Silk or Art Silk?

This is horrible to say, but whenever someone says they have a Silk rug I doubt that fact. Silk area rugs are few and far between. Most of the time it is a faux Silk or Art Silk.

Here are what the fake silk rugs can be made with:

• Art Silk (ARTificial)
• Faux Silk
• Mercerized Cotton
• Rayon or Viscose
• Man made Silk

Whenever you see a label that says man made silk it is not real silk. Only Silk worms can make Silk. Plus Silk rugs usually do not have a label on them.

With a little bit of knowledge you can avoid paying too much for a Fake Silk area rug.

True Silk rugs also do not fade like this one here. The front is gray and the back is black. A sure sign that this is not Silk. This rug is very soft and when new was very shiny.

Manufacturers are very good at making a rug look like silk, it is only the bad dealer that sell them as silk.



The best way of telling a real from fake silk rug is to look at the fringes, but you need to look very closely. It is hard to see in the photo, but the white flat part of the fringes is folded over.

On a real Silk rug this part is flat and comes out from the bottom of the rug. The fringes on a real Silk rug are the foundation of the rug and are always silk.

It is little details like this that as a buyer you need to look for.

On this rug the flat part is cotton and then silk was pulled through to make the fringes.

I caught it because the colour and texture of the cotton and silk are slightly different.

The fringes (tassels) are silk, so if you only look at the long part of the fringes you would be sold that this was a true silk rug. That is until it started to rapidly fade or someone mentioned to you that it was not real silk.

Again it is small details to look for. There is no way of telling if this rug was made to be sold as a real silk rug, but if a crooked dealer wanted to, this is a good rug to sell as "real Silk".

True Silk area rugs are uncommon, we don't see very many here at Luv-A-Rug. When we do get in a silk rug for cleaning they are amazing to see. The workmanship that goes into them is unreal, so many knots per square inch and the details are amazingly fine. For me real silk rugs should never be walked on. They should be used as wall art.

Thanks for reading, RugloverMary