Choosing an area rug - Size Matters

“I don’t understand sizes anymore.  

There’s a size zero, which I didn’t even know they had.  

It must stand for: “Ohhh my God, you’re thin.”

Ellen DeGeneres

A perfectly sized rug can transform a room and enhance its décor; a too-small rug, however, can have the opposite effect.

The number one mistake people make when choosing an area rug is buying a too-small rug!  Even a naked floor is better than a too-small rug, because while a naked floor makes a room look unfinished, a skimpy rug looks cheap, sparse, and choppy.  Read on to learn how to choose the size for your rug, whether you should pay up for a wool rug, and why you should buy a pad for under your new rug.

SIZE 

A rug should anchor the room in which it lives.  Never ‘free float’ an area rug - the idea is to tie the room together.  In the living room it should come within at least a few inches of the feet of all the chairs and sofas, and ideally extend well under and even a few inches behind each chair and sofa.  In the dining room choose a rug that is big enough that when a chair is pulled out to be sat in, its feet stay on the rug.  A good rule of thumb is to add three to four feet to the length and width of your dining table to figure the size of your rug.  It should be small enough, however, that other furniture in the room (such as a buffet) stays off the rug.  In a bedroom the rules are more flexible, but a rug either next to or under the bed should provide a comfortable three foot path all around the bed.

Overall, it’s better to go too big than too small, within the confines that you need to keep air vents and radiators free and that you should still have a nice border around the edges of the rug - at least 6 inches, up to several feet in a really generous room.  Imagine yourself looking down on the room from above and pretend the rug is a picture - it should have a floor ‘frame’ around the outside in proportion to the picture itself.

WOOL vs MANMADE

Once you choose your size, you need to determine the quality of the rug you want.  There are many beautiful synthetic rugs on the market nowadays, and they are often much less expensive than a wool rug.  A synthetic rug can be a good value if you want something a little more ‘disposable’ - perhaps you want to decorate a teen’s room in zebra stripes and you know it’s just a phase.  Know, however, that the rug will lose it’s luster over time (say, 3-7 years depending on the use), and unlike a wool rug, can’t really be revived.  A wool rug, if cared for with professional cleaning occasionally, can last a lifetime, and even become an heirloom.  In other words, unless you are choosing something really trendy, overtime your money will be better invested in the wool rug.   They clean beautifully, look and feel great, and stand up wonderfully to heavy foot traffic.

RUG PADS

Finally, you want to protect your new rug with a rug pad.  It will extend the life of both synthetic and wool rugs by reducing the wear and tear.  It will cushion the step for more comfortable and quieter walking.  It will make a rug on a hard surface safer (not to mention easier to vacuum) by making it slip-resistant.  If you are placing a rug over carpet, a carpet-to-carpet mat can keep spills from soaking through to your carpeting, and also prevent the area rug dye from transferring to the carpet.  It’s more important to have a pad under a rug on a hard floor, but in many instances the carpet-to-carpet pad is also a good use of money.