An antique Donegal rug is a hand knotted wool carpet woven in County Donegal, in the northwest of Ireland, almost entirely between 1898 and 1930 for the Arts and Crafts market. It is the one rug type in our collection whose designs were commissioned from named architects and designers rather than copied from oriental models, and it is the only Irish weave we stock in any depth: of the 26 in stock antique rugs we record as Irish, 25 are titled Donegal.
This guide is built from our own stock rather than from the literature. Every number below was measured on 26 October 2026 across the 4,840 in stock antique rugs on this site, of which 26 are titled Donegal and 27 carry the Donegal Rugs type value. Where our own records contradict each other, which happens on four of the 27, the guide says so rather than picking the convenient side.
The short version. A Donegal is big, it is floral, it is coral more often than any other colour, it dates from around 1900, and its price tag is misleading. The median is 34,500 dollars against 9,775 for our other antiques, which looks like a 3.53 times premium. Matched against carpets of the same measured area it is 1.40 times. The single most useful thing in this guide is the method for telling those two numbers apart, because it applies to every large carpet you will ever price.
What makes a carpet a Donegal, and what does not
Alexander Morton opened a carpet factory at Killybegs in County Donegal in 1898, in a region with wool, water and very little paid work. The commercial idea was specific: instead of weaving oriental patterns for the British market, which is what nearly every other Western factory of the period did, Killybegs commissioned designs from the Arts and Crafts movement and wove them at architectural scale. That is the whole distinction, and it is visible in our data rather than only in the history books.
19 of our 26 carry the Arts and Crafts design value. That value appears on only 53 of our 4,840 antiques, so it is a genuinely scarce label, and Donegal holds 19 of those 53. Two more carry Art Nouveau, which only 10 of our in stock antiques carry at all. Against the rest of our stock the Arts and Crafts association runs 103 times the catalogue rate.
Being precise about this matters because it is the one place where the type is easy to oversell. Donegal is not the only Arts and Crafts weave we hold and it is not even the largest holder of that label: 21 of the 53 are Oushaks and 7 are Sultanabads, both of them Turkish and Persian weaves made for the same British and American taste at the same moment. What Donegal has that those do not is a factory, a date and a list of designers.
The designers, and why an attribution is not a signature
Four names recur in our records: C.F.A. Voysey, Gavin Morton, Alexander Morton and G.K. Robertson. Voysey appears in the copy of 7 of our 26 Donegals and in none of our other 4,814 antique rugs. Gavin Morton appears on 4 and nowhere else, Alexander Morton on 3 and nowhere else, Robertson on 1 and nowhere else. No other type we stock carries a named Western designer at all, which makes this unique in the collection.
It also makes it the single easiest thing in the rug trade to overstate, so here is the discipline. These carpets are not signed. Exactly one of our 26, a red squarish carpet at 16,500 dollars, carries a designer name in its actual title, and one more, the 134,000 dollar coral carpet that is the most expensive rug in the group, carries the Voysey reference only in its web address. Every one of these names is an attribution made on the evidence of the design, not a maker mark. When a seller tells you a Donegal is a Voysey, the right question is what the attribution rests on: a documented design in a company pattern book, a published comparison, or a resemblance. All three are legitimate answers and they are worth very different amounts of money.
The price tag and the value are two different measurements
This is the part worth reading even if you never buy an Irish carpet.
Our Donegals have a median price of 34,500 dollars. The other 4,814 in stock antiques have a median of 9,775. That is 3.53 times, and on its own it means almost nothing, because a Donegal covers a median 180 square feet of floor and the rest of our stock covers 59. You are comparing a dining room to a bedside.
The obvious correction is to divide by area. Our Donegals run 196 dollars a square foot and the rest of the catalogue runs 167, which would say the premium is a mild 1.18 times. That number is also wrong, and it is wrong in a way worth understanding, because price per square foot is not a flat yardstick across sizes. Measured across the 4,807 antiques for which we hold both dimensions, the median price per square foot runs:
- 269 dollars in the smallest tenth of the catalogue, under 12 square feet
- around 195 dollars from 12 to 42 square feet
- 161 dollars from 59 to 86 square feet
- 118 dollars from 86 to 105 square feet, the cheapest band
- 136 dollars from 130 to 188 square feet
- 159 dollars above 188 square feet
Small rugs cost far more per foot than large ones, because a scatter rug carries the same borders, the same setup and the same handling cost over a tenth of the area. So the catalogue wide figure of 167 dollars is set mostly by small rugs. Comparing a 180 square foot Irish carpet against it understates the premium, for the same reason that comparing its price tag against the catalogue median overstates it. Both headline numbers are size artifacts pointing in opposite directions.
The honest comparison is against antiques of closely matched measured area. Donegals between 139 and 201 square feet, the middle half of the group, run 196 dollars a square foot against 140 dollars for the 439 other antiques in the same size range. 1.40 times. That is the real premium: substantial, and nothing like 3.53.
Every matched cut, including the ones that argue against us
Area matched comparisons on 26 rugs give small samples, so here is every cut we ran with its sample size, rather than the flattering ones:
| Measured area | Donegals | Others | Price | Per square foot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 to 160 sq ft | 7 | 1,010 | 2.13x | 1.74x (215 vs 124 dollars) |
| 140 to 220 sq ft | 12 | 526 | 1.52x | 1.66x (230 vs 139 dollars) |
| 150 to 250 sq ft | 12 | 538 | 1.33x | 1.28x (178 vs 139 dollars) |
| 200 to 320 sq ft | 5 | 315 | 1.77x | 1.59x (238 vs 150 dollars) |
| 250 to 400 sq ft | 5 | 184 | 1.12x | 1.04x (186 vs 179 dollars) |
| over 250 sq ft | 5 | 224 | 1.00x | 1.02x (186 vs 184 dollars) |
The premium is present in all six cuts and it shrinks as the carpets get bigger, until above 250 square feet a Donegal costs what any other carpet of that size costs. Two readings are available and we are not going to pretend to choose between them on five rugs: either the Irish premium is a mid size phenomenon, or the very large end of any type is priced by the practical difficulty of selling a 300 square foot carpet at all. The 1.04 and 1.02 rows are published here because they cut against the simpler story.
A natural experiment that needs no statistics
There is one comparison on this site that requires no adjustment whatever. Our Aubussons have a median measured area of 178.7 square feet. Our Donegals have a median of 179.8. One square foot apart, 61 rugs against 26, so the two groups can simply be put side by side:
| Type | In stock | Median area | Median price | Per square foot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donegal | 26 | 180 sq ft | 34,500 dollars | 196 dollars |
| Aubusson | 61 | 179 sq ft | 25,000 dollars | 158 dollars |
1.24 times, on groups matched by accident rather than by arithmetic. If you are choosing between a big Irish carpet and a big French one, that is the number: an Irish Arts and Crafts carpet costs roughly a quarter more per foot of floor than a French flatwoven tapestry carpet of the same size. Our full Aubusson guide explains why a flat weave is cheaper to make.
Inside the type, size predicts nothing
Across our 26 the correlation between measured area and price per square foot is minus 0.07, which is no relationship at all, over a 6.4 times spread from 79 to 502 dollars a square foot. Condition, design and attribution move the money here, not scale.
The two extremes make the point. The dearest per foot is a 70,000 dollar floral medallion carpet at 124 by 162 inches, 502 dollars a square foot, closely followed by a 98,000 dollar red floral at 144 by 201 inches and 488 dollars. The cheapest is a 13,600 dollar coral carpet at 138 by 180 inches and 79 dollars a square foot, and that one is a flat weave whose own record places it in England rather than Ireland, discussed below. Remove it and the group median rises from 34,500 to 35,000 dollars and from 196 to 206 dollars a square foot, so none of the conclusions here depend on it.
Format: a Donegal does not come small
This is the most extreme format concentration in our Irish and British stock, and it rules the type in or out before any question of taste.
- Zero of 26 are under 20 square feet, against 17.8 percent of the rest of the catalogue
- One is under 40 square feet, against 38.2 percent, a rate of 0.10 times
- 88.5 percent are over 100 square feet, 2.50 times the catalogue rate
- 65.4 percent are over 150 square feet, 4.14 times
- 19.2 percent are over 250 square feet, 4.13 times
- Median long side 15.2 feet against 10.0 feet
In our size fields, 12 of 26 carry Large Oversized, which is 4.95 times the catalogue rate, and 12 carry Room Size. Among standard sizes the 16 by 21 foot and larger band runs 20.57 times the catalogue rate on 4 rugs, 12 by 15 runs 9.18 times on 6, 9 by 19 runs 7.41 times on 2, 12 by 18 2.36 times on 2, and 10 by 14 3.55 times on 5. Our 10 by 14 guide covers that band across every type.
The practical consequence: there are exactly two Donegals in our stock that will work in a small room. A 13,600 dollar medallion carpet at 67 by 93 inches is the only one under 50 square feet, and a 13,600 dollar ivory runner at 42 by 134 inches is the only narrow piece, which is also the only angora rug in the group against wool on the other 25. If you want a scatter rug or a hallway runner in the Arts and Crafts idiom, American hooked rugs are the place to look instead.
Colour: coral, not the greens and blues of the usual description
The published description of this type, including on our own archive page, reaches for the Irish landscape: earthy greens, deep blues, warm browns, muted neutrals. Measured against our other 4,814 antiques, one of those four holds and the other three run backwards or are absent.
- Coral, salmon and pink: 10 of 26, 38.5 percent against 9.2 percent, 4.18 times. The strongest colour signal in the type and the one the description omits
- Green: 4 of 26, 15.4 percent against 3.0 percent, 5.18 times. Holds, and strongly
- Red and rust: 5 of 26, 2.34 times
- Blue: 3 of 26, 11.5 percent against 23.3 percent, 0.50 times. Under represented, not characteristic
- Ivory and cream: 3 of 26, 0.40 times
- Muted neutrals, greys, beiges and camels: 3 of 26, 0.36 times
- Brown and earth tones: zero of 26, against 6.7 percent of our other antiques
So the honest sentence is that a Donegal is more likely to be coral than any other single colour, with green the distinctive second, and that the earthy, muted palette attributed to them is the opposite of what we actually hold. Four of the six most expensive carpets in the group are coral, including the 134,000 dollar oversized carpet, a 60,000 dollar carpet at 198 by 234 inches and a 68,000 dollar room size carpet at 150 by 176 inches. Green shows in a 75,000 dollar Art Nouveau carpet at 150 by 302 inches, a 34,000 dollar asparagus green medallion carpet and a 23,400 dollar open field carpet with a rose border.
Design: floral and allover, not geometric
The same description calls them geometric, with stylised tartans. Neither survives contact with the records.
Floral runs on 15 of 26, 57.7 percent against 49.0 percent, and allover on 19 of 26, 73.1 percent against 54.9 percent. Geometric runs on 5 of 26, 19.2 percent against 39.0 percent of our other antiques, which makes it under represented at 0.49 times, and central medallions likewise at 0.65 times. The characteristic Donegal field is a flowing plant pattern across the whole ground, or an open field with a strong decorative border, and 3 of the 26 carry the open field medallion value at 3.80 times the catalogue rate.
As for tartan: the word appears on zero of the 26 in any structured field, and zero times in any of their titles or descriptions. Plaid likewise zero. A tartan is a Scottish cloth pattern, and these are Irish Arts and Crafts carpets designed by English architects. It is a plausible sounding detail with nothing behind it, and it is the kind of claim worth testing whenever you read a rug description, including ours.
Where the geometric reading does hold is in a minority of strong, flat, architectural patterns, and those are worth seeing: an 68,000 dollar coral geometric carpet at 136 by 200 inches and an 52,500 dollar oversized allover geometric carpet at 176 by 254 inches are the clearest examples. Both also carry the Voysey attribution discussed above, which is consistent: Voysey designed flat pattern rather than shaded naturalism.
Construction: knotted pile, and the two records that say otherwise
A Donegal is a hand knotted pile carpet. 24 of our 26 carry that value, 25 of 26 are wool, and 25 of 26 carry the 0.5 pile thickness our catalogue uses as its default for pile rugs. Our archive copy for the type calls them hand woven, which is loose: Hand Woven is a distinct construction value in our own vocabulary and only one Donegal carries it.
The two exceptions are both record problems rather than different kinds of rug, and we would rather publish them than have you find them.
- 45509, a 13,600 dollar coral carpet at 138 by 180 inches, records Flat Weave, carries Origins England rather than Irish, says English Flat Weave in its own title and web address, and never mentions Ireland in its description. Its only type value is Donegal Rugs, so the fix is to add the right value rather than strip the one it has. It is the cheapest per square foot in the group and it is probably not an Irish Donegal at all
- 136359, a 23,400 dollar green open field carpet at 132 by 216 inches, records Hand Woven and calls itself a woven carpet in its title, on a type that is knotted by definition. One of those two fields is wrong and our data cannot tell you which
This is why the back of the carpet settles the question and the paperwork does not. A knotted pile rug shows rows of knot collars on the reverse and the pattern on the front face only. A flat weave shows the same pattern on both faces, reversed left to right, with no pile to part. Our guide to warps and wefts walks through the difference on the piece itself.
One thing we cannot tell you is how finely these are knotted. We hold no knot count for a single one of the 26, so any claim about density here would be invention, including the “dense weave and firm construction” our own archive page asserts. Six of our own descriptions use the words fine or firm, which is sales copy and not a measurement. If knot density matters to your decision, our guide to knots and KPSI explains what the number does and does not tell you, and the honest answer for Donegal is that fineness was never the point. These were architectural furnishings woven at scale.
Age: this is the Arts and Crafts window, not a claim to antiquity
13 of our 26 carry a circa 1900 date, 50.0 percent against 11.97 percent of our other antiques, 4.18 times. Two carry circa 1905, and those two are 2 of only 12 rugs so dated in the entire catalogue, 37 times the rate. Circa 1920 runs on 7 at 0.89 times, slightly below the catalogue, and circa 1930 on 4 at 1.10 times.
Not one is nineteenth century, and that is a fact about the factory rather than about our buying: Killybegs opened in 1898, so a nineteenth century Donegal can only mean 1898 or 1899. If someone offers you an early or mid nineteenth century Donegal carpet, the date is wrong or the carpet is not a Donegal. Our guide to antique, vintage and new explains how the hundred year line works, and in this type almost everything sits a decade or two over it.
Because the dating is tight, it also tells you something about dyes. A carpet woven in Ireland around 1900 was made after synthetic dyes were in general industrial use, and the Arts and Crafts movement had strong views about them. Our natural and synthetic dyes guide covers how to read the difference, and it is worth doing on a coral ground, which is where early synthetic reds show their age most visibly.
Shape: less varied than it looks, and one record that is simply wrong
A round and an oval in a group of 26 suggests an unusually shape varied type. Measured, it is the opposite: 21 of 26 carry Rectangle, so non rectangular runs 19.2 percent against 25.8 percent of our other antiques, 0.74 times. Donegal is slightly more rectangular than our average antique, not less.
The individual shape records need care, and one of them is flatly wrong.
- 47333, a 23,000 dollar carpet at 114 by 174 inches, carries Oval, consistent with its title
- 113107 is titled a round carpet and carries Round Rugs in its shape field, and it measures 204 by 237 inches. A round rug has one diameter. Two fields agree here and both are wrong, which is exactly why a measurement beats a label
- 113071 and 47127 carry Square Rugs at 124 by 138 and 159 by 168 inches, ratios of 1.11 and 1.06. Squarish is fair, square is not exact, and in a room that difference is a foot of floor
- 45444 carries Long and Narrow in its shape field, which is a size rather than a shape, and in this case the description is right: at 42 by 134 inches it is a genuine runner
Where Donegal sits among the European carpets we hold
Every figure in this table was measured on 26 October 2026 rather than carried over from an earlier page, because these numbers move as stock turns.
| Type | In stock | Median price | Median area | Per square foot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axminster (English) | 13 | 45,000 dollars | 119 sq ft | 377 dollars |
| Bessarabian | 26 | 14,300 dollars | 68 sq ft | 241 dollars |
| Savonnerie (French) | 26 | 46,250 dollars | 265 sq ft | 201 dollars |
| Donegal (Irish) | 26 | 34,500 dollars | 180 sq ft | 196 dollars |
| Needlepoint | 44 | 21,000 dollars | 98 sq ft | 194 dollars |
| Aubusson (French) | 61 | 25,000 dollars | 179 sq ft | 158 dollars |
| American hooked | 454 | 3,338 dollars | 21 sq ft | 154 dollars |
| Dhurrie (Indian) | 68 | 12,000 dollars | 146 sq ft | 83 dollars |
Read that table carefully, because the two columns rank differently. Savonnerie has the highest price tag and is fourth from the top per square foot once you account for being the largest. Axminster, the English neighbour nobody asks about, is nearly twice Donegal per foot of floor on a smaller carpet. Aubusson is the most famous name on the list and the second cheapest per foot. And the ranking by area matters more than any of them: per square foot generally falls as carpets get larger, so Axminster at 119 square feet and Savonnerie at 265 are not really competing on the same axis at all.
Against its two natural comparisons the reading is clean. Donegal is cheaper per foot than a Savonnerie while being 85 square feet smaller, and dearer per foot than an Aubusson of identical size. Our Bessarabian guide covers the cheapest headline and dearest per foot corner of this group, and the dhurrie guide the other extreme, a big carpet at a third of the money per foot.
A note on our own method, and a correction
This guide is one of a series in which we measure each rug type against our own stock. In October 2026 we started cross checking band comparisons with a figure for price per square foot across the whole group, which is a better control than a raw price comparison but, as the catalogue curve above shows, not a clean one. Our Khotan guide flagged the problem on its own page and declined to publish its whole group figure for exactly this reason.
Three later guides published one anyway, so the corrected numbers belong here. Our Turkmen guide reports 1.12 times per square foot; against same size stock it is 0.98 times, meaning Turkmen rugs are priced at the market rather than slightly above it. Our dhurrie guide reports 0.49 times; matched on area it is 0.64 times, still a real and large discount. Our Savonnerie guide reports 1.19 times; matched on area it is 1.31 times, so that one understated the premium. The area matched tables on all three pages are unaffected and remain the numbers to trust. We are correcting these rather than quietly restating them because the method is the part of this series worth anything, and it is also the part most likely to mislead.
The practical rule, for any carpet from any dealer: get the measurements, divide the price by the real area, and compare that figure against another carpet of the same area. Comparing it against a catalogue average or a showroom average will mislead you in a direction that depends entirely on whether the carpet is bigger or smaller than that average. Our Bakhtiari guide works through the same trap on a Persian village weave.
What to check before you buy an antique Donegal
- Turn it over. Rows of knot collars on the reverse, pattern on the front face only. Two of our own 26 records disagree with the type definition, so do not take the construction on trust from anyone, us included
- Measure it, in inches, yourself. We hold a carpet titled Round that is 204 by 237 inches and two called square that are not, and a carpet whose title says 12 feet 6 inches wide where the field records 12 feet 8. Size words in titles are the least reliable data in the trade
- Ask what a designer attribution rests on. No Donegal is signed. A pattern book reference, a published comparison and a resemblance are three very different things
- Ask about repair and reweaving. These are century old wool carpets that spent their lives on floors under furniture, at 180 square feet average. Restoration is normal and it belongs in the price
- Price it per square foot against a carpet of the same area, not against another Donegal and not against a catalogue average. Inside this type size tells you nothing about value, correlation minus 0.07
- Check the origin field as well as the title. One of our 26 is recorded in England, and an English Arts and Crafts carpet is a different object with a different market from an Irish one
- Decide about the colour first. Coral runs 4.18 times the catalogue rate here. If coral is not wanted, the type gets small quickly, and green is the main alternative at 4 of 26
Everything discussed here is in our Donegal collection, which sits inside the broader Irish rugs origin and the Arts and Crafts and European design groups. For the weaving history of the region rather than the buying side, see our longer piece on the rugs of Ireland, and for the English neighbour the rugs of England.
Every antique Donegal carpet we hold, with its price per square foot
All 27 were confirmed published and in stock on 26 October 2026. The price per square foot column is computed from the recorded inch dimensions rather than typed, so it is the figure to compare against any other carpet of similar area. The last row is the one whose title omits the word Donegal.
Frequently asked questions about antique Donegal rugs
What is an antique Donegal rug?
A Donegal is a hand knotted wool carpet made in County Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, almost all of them woven between about 1898 and 1930 for the Arts and Crafts market. Alexander Morton founded the Killybegs factory in 1898 and commissioned designs from British architects and designers rather than copying oriental patterns, which is what separates a Donegal from a European carpet made in the oriental taste. In our own stock 24 of 26 carry the Hand Knotted Pile construction value, 25 of 26 carry Origins Irish, and 19 of 26 carry the Arts and Crafts design value, which appears on only 0.71 percent of our other antiques.
How much does an antique Donegal rug cost?
Our 26 run from 12,400 dollars to 134,000 dollars with a median of 34,500, which is 3.53 times the 9,775 dollar median of our other antiques. Almost all of that gap is size rather than value: a Donegal covers 180 square feet against 59 for the rest of the stock. Measured per square foot against antiques of closely matched area it is 1.40 times, so the real premium is about 40 percent and not the 253 percent the price tags suggest. Expect roughly 140 to 240 dollars a square foot for a sound one.
Are Donegal rugs a good investment?
We do not give investment advice and no rug should be bought as a financial instrument. What we can say from our own records is that the price per square foot inside this type has no relationship to size at all, with a correlation of minus 0.07 across a 6.4 times spread, so condition, design quality and attribution are doing the work rather than scale. The two dearest per square foot in our stock are both florals at around 500 dollars a square foot, and the cheapest at 79 dollars is a flat weave that our own records place in England rather than Ireland.
Who designed Donegal carpets?
The Killybegs factory commissioned outside designers, and the names that recur are C.F.A. Voysey, Gavin Morton, Alexander Morton and G.K. Robertson. These are the only named Western designers attached to any rug type we hold: Voysey appears in the copy of 7 of our 26 Donegals and in none of our other 4,814 antique rugs. Treat every one of those names as an attribution rather than a signature. Exactly one of our 26 carries a designer name in its title and the carpets themselves are not signed, so the correct question to a seller is what the attribution rests on.
What colours are Donegal rugs?
Coral, and that surprises people who have read the usual description. 38.5 percent of ours carry the coral, salmon and pink colour value against 9.2 percent of our other antiques, a factor of 4.18. Green follows at 5.18 times and red and rust at 2.34 times. The colours commonly attributed to them run the other way in our data: blue is 0.50 times, ivory and cream 0.40 times, muted neutrals 0.36 times, and not one of the 26 carries a brown or earth tone value at all.
Are Donegal rugs geometric or floral?
Floral and allover, despite a widespread description to the contrary. 57.7 percent of ours carry the floral pattern value and 73.1 percent carry allover, while geometric runs 19.2 percent against 39.0 percent of our other antiques, so it is actually under represented at 0.49 times. Central medallions are also under represented at 0.65 times. The characteristic Donegal field is a flowing allover plant pattern or an open field with a strong border, which is the Arts and Crafts idiom rather than an oriental one.
What size are antique Donegal rugs?
Large, and they do not come small. Not one of our 26 is under 20 square feet, against 17.8 percent of the rest of the catalogue, and only one is under 40 square feet against 38.2 percent. 65.4 percent are over 150 square feet, which is 4.14 times the catalogue rate, and the median long side is 15.2 feet against 10.0. The 16 by 21 foot and larger band runs 20.57 times the catalogue rate and 12 by 15 runs 9.18 times. If you need a 4 by 6 or a hallway runner, this is the wrong type to shop.
How old is an antique Donegal rug?
In our stock it is a turn of the century object. Half of the 26 carry a circa 1900 date, which is 4.18 times the catalogue rate, and two carry circa 1905, which is 2 of only 12 such rugs in the whole catalogue. None is nineteenth century, because the Killybegs factory did not exist before 1898. Circa 1920 runs slightly below the catalogue rate at 0.89 times and circa 1930 is level. This is the Arts and Crafts window itself rather than a general claim to age.
Is a Donegal rug the same as an Axminster?
No, and the two are priced very differently. Axminster is an English type and Donegal an Irish one, and our records keep them entirely separate: 13 Axminsters on Origins England, 25 Donegals on Origins Irish, and no rug titled both. Measured today our Axminsters run 377 dollars a square foot against 196 for Donegal, which makes them the dearest per square foot of any European type we hold. They are also smaller, at a median 119 square feet against 180.
How do I check a Donegal rug before buying it?
Look at the back for rows of knot collars, because this is a knotted pile carpet and two of our own 26 records say otherwise when they should not. Measure it yourself rather than trusting a size word in the title: we have a carpet titled Round that measures 204 by 237 inches and is not round, and its shape field repeats the error. Ask what any designer attribution rests on. Ask about repair, since these are large wool carpets that have been on floors for more than a century. And compare the price per square foot against another carpet of the same measured area rather than against another Donegal.