A handmade or handknotted carpet is made entirely by hand from start to finish. This ancient Tibetan carpet weaving technique uses iron and wooden framed vertical looms. Wraps are made on the loom and knots are made on the warps and then cut before moving on to subsequent knot. Arranging horizontal rows of wefts across the warps creates a pile effect and gives suitable thickness to the carpet.

The knots density is measured by knots per square inch (KPSI) basis. Carpets can be made in 45-200 knots depending on the design and requirement. More the knots more sophisticated the design.

Hand tufted carpet weaving on the other hand is a less cumbersome and time consuming. It involves a tufting gun with needles on its front. The gun used in tufting leads to faster production, hence lower cost.

There are other weaving techniques like Handloom weaving which uses a device called Loom that grips the wrap threads enabling the interweaving of the threads. Similarly, Flat weave techniques are used to make Kilims or durries. Nowadays, carpets are also made from electrically operated Power looms or Computerized tufting machines using mostly synthetic fibers like nylon, art silk or polypropylene. They make precise and complex patterns in short time but have no great appreciation value but offer cheap alternative to handwoven carpets.