Rug Resizing
Reduce. Extend.
Preserve the pattern.
Moving houses? Fitting a new room? We cut down, add borders, and re-finish rugs without breaking the pattern’s symmetry. Hand work — always.
Starting price
From $75 per cut. Larger or multi-cut projects quoted after inspection.
Reduce a room-size rug; full cut-and-bind. Quoted on inspection.
Typical time on bench
Includes foundation reinforcement and hand-stitched new edges.
Door-to-door
Pickup, bench work, delivery. Free pickup across the Bay Area.
Extensions are quoted separately after inspection. See the full repair pricing table.
What is rug resizing?
A rug can be smaller than it started. Sometimes larger.
Resizing is the art of changing a hand-knotted rug’s dimensions without breaking the visual logic of its pattern. On a cut-down, the master weaver studies the medallion, border, and guard-stripe symmetry to find the cleanest lines to remove from each side. On an extension, we reweave new pile to match existing warp density and field colors — effectively adding more rug.
The most common reason is a move. A 12×15 in a San Francisco flat gets reduced to 10×13 for a Menlo Park dining room. A 9×12 Tabriz needs to become a 10×14 runner-pair for a remodeled hallway. Less commonly, water or moth damage forces a trim rather than a patch.
Resizing is one of the few repairs where the before and after are fundamentally different rugs. Done right, it looks original. Done wrong, the border is uneven and the medallion is off-center — and there is no undoing it. The work is priced by project because every rug is its own geometry problem.
Our process
Five steps to a new size.
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Assess
Measure, photograph, and trace the pattern. Study guard stripes and medallion for the best cut lines. Discuss final dimensions with you in writing.
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Match materials
Dye new wool to match the existing field — for extensions. For cut-downs, prepare wool selvedge and finishing thread for new edges.
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Execute
Hand-cut along the planned lines. Stabilize cut knots with hand-sewn reinforcement before the edge is finished. For extensions, reweave the new field on matched warps.
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Blend & finish
New selvedge cords are added. Overcasting or serging goes over them. Fringe is re-attached or a kilim end created if the cut runs across the short dimension.
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Quality review
A second master weaver confirms the pattern symmetry, edge matching, and dimension precision against the spec — within 1/4 inch.
Before & after
Pattern preserved. Size changed.
An oversized Kashan reduced by 18″ on each long side — medallion perfectly centered.
What we work on
Resizing by rug type.
Insurance & estimates
Free estimates. Design-trade invoicing.
Resizing is almost always a design decision rather than an insurance claim, but when a resize follows water or fire damage we bill carriers directly. For trade clients we offer transparent, per-project estimates with full written scope-of-work for client approval.
Service areas
Free pickup & delivery across the Bay Area.
Resizing FAQ
Common questions.
Will the pattern look off-center after a resize?
Not if the resize is planned around the pattern’s symmetry. We always take an exact cut line to run through a guard-stripe transition, not through the medallion or a significant motif. Photos of our proposed cut are sent for your approval before any work begins.
Can you make a rug larger?
Yes. An extension is a knot-by-knot reweave onto matched warp threads, using wool dyed to the existing field. It is the most expensive kind of resize because the new section must match the original exactly.
Will the resize affect the rug’s value?
Done by a master weaver, a well-planned resize has a small impact on a working collector’s rug and little impact on a decorative piece. A museum-grade antique is a different story — in that case we usually recommend against resizing.
How precisely can you cut?
We guarantee final dimensions within 1/4 inch of the target spec. Hand-cuts on knotted rugs always have slight variance along the edge; machine-level precision isn’t the right goal for handwoven textiles.
Can you make a rug into a runner?
Yes — this is a common conversion. We cut lengthwise along the border with a hand-finished new long edge, or create two runners from a single large rug.
Send us a photo
Bring it in or send a photo for a free estimate.
Current size, target size, and a photo is all we need for a written estimate within 24 hours.