Jazz Up Your Home With A New Area Rug

Choosing the best area rug for your home is really about knowing the right combination of characteristics, aesthetics, performance and budget to best meet the needs of your lifestyle.

Size and Shape:

• Rugs are available in different sizes and in different shapes.
• The most common sizes are 2’x3’, 4’x6’, 5’x8’, 6’x9’, 8’x10’ and up. Custom sizes are also available.
• Shapes – rectangle, round, square, oval, octagon or runners.
• Choose the correct size depending on the dimensions of the room or space.
• Measure the size of your room and measure the space you want covered.
• Place pieces of paper where each of the corners will fall.
• Adjust the “corners” as needed to make the space larger or smaller.
• Re-measure the area.
• To cover the majority of the room, leave a 12”-15” border.
• Under the dining table, select a rug that is large enough so that when seated at the table the back legs of the chairs are on the rug with enough space to push back and get up from the table.

Color:

• Think outside the box.
• Vital element – machine made or handmade.
• Select a rug with colors to visually enhance the decor.
• The rug colors don’t have to match other colors in the room.
• Choose colors that either contrast or complement a color scheme.

Pattern:

• Pattern is the way lines are used to form shapes on a rug.
• They are divided into three categories: curvilinear, geometric and pictorial.
• Woven with curving lines (curvilinear) or straight lines (geometric).
• Pictorial refers to rugs that portray people and/or animals.

Need help selecting the perfect area rug for your room? Please visit our showroom and talk with one of our dedicated project consultants.

Photo: Shaw Floors

Keep Your Carpet Looking New

Photo: Tuftex

Carpet may be one of the easiest types of flooring to take care of. Learn how to keep yours looking great over time with a simple care program.

• Preventive Maintenance – protect your investment before problems occur.
• Vacuuming – prolong the life and beauty of your floor.
• Spot and Spill Removal – be prepared for the unavoidable.
• Professional Cleaning – get your carpet cleaned professionally each year.
• DIY Cleaning – get the right equipment to do it yourself.

No carpet is absolutely stain proof. Some carpets have stain resistant treatments that improve your ability to clean stains, but not prevent them. Similarly, carpets with soil resistant treatments reduce the rate of soiling, but all carpets require regular care and maintenance.

The majority of stain complaints are actually soil related. For example, many sugar-based spills, such as soft drinks and coffee, leave a sugar residue after removal. This sticky residue readily attracts soil from ordinary shoe traffic, and the resulting discolored area appears to be a stain.

The same thing happens when spills are cleaned with a detergent solution and the area is not sufficiently rinsed with plain water, leaving a sticky detergent residue. It is important to rinse thoroughly with water and blot dry after removing any spill.

Source: Tuftex

 

Tips on Choosing a Rug

Photo: Stanton Carpet

Today, flooring choices are as important to your overall design as furniture and paint. Whether you use vinyl flooring, area rugs, wall-to-wall carpeting or marble, the choices are endless and the finished look is nothing short of spectacular.

Rug Tips

• If possible, buy the rug first and make it your focal point, then dress the area with furniture.
• If space permits, the furniture should sit on the outskirts of the rug, not on top of it.
• Rotate area rugs periodically to minimize the wear and tear to any one part.
• If furniture lies on the rug, try to occasionally move everything one or two inches in order to keep it from permanently crushing the carpet fibers and leaving depressions in the rug.

Patterns can be sweet and delicate, or full of pizzazz. They can blend in or stand out. A large design can cut your room down to size, while a minimal pattern or solid colored carpet can make your room appear to grow in size. A bright floral design can make a room that doesn’t get much natural light, more welcoming than before. Patterns can also hide a multitude of sins, camouflaging the little spills and mishaps that come with life at home.

Carpet has become one of the most versatile items in home decorating and has found its way into 95 percent of all households in America. Recent innovations have produced products that are more vibrant, stronger, and wear better than ever before. Wool and synthetic fiber carpets have become an affordable luxury that, with regular vacuuming and deep cleaning, can be the proud focal point of your home for many years.

Source: Stanton Carpet

Decorating With a Living Room Rug

Photo: Shaw Floors

A rug on top of your living room hardwood is an accessory that can easily transform your space. Small rugs look great on top of sleek hardwood flooring and can add a whole new dimension to the room, especially if they include rich colors, textures or patterns.

Consider these rug ideas for your living room design.  

Durable patterns

Houses catering to a family should include a rug that can withstand the wear and tear usually inflicted upon the floor by children.

Real Simple magazine also suggested patterned rugs to make the space more visually interesting, adding another element of texture to your living room.

 Use your rug as an accessory.

The size of you rug should be smaller than the area that your furniture covers. People often make the mistake of using an oversized rug for their room, covering up more of their hardwood floor than they have to.

According to HGTV, the front two legs of your sofas or chairs should be placed on the area rug, supporting the gathering space, but not taking away from the overall sleekness or openness of the room. Think of the rug as an accessory, just like your ottoman or coffee table. It shouldn’t take over your flooring, but complement it instead.

“It is a nice way to add color to a room if you don’t want to commit to a strong color on the furnishings or window treatments,” designer Jennifer Duneier told HGTV.

Real Simple recommended using a decorative rug to draw attention to a specific piece of furniture, like your bold-colored sofa. This is easily done by contrasting the color of the rug with that of the piece of furniture you want to make the focal point of the living room.

Source: Shaw Floors

 

Choosing an Area Rug

Photo: Shaw Floors

Colors and designs for area rugs run the gamut from serene and subdued to spunky and bright. But don’t be confused about your selection. Here are a few guidelines.

Color and Design

If you want to make a bold, contemporary statement, consider a large floral pattern or dazzling geometric that becomes the room’s main focal point. To add warmth, texture and quiet style, try a rug with more subdued colors or a classical pattern in subtle shades.

Tips for Choosing

• Living Areas: A rug should be large enough to hold seating groups and small enough that the floor forms a contrasting frame around it.
• Dining Areas: Choose a rug large enough to accommodate chairs when they’re pushed away from the table.
• Foyers: The rug should cover a large portion of the area, allowing a generous 18- to 24-inch border of floor to frame it.

Do you have a favorite area rug?

Source: Shaw Floors

Area Rugs Guide

Long before the term “wall-to-wall” was invented, area rugs graced the floors of human dwellings. The original area rugs may have been lion skins — and they may have done double duty as beds, but it was an area rug, just the same.

Later on, our ancestors learned to weave rushes and grasses to make mats. Once we started domesticating sheep, we learned to spin their wool into yarns and weave them.

Some time before 2000 BC, the nomadic tribes of Asia began making rugs in great numbers. The Mongols gave us pile rugs, but the Persians turned rug making into an art form. European rug weaving probably started about 1000 AD in Spain. Intrepid explorer Marco Polo influenced rug making with his discoveries of new materials and techniques in China in the late 1200s. As civilization has marched forward, there’s likely been a good rug underfoot.

Area rugs are tremendously versatile. With the appropriate pad, area rugs work on any type of flooring and in any room. The results are magical. Area rugs offer unlimited combinations of color, texture, pattern and placement. They are the only flooring product that you can easily install, then pick up and move!

Today’s area rugs are most often machine-made with sophisticated design patterns on computerized looms that can imitate the more intricate handmade rugs — but at greatly reduced costs. They are generally made out of wool, silk, (or a blend of wool/silk), olefin (polypropylene) or nylon —occasionally cotton, and even bamboo.

Wool and silk antique and modern area rugs rule the high end of the market. More moderately priced rugs are manufactured from heat-set olefin, which looks like wool and cleans easily.

Are you looking for an investment, a family heirloom, a practical room addition or a fun accessory? Whatever your need or intention, you simply can’t go wrong with an area rug.

Source: World Floor Covering Association