When you place an order, the studio confirms it within two working days and the weaving begins. Every rug is hand-knotted, so lead times run from four to fourteen months. You can change your mind at any point before the warp is strung. After that, the rug is yours.

Every rug ships insured, on a sixty-night home trial. If it isn't right, we'll take it back, re-bind it, or refund you in full. We stand behind every piece for twenty-five years against any defect of craft.

An order can be placed in three ways. Whichever you choose, the studio will confirm in writing before any thread is dyed.

• From the shop — choose a piece, a size, and a colourway. The studio writes back within two working days with a confirmed start date.
• A bespoke commission — send a sketch, a photograph, or a description. Two rounds of design revisions are included.
• By appointment — at the studio in Bhadohi, or at one of our European viewing rooms.

An order is only legally binding once you have confirmed the studio's written quotation and paid the deposit (typically 30%). Until that moment, either side can walk away without obligation.

Prices on the site are in Euros and include the cost of materials, weaving, finishing, and a fair wage for every hand that touches the rug.

• Deposit — 30% of the agreed price, on confirmation of the order. Begins the weaving.
• Mid-payment — 40% at the half-way point of weaving, with photographs from the loom.
• Balance — 30% before the rug leaves the studio, after final wash and inspection.
• Currency — Euros (EUR) by default. GBP, USD, INR on request.
• Taxes & duties — EU and UK orders are duty-paid. Other countries — duties may apply on import.

We accept bank transfer, Stripe, and (for larger pieces) part-payment in three to six instalments at no interest. Full card details never reach the studio.

A hand-knotted rug takes time. Typical lead times, from confirmed order to delivery:

• Small (2.6 × 8) — 4 to 5 months
• Medium (8 × 10) — 6 to 8 months
• Large (9 × 12) — 9 to 11 months
• Oversized (10 × 14) — 12 to 14 months
• Bespoke / fine archive — case by case, up to 18 months

All shipping is fully insured and uses specialist hand-knotted-rug handlers. EU and UK delivery is door-to-door, white-glove, climate-controlled. We do not ship by air — wool and the sea have always agreed.

Every rug arrives with a sixty-night home trial. Walk on it, sit on it, live with it. If it isn't right:

• Within 30 days — full refund, return shipping at our cost.
• Within 60 days — full refund, return shipping shared.
• After 60 days — re-binding, re-dyeing, or studio credit at face value.

The trial does not apply to bespoke commissions designed for your room — though we will always work with you to make it right.

A bespoke rug is a particular thing — designed for one floor, one room, one set of windows. The terms are slightly different.

• Design fee — €450, deductible from the final price if you proceed.
• Revisions — two rounds of design adjustments are included; further rounds at €120 each.
• Approval — once you sign off on the 1:1 cartoon and dye lot, the rug is committed to the loom.
• Cancellation — free until cartoon approval. After that, the deposit is non-refundable.
• Trial — bespoke pieces are not eligible for the 60-night trial; we work with you on adjustments instead.

The studio stands behind every rug for twenty-five years against any defect of craft — including the knot, the warp, the dye, and the finish. Normal wear, sun-fade, and the patina of footfall are not defects; they are how a hand-knotted rug ages well.

• Cleaning — Send the rug back to the studio for a professional wet wash every 3–5 years. We cover wash; you cover shipping.
• Re-binding — Free for the first 25 years against any binding or corner failure.
• Re-dyeing — At cost. Vegetable dye does not run, but we can match a faded section if asked.
• Loss / damage — Use the insurance from your shipping carrier or home policy. The studio can advise on assessment.

The studio's patterns, cartoons, photography, and writing are protected by copyright — registered in India and the European Union.

• You may photograph your own rug, post it to social media, and reference TRC as the maker.
• You may not reproduce the patterns commercially, screen-print them, or sell derivative works.
• Bespoke designs — the rights to a bespoke cartoon are shared. You hold the rights to that piece for your room; the studio retains the right to weave it again, with your written consent.

The studio's total liability for any one piece is capped at the price you paid for it. We do not exclude liability for death, personal injury, or fraud — none of which a rug should ever cause.

Hand-knotted rugs depend on the natural world — monsoons, dye crops, the health of a weaver, the river. If something genuinely beyond our control delays a piece, we will tell you within seven days, share photographs, and offer the choice to wait, switch piece, or cancel with a full refund of your deposit.

These terms are governed by the law of India for orders placed from outside the European Union, and by the law of the customer's EU member state for orders placed within. Either party may bring proceedings in the courts of either jurisdiction.

Before that, we much prefer a phone call. Write to studio@therugchalet.com and we will pick up.

We collect what we need to take an order, write back to your enquiry, ship a rug, and — if you've asked us to — send you the monthly journal. Nothing else. We do not sell your data, ever, to anyone, for any reason.

You can ask us, at any time, to show you everything we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it. We will do this within thirty days at no charge. Write to privacy@therugchalet.com.

We try to collect the minimum we need to do the work. In practice this is:

• Identity — your name, the form of address you'd like us to use.
• Contact — email, telephone (optional), postal address for shipping.
• The room — sizes, photographs or sketches you choose to share, design notes.
• Order history — rugs purchased, dates, lot numbers, repair history.
• Payment — handled by our payment processor; we never see or store full card details.
• Site behaviour — anonymised page views and approximate location, used to improve the site.

We use the information you give us only for the purposes you might reasonably expect:

• To fulfil an order — design, weave, finish, and ship a rug to you.
• To answer a note — reply to questions about pieces, sizing, or shipping.
• To send the journal — only if you've ticked the box. One letter, once a month.
• To improve the workshop — anonymised analytics about which pages people find useful.
• To meet the law — tax, customs, anti-fraud, and similar obligations.

• Enquiries — 24 months from your last note, unless you ask us to delete earlier.
• Order records — 10 years from the date of order — required for tax, warranty, and repair traceability.
• Newsletter — Until you unsubscribe. There is a one-click link at the foot of every letter.
• Analytics — 26 months, anonymised, in aggregated form.
• Backups — Encrypted off-site backups are retained for 12 months after deletion, then purged.

We use a small number of strictly necessary cookies for site function (cart, language, viewing-room bookings) and, with your consent, a single privacy-respecting analytics cookie. We do not embed third-party trackers from social platforms.

• Strictly necessary — always on. Required for the site to work at all.
• Analytics — only if you accept. Counts visits, no personal profiling.
• Marketing — we do not use marketing cookies. There are none to accept.

You can revisit your choice at any time from the cookie panel in the footer.

A handful of partners help us run the studio. Each is bound by contract to the same standards we hold ourselves to. We share only what they need, never the whole record.

• Payments — Stripe Payments Ireland Ltd — to process card and bank transfers.
• Shipping — DHL Express & specialist art handlers — to deliver the rug.
• Email — Postmark — for transactional email (order confirmations, replies).
• Newsletter — Buttondown — for the monthly journal, when you've opted in.
• Hosting — Fastly & Hetzner — EU data centres, encrypted at rest and in transit.

Wherever you live, you have the following rights. Under GDPR (Europe) and the DPDP Act (India), they're written into law; we extend them globally.

• Access — ask for a copy of everything we hold about you.
• Rectify — ask us to correct anything inaccurate.
• Erasure — ask us to delete your record (with limited exceptions for tax/legal obligations).
• Portability — receive your data in a common, machine-readable format.
• Object — withdraw consent for the newsletter, analytics, or any optional processing.
• Complain — to a supervisory authority in your country if you feel we've fallen short.

We respond within thirty days at no charge.

The studio's data protection lead reads every privacy request personally. Write to:

• Email — privacy@therugchalet.com
• Post — The Rug Chalet · Data Protection · Mahmoodpur Road · Bhadohi 221401 · Uttar Pradesh · India
• EU representative — To be appointed · MMXXVI

If you remain unhappy, you may complain to your national supervisory authority — for example, the ICO in the United Kingdom or the Data Protection Authority in your EU member state.