The primary aspect that characterizes Indian rugs is their singular, intense palette, based on yellow, pink, light blue, and green and best displayed in the typical bluish red known as lac red, used only for the grounds of fields. The designs, although indebted to the Persian style, are distinguished by their asymmetry and strong sense of the pictorial, with close attention to reality and detail.

The decoration shows a preference for naturalistic floral designs and figural scenes arranged on directional layouts, and the compositions are not elaborate; the most common layouts involve full-field distributions using rows or grids, in-and-out palmettes, and prayer rugs. Because of this naturalistic taste, Indian rugs lack characteristic decorative motifs, aside from those few borrowed from Persia or other production areas, such as Herat botch, and cloudbands.

The general character that informs these carpets is thus very rich, aristocratic, and refined, though without the ideal or abstract elegance common to the Persian manner, and seeming instead concrete and exuberant, with a sensibility that verges on the carnal.

All Indian rugs are made using the asymmetrical knot and stand apart technically because of their particularly dense knotting, well suited to rendering realistic figural details. The foundation is usually of cotton and the pile wool; in northern regions the soft and shiny wool of Kashmir is used. Sometimes silk is used both in the foundation and for the pile. The pile is usually trimmed low. The carpets are usually medium or large in size, reaching as much as 150 x 240 inches.