, not at the photograph, and follow this specification.
Cream is the palest family here, and white belongs to it. A cream or ivory ground is undyed wool, which is what “white rug” has always meant in the trade, so cream, ivory and white share one region of the specification; a warmer, darker tone — oatmeal, sand — is beige.
Because pure white and pure black hardly exist in rugs: the palest rugs are undyed wool, ivory or cream, and a black one is a very dark indigo or aubergine that reads black in ordinary light. Where you read a rug in detail — its specification rows and this guide — we say off-white and off-black; in the filters, titles and search results we say cream and black, because those are the words people look for and tick. Web addresses still say white for the palest family.
Three things move between our studio and your room: the color temperature of the light, your screen, and the angle at which you see the pile. Each is explained on this page, and the lighting simulator shows the first one. The color name, defined in daylight, does not change.
Slowly, and on a naturally dyed hand-knotted rug, mostly for the better. The colors soften and harmonize, the pattern sharpens as loose fibres wear away, and abrash often grows more distinct (see Abrash). What to avoid is patchy fading: years of direct sun fade whatever part of a rug it falls on, so draw the curtains while the sun is on the rug and turn it about every six months to keep any fading even. To tell gentle mellowing from a faded synthetic dye, see Patina and fading, above.
A rug in which no one or two colors dominate: at least three families in near-equal measure. It replaces the main colors on the product page; when its individual colors are also recorded as accents, the rug appears in the filters for those colors too.
Because that is how people describe rugs — “a red and blue rug” — and because the first name becomes the rug’s title. Everything else that catches the eye is an accent color, up to three of them.
No. On a hand-knotted rug the fringe is the warp, not the pile: the foundation itself, running on past the knots at both ends. So it shows the foundation’s fibre — cotton on most city and village rugs; wool on many tribal ones, where it may be braided or in several colors; silk on a few very fine pieces. Color names describe the face of the rug, never its fringe. Where the pile wears low, that same foundation shows through.
Blue, however dark — unless it is so dark and so muted that it falls under the neutral ceiling, in which case it is black and we say so on the product page, as we do for the deep indigo grounds of Persian rugs.
Not metallic ones. A pale, cool grey — what many people mean by silver — is one of the shades of our grey family, which runs from pale grey to charcoal and includes warm greys such as taupe and greige. The family used to be called silver here, which is why its web address still says silver. On our rugs, a sheen comes from the fibre — silk, or a lustrous grade of wool — not from the color.
The specification is written in CIELAB, the system those references are themselves measured in, so any reference can be located on the disc with the probe. We do not name rugs by Pantone or RAL: hand-dyed wool varies across a single rug (see abrash), so a single reference would be a false precision.
Yes. Ask us from the product page and we will send further photographs of the piece — under daylight and, if you wish, under a warm lamp — and describe its tones against this specification.
Only deliberately. Each version carries a number and an effective date at the top of this page, and every rug is described according to the version in force when it was catalogued. A change of a boundary is a new version, never a silent edit.
Color Specification 1.1 · effective September 14, 2026 · CIELCh(ab), D65, 2° observer (ISO/CIE 11664-4); sRGB IEC 61966-2-1 input
Colors are located in CIELAB (CIE 1976 L*a*b*, ISO/CIE 11664-4) under illuminant D65 for the 2° standard observer, converted from sRGB (IEC 61966-2-1) values, and expressed in cylindrical form as lightness L*, chroma C* and hue angle h. Boundaries are half-open intervals: a color exactly on a line belongs to the family on the higher side. The rules are applied in order and the first match wins, so every color has exactly one name.
The disc, the probe, the strips and the product pages all run the same code from the same table, and an automated test asserts that the table has not moved without a change of version. Colors beyond the sRGB gamut are shown at the highest chroma the screen can display, at the same lightness and hue, and are marked as such.
Rugs are described under the version in force when they were catalogued. Changing any number in this specification is a new version with a new effective date.