Poona sarees are usually fine cotton or silk sarees in a solid colour with a contrasting border. The sarees may or may not have zari and, if they're cotton, they can cost anything from 200 INR to about 4500 INR (as of 2015). The more expensive sarees are often white or off-white with a zari-filled border.The colours used include green, pink, mauve, beige, orange, blue, grey and black although the combinations of colours are not entirely random. Blue and black, for example, a combination often seen in sarees from East India, is apparently never used in Poona sarees – I’m basing this on being told by several shops which sell Poona sarees in its old city that this particular combination is not used. (I’m enamoured of the combination myself, and specifically went looking for a black Pune saree with a copper sulphate border on my last saree trawling trip to the old city.)
Apart from a solid body, the sarees may also have checks in the main body, often of the ‘baby checks’ kind with small coloured squares in lime yellow and white or, alternatively, in white and the colour of the border.
Although the border, either topped with sawteeth or plain, usually has one dominant colour which contrasts with the colour of the main body of the saree (unless it’s the border of a checked saree and uses one of the colours of the checks), a close look often reveals that there are two or more colours in the border – the second colour of the border may be a colour which contrasts with the border or the colour of the main body, and is used to demarcate different parts of the border, provide a background for the motifs or, possibly, to separate repeats of the motifs in the border. These motifs may be anything from rudraksh to birds or flowers.
Some designs often change or evolve, and contemporary Poona sarees may be embroidered although embroidery is not part of the traditional repertoire of these sarees.