A layout in which a motif or pattern is spread across the whole field instead of being organized around a central medallion. The motif can be flowers joined by vines, leaves and blossoms (sometimes with birds and animals), angular geometric shapes, or repeating units such as boteh, gul and herati; a barely noticeable center may remain. A geometric allover either repeats one shape or runs as a continuous pattern whose shapes vary, often with a different ground color inside each. With no strong midpoint, an allover rug sits comfortably anywhere in a room, including odd-shaped ones; in floral versions the flowers are drawn larger, on thicker branches, than in a floral medallion rug.
Popular, durable Persian city rugs from Sarouk, a town in central Iran about 50 km (31 miles) north of Arak, prominent from the 19th century and exported to Europe and America. A cotton foundation carries a medium-to-thick wool pile, at times with silk highlights, usually tied with the Persian knot (some older pieces use the Turkish knot) at medium-to-high density of up to about 320 knots per square inch (roughly 50 per cm²). Floral, medallion and allover designs, with some Herati, boteh and pictorial patterns, appear on beige, ivory, cream, navy or red fields, the red leaning toward orange or rust, usually with a thin secondary border. American Sarouks, woven mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, adapted designs and colors to U.S. taste, and many were re-dyed to a preferred rose red.