With the colder weather fast approaching our thoughts are moving away from the great outdoors and more towards cosy days indoors. A rug will warm up the floor of your room, give it an additional feature and help keep your feet toasty warm. Here are some tips for choosing the right rug for your room.
Think about the room's function
For obvious reasons, you don't want a nice plain cream rug right by the main entrance to your house! The hallway and the kitchen are high traffic areas so a rug produced from a more hard-wearing material is the only real option. If the room does have a busy footfall you will most likely want a rug with a low pile so it doesn't show irritating footprints in between cleans. Also, consider the colour you will be buying, a darker colour would definitely be best or one with some patterning. Reclaimed wood furniture and cream rugs work so well together but it does have to be in the right room of the house like a dining room or the living room, it's also a natural choice for bedroom rugs. You can also place a rug to protect your carpet in certain areas - it's way cheaper to replace small rugs than large areas of expensive carpet.
Get the size right
Large living room rugs should fill a room and finish 30-40 cms off from the wall. One of the purposes of a smaller rug is to bring the furniture in your room together so try to avoid the 'floating rug' look. Try to get one slightly bigger than the space you want to fill, it should be just touching - or placed under your furniture. Rugs can also be used to create "zones" in an open living space, one to identify the dining area and the living space or to identify a reading corner in your living room and so on.
Think about what shape works best
In the hallway a long rug is most likely needed - but you could lay two smaller ones running down the hallway. This would probably be cheaper than getting a long runner and there's also the option, rather than two exactly the same, that you could get two that complement each other to add a bit of style to the entrance to your home. In living rooms, think also about layering rugs, so they overlap slightly, to give more texture and add an additional feature to your room.
Make the most of colour, patterns and style
We love to see a red rug in a neutral coloured living room it will add a lovely warmth to the room as well as being an eye-catching centerpiece. You can see below how a Louis de Poortere gold rug ties in statement furniture and feature lighting and really helps make the most of the sun flowing into a south-facing room.
