Selecting Your Area Rug

Decorating your home starts from the ground up with an area rug. Proper rug choice can bring fresh excitement to your rooms and can impart comfort and warmth as well as tie together various elements of your architecture, furnishings and accessories.

Your rug choice can also allow you to express your unique style and good taste. Traditional, contemporary, transitional, “fun” and children’s designs are among the many options. The entire range of shapes, colors, materials and designs is available to suit your preferences. Quality rugs are available in nearly every price range.

Planning your purchase

• First, visualize the “look” that you want to achieve. Decide if you want an uncluttered and single-tone room or one that is rich with color and textures. Evaluate how the room is to be used and under what light conditions it will be used. For high-traffic areas such as hallways and foyers, consider using a durable, patterned rug.
  
• If you start with a bare room, choose a rug and then paint or paper the walls in colors found in the rug. If you plan to incorporate a favorite painting or piece of furniture, pick up key colors from those pieces. Elements of an area rug’s design can be further incorporated into the overall design scheme. Patterns can be mixed if they are coordinated by color. For example, if a rug has a floral pattern try adding framed prints, pillows or flowers in similar colors.
  
• Choosing the right size rug for your room and function may be a compromise, based on standard area rug sizes. The most common sizes tend to be 4’ by 6’ and 6’ by 9’. These are often used under a coffee table, for example. Dining rooms often use 8’ by 10’ rugs, and a 9’ by 12’ will usually look well in a average-size living room. Smaller area and “scatter” rugs can be ideal for use in small spaces or at hearthside, bed-side or in front of a kitchen sink; perhaps where a splash of color is wanted.
  
• There are few “rules” in interior design, but some useful generalizations follow: Light colored rugs tend to make a room look more spacious and deeper colors lend a look of coziness. A rug with a bold overall pattern can be the focal point of a room, with a sofa and chair in solid or subdued patterns. Consider using round, oval, octagonal or other “shapes” for a lively look.
  
• Choose a rug that will look and perform well, with the right combination of fiber and density. Wool and the synthetic yarns (nylon, polyolefin, acrylic, etc.) are durable, soft and easy to clean. The denser the pile, with closer tufts, knots or stitches, the better your rug will wear.
  
• Today’s machine-made rugs represent great values: Most look very similar to their hand-made counterparts but are usually much less expensive.
  
• Think of non-skid underlay padding as a part of your rug purchase. It helps the rug to absorb impacts, protects floors, reduces wear and makes cleaning easier and more effective.
  
• Follow closely the cleaning instructions for your rug to obtain best wear performance. Do not use a vacuum cleaner beater bar when cleaning fringe or long-fiber rugs. Have all rugs cleaned annually. Turn rugs 180° in the room periodically to equalize wear and sun exposure.