Decorating With Area Rugs
Area rugs can provide a foundation to any room's decor. The decorator's rule of thumb, whenever possible, is to start from the floor and work your way up. Area and oriental rugs serve a great point from which to compliment your decor.
Size
The rug size for your room is determined by a few factors such as the type of room and the furniture arrangement. Area rugs are just that, they don't have to cover too much floor. Here are some suggestions for various rooms:
Formal living room: This room is usually not used everyday. The rug in this room can be centered within your seating arrangement and can either just meet the legs of the furntiure or go under just a bit. This rug does not have to be so big as to go completely under all your furniture.
Dining room: Here, your main concern is that the chairs stay on the rug when you pull them out. Most dining rooms need at least an 8'x10' sized rug. This size usually handles tables with 6 or 8 chairs. A 9'x12' sized rug would guarantee that the end chairs would stay on the rug when the table is extended, depending on how often you use it this way.
Family room: This room is where more is better. This room is your daily room, perhaps with kids and pets, and should be as comfortable as possible. It is nice to land on a rug when you get off the furniture so in this room, we would like to see rug under furniture.
Bedrooms: You may either get one large rug to go under the bed with extra around the bed or you can get a few smaller rugs to go in front of and to the sides of the bed. This is a matter of personal taste and there is not a right nor wrong way. Keep in mind that if you place your rug under your bed, for a king size bed, the rug must be at least a 9'x12' rug and for queen beds at least an 8'x10' rug.
Designs and Colors
The colors in your room don't have to be a perfect match. They should all compliment each other. The dominant color in your rug should not be the color that you use throughout your entire room. A good way to carry colors is by taking accent colors from the rug and adding more of that to items in the room. For example, if your rug is predominantly red, then there is no need to bring in a large amount of red, such as in a sofa. The larger amounts of color can be the accent colors of the rug. Pull out these accent colors and add them to furniture, walls, window coverings, etc, and just highlight the red in the room.
Mix and match designs for true charm! A floral rug does not mean you need florals everywhere else in the room. Florals work well with geometrics, stripe and plaids. Scales of designs should be mixed as well. As an example, if the rug contains a large floral pattern, then avoid having another large floral pattern somewhere else in the room. Use a smaller scaled pattern on either the furniture or window treatments. The same scaled patterns against each other create a very busy and confusing look.
| |
|
|
|
