Sanganer vs Bagru
Two towns, two traditions.
Almost all of our cloth is printed in one of two places, both within an hour of Jaipur: the town of Sanganer and the village of Bagru. People often use “Jaipur block print” as if it were one thing. It isn't. Sanganer and Bagru have different histories, different colours, and different techniques — and once you can tell them apart, you see it in every piece. This page is how to tell them apart.
Sanganer.
Sanganer is the older of the two — a town just south of Jaipur where block printing has been practised continuously for more than four hundred years. Sanganeri printing is known for being fine, dense, and delicate. The motifs are small and intricate, the colours soft, the backgrounds usually white or cream. Pale indigo, faded madder, fine floral repeats — this is the Sanganeri palette.
There is a practical reason the printing here is so fine: the water. Sanganer sits on alkaline, mineral-rich groundwater that suits the dye-setting process for delicate work, which is part of why the tradition of fine printing took root here specifically. Most of our bedding and our finer cottons are printed in Sanganer.
Recognise Sanganer by: fine detail, soft colours, white or cream grounds, small repeating motifs, an overall sense of restraint.
Bagru.
Bagru is smaller, drier, and more rural — a village about thirty kilometres west of Jaipur. Bagru printing is bolder and earthier: deep indigos, strong madder reds, contrasting blacks, often on a natural beige rather than a bleached white ground. Where Sanganer is delicate, Bagru is grounded and graphic.
Bagru is also home to a distinctive technique called dabu — mud-resist printing. A paste of clay, gum, and chalk is printed onto the cloth in a pattern and left to dry. When the cloth is then dyed, the paste resists the dye, so when it is washed off, the original cotton shows through where the paste was. It is slow, physical, and unmistakable once you know it. Most of our two-tone and multi-colour pieces, and anything with that characteristic resist look, come from Bagru.
Recognise Bagru by: bolder colours, natural beige grounds, larger and more graphic motifs, the dabu mud-resist look, an overall sense of earthiness.
Which is better?
Neither. They are different traditions for different cloth, and we use both deliberately. If you want something fine, pale, and quiet — a delicate floral bedsheet, a soft Sanganeri cotton — that is Sanganer. If you want something bolder and more graphic — a deep indigo, a strong two-colour print, a dabu pattern — that is Bagru. Most homes end up with some of each.
On every product page, where we know it, we tell you which tradition a piece comes from. Now you know what the difference means.