Most Anatolian rugs consist entirely of wool. Cotton, for warp and weft or for pure white, is very rarely used. The colors are generally bright and varied, though their range is not quite so wide or subtle as in Persian rugs. Red, blue, yellow, green, ivory, and white are the favourites, and the warp and weft threads are often dyed the predominating color of the pile. The Ghiordes or Turkish knot is employed. Both in early and nineteenth-century examples, the weft is not always taken across the entire warp after each row. Researchers cannot tell whether this happened because someone was working very fast, or because a new pattern was being tried out. The resultant triangle, and the diagonal joins to the neighbouring sections, can be clearly seen from the back.

A very common type of Anatolian rugs, generally of a more vigorous character, was made at Kula. Since the red has usually faded, the general impression is of blues and yellows. In these, there is a cross panel only above the mihrab, which is slightly flatter than in Ghiordes rugs. Spandrel, cross panel and border - generally of many narrow stripes (shobokli) - are usually covered with stars and little flowers.

The prayer rugs of Ladik, the Laodica of Antiquity, also go back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In early examples, the mihrab used to contain six or eight pillars. Later these were omitted, though the tripartite gable was retained for some time. The gables of later Ladik rugs are crow-stepped, often with elaborate lamps hanging down from the center. The cross panel at first above the mihrab and later below, is usually filled with rows of long-stemmed tulips. In earlier pieces, the spandrels contained broad leaves or a row of pointed arabesques reminiscent of battlements. These motifs gradually withered, to be replaced in the border by geometric panels, increasingly angular scrolls, and pointed arabesques, which later acquired comblike wings.

Anatolia, the Turkish name of Asia Minor, means "Land of the Rising Sun". The Anatolian rugs design is usually geometric, with rarely any trace of even the most stylized floral motifs. Right angles predominate, and borders often consist of one broad stripe, the subsidiary border stripes having been reduced to thin lines.

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In some districts of Anatolia, kilims or smooth-faced, pileless carpets assumed considerable importance. For a short while all smooth-surfaced carpets were called Karamanies, after the leading center of production and distribution in the East. A Kilim (the word means, literally, a woven fabric) is reversible, comparatively fine, and rather thin. In their country of origin kilims are also used to cover carts.

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