Use an area rug to add some flavor to your home decor.

Especially if you’re moving into a rental property, you may have little control over how the floors are covered. Wood finishes may look tired as may neutral but aging wall-to-wall carpeting. Even with new floors and tiles in a house you proudly own, decorating decisions take some time to get done right. It’s nice to know you can live with your new living space as it is while you decide what you would like to do. One of the quickest and easiest ways to make your new house a home is to consider adding area rugs to your d?cor.

Types of Rugs

Area rugs come in a great variety of patterns, textures and materials from fine floral- or oriental-patterned wool to simply-bound jute or grasses. It is hard to imagine a decorating scheme for which there is no area rug available. They abound in both stores and catalogs and come in a wide variety of sizes, providing options for every room in your home.

Using Area Rugs

One of the best uses of area rugs is to define the spaces in your new home. Increasingly in new houses and apartments, a sense of spaciousness is conveyed by combining what used to be two rooms into one – like a combination of a living room and dining room, or a dining room and family room combined. Sometimes, especially if the view is good, the spaciousness is a real asset. But at other times it does not. Without adequate definition of spaces, it seems as though you just move back and forth stuck in the same room. Area rugs are the perfect way to define the living and dining areas of a single large space.

One strategy is to use matching area rugs with one in front of the couch and the other under the dining room table. This emphasizes the size of the space while providing islands with particular purposes.

Another strategy is to choose different, contrasting or complementary rugs for each space. The rug in the family area might be more casual, and the one in the dining area might be more formal. But both may share at least a touch of the same color or similar patterns. Area rugs also do a wonderful job of defining an entry way, even if one walks straight into the living room. 

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Kitchen Rugs

An area rug in the kitchen dining area makes the area seem both slightly separate from the cooking area and cozier than tile or linoleum. Good-looking area rugs that can be easily spot cleaned or that are fully washable meet the need for such an area. One can only hope that making a kitchen eating area more attractive will spruce up everyone’s table manners and cut down on spills. If the washable rug seems a bit ponderous for your home washing machine, laundromat machines usually accommodate large washable rugs.

Bedroom Rugs

A colorful area rug in a child’s room can make a great addition to d?cor while performing an even more important function. Area rugs make wonderful play spaces and provide just the right place for tummy time for infants. You and your brood are likely to find the rug a cozy place to gather and play. Many children’s rooms look completely pulled together with a handsome floor focal point.

Other Ideas

• Area rugs provide a flexibility in decorating that other floor coverings cannot. A jute or grass rug under outdoor furniture makes a porch or covered patio seem more welcoming.

• A rug at the back door allows for wet boots and muddy paws while confining damage that might track your whole kitchen floor.

• In the days before air conditioning, those living in hot, humid areas made summer more bearable by taking down the heavy winter drapes, covering furniture with cotton slipcovers, replacing heavy bedspreads with light ones and rolling up the rugs. While this may be impractical for your entire house, performing this cooling ritual in even one room will help you feel a little less oppressed by the heat. Rolling up or even replacing the area rug in that room is an easy and economical way to change your d?cor with the season.

Whatever the room or the area, you won’t regret adding area rugs to your d?cor.