Rugs are all over the place.
That’s a good thing.
We need them, they’re one of the three golden rules that you can apply to pretty much any room and improve the design.
- Buy a rug
- Throw some art on the walls
- Give life to some plants
This article is concerned with point number one.
There are a lot of styles of rug.
Each one complimenting the style of living room you’ve chosen.
The 3 rules
There are usually three stages people go through in the lifecycle of a rug owner.
The first is not having a rug.
Rug absence is commom, especially if you’re new to furnishing your home. Eventually the floor becomes too sparse and you realize the error of your ways.
The next stage is buying a rug for the sake of it.
You know you need it and you get desperate. There’s no judging here, you don’t need to feel that shame.
The one you end up purchasing is below par. Its style just doesn’t fit the room.
It’s not that you didn’t try and find the perfect rug, you just settled.
This leads me onto the third and final stage of Rug Life.
Finally, you unearth it.
It’s a match made in heaven. Your friends come over and are taken aback, breathless as they marvel at the beautiful rug that you’ve discovered.
You smile to yourself as you take a small amount of joy at the envy coarsing through their veins.
I’m going to break the wheel
In this article I’m going to help you jump to the third stage wherever you are in your journey.
You may have found it tricky finding the style that suits your living room. A lot of stores are niche and lesser known.
I’ve done the hard work here and put a list of all the stores you could possibly need.
Mid-Century Modern Rugs
What do you need to look for in Mid-Century Modern rugs?
Mid-Century Modern is extremely popular at the moment. What this means is that it’s become a catch-all term.
You’ll be able to add a lot of different styles and it’ll look great.
Here’s an example from Pinterest.
I’m not going to be a purest, I’ll assume that all of these pictures represent the typical Mid-Century Modern living room or at least have elements in.
You can clearly see the diverse range of rugs that are shown.
In this image, the rugs have an abstract pattern to them, however, there isn’t a common geometric theme among each.
Additionally, the colors don’t related to one another either.
The Urban Outfitters rug is one big variation of red, compared to the image in the top-right of the selection which is premoninantly white and cream with a splattering of red, blue and green.
This living room by Allvoid contains some great Mid-Century Modern elements.
The design works so well because of the charcoal spine running thoughout each piece of furniture.
This includes the rug.
This criss-crossing lines sewn into the fabric pull the items that surround the room together in the middle. It’s medium pile and contrasts well against the block color of the sofa, chair, coffee table and TV stand.
Where to buy Mid-Century Modern rugs
Below are the stores giving you the best chance to find rugs that fit the Mid-Century Modern design style. Your living room is going to look awesome.
These stores are high-end and they will sell brands such as Herman Miller and Knoll. They’re licensed to sell reproductions of classic Mid-Century Modern designs.
Similar to the first two stores except they’re entirely based online, may be slightly cheaper overall.
These stores sell their own brand by coming up with the designs based on current trends and buy the furniture from smaller manufacturers who produce the items. The quality can vary but they have a wide customer base.
Some more stores that are more mass-market.
Scandinavian Rugs
You’d be forgiven for not immediately assuming that Scandinavian living rooms have rugs or, at least, taking the time to pause and think about it.
They’re minimalist -but they’re not that minimalist.
Here’s a cross-section of Scandinavian living rooms.
Straight away you can see rugs.
A great sign, we’re on the right track.
The color palette is a lot softer than Mid-Century Modern living rooms, everything is more neutral and this extends to the rugs.
They’re short pile, this keeps with the fresh, natural look that’s synonymous with Scandinavian design.
Even the patterns themselves are relatively simple. There isn’t much deviation away from even speckling throughout the rug.
I’ll ignore the very large ‘Luxury Rugs’ tile and chalk it off as an anomaly.
Where to buy Scandinavian rugs
- YLiving
- Scandinavian Designs
- 2Modern
- Ambient Direct (A German store that ships to the US)
- Connox (UK and Germany but ships to the US)
- Northern Icon
This first section includes furniture stores you can search for Scandinavian style rugs. They aren’t necessarily exclusively Scandi but they do stock products I know you’ll love.
These stores import Scandinavian products to the US.
These are American brands which includes rug designs in the Scandinavian niche.
Eclectic Rugs
It gets fun with anything Eclectic.
There’s a common misconception that you can just throw whatever you want into a room, call it Eclectic and Bob’s your uncle, Sally’s your aunt.
The reality is you need to think carefully about what you’re including.
In exactly the same way you’d search for furniture and accessories to fit Mid-Century Modern or Scandinavian interior designs.
Here they are, the likely suspects.
The great thing about Eclecticism is the variation. But you still need your rugs to work within the limits of the other items in your living room.
You have license to buy more interesting patterns and textures that you can’t do with alternative styles.
Although the colors of the rugs compliment the rest of the living rooms within each of the tiles, there aren’t any common colors among each of the rugs.
Where to buy Eclectic rugs
Because of the wide scope in rug type that you can buy with the Eclectic style, try using the other websites that I’ve provided refering to other interior design styles if you prefer those.
These websites are more focused on contemporary designs.
The ones that make you look crazy.
Industrial Rugs
Rugs aren’t a necessity in industrial design but they can be nice to bring a bit of homeliness to an otherwise harsher environment (which is intended).
As you’d imagine, the colors are more masculine looking.
If these rugs had personalities, they’d be nonchalant.
Wouldn’t care about a soul.
They’re darker and work well with the brown leathers of the seating and coffee tables.
The rugs themelves are short pile, often distressed looking. Industrial style needs elements that are picked for their ‘this’ll do’ vibe. As if you’ve just come across them at a junk sale.
I suppose you could just find them at a junk sale.
Where to buy Industrial rugs
There aren’t many stores that are dedicated to industrial style furniture but there are plenty that are more general and accomodate what you’re searching for.
Bohemian Rugs
Bohemian interior design is one of my favorites, it’s such a relaxing environment to be in.
You can look like you’ve travelled to the ends of the Earth without having gone further than your block. As much as I love the Bohemian style, I advise you actually do the travelling too.
Live a little.
Let’s see how rugs fit into the overall dynamic.
The first thing that jumps out is the amount the of color that’s coming from the rugs.
You can even have some luxurious blues and they look awesome.
The majority of the rugs are Persian or Moroccan. It matches with visual variety that tends to accompany Bohemian design.
Once again, short pile.
Makes sense, they’re easier to keep clean and the material doesn’t shed like a German Shepherd.
Where to buy Bohemian rugs
Oriental rugs are fairly easy to find, they’re also the most likely to have websites dedicated to only selling the rugs.
Here’s a few that I’ve found for you.
There we have it
It’s time for you to venture into the world and find the style of rug that suits your room the most.
I’ve laid the foundations for you.
Now you must go alone.
You’ll notice that there’s a some overlap and many stores stock multiple styles of rugs.
If you have broader interior, such as Eclectic, this gives you the opportunity to steal ideas from places you wouldn’t normally see.
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