Creative Ways to Use Area Rugs to Enhance Your Flooring

By definition, they do not cover entire floors; part of the household’s floor surface is typically left unprotected, which reduces the homeowner’s cleaning and maintenance costs. However, area rugs also provide visual enrichment with their colours, contrast, pattern and texture as parts of a design scheme, acting as focal points and design features.

A layer of rugs – large and small, plush and flat – made of mixed materials spread over dark hardwood floors can enliven an otherwise sombre space.

Add a Layer of Comfort

You can make any space feel soft and cosy, add some visual contrast, and improve your home’s acoustics with area rugs. They also protect floors.

When you selecting your hardwood rug, know that it is important to consider size and colour. A rug that is too small will look a little odd next to its surroundings while a rug that is too big will make your room look smaller and uninviting.

Or, as Knight suggests, you can minimise patterns on your carpet by using rugs with a solid colour that is complementary to your floors but not busy or overpowering. To accomplish this, he says, you should purchase solid pattern area rugs.

Area rugs can help protect wood flooring in spots of high vehicular traffic in your home, such as hallways, doorways and living rooms, without overshadowing its showy finish at all.

Create a Statement

Many rooms with hardwood floors have area rugs because those large, flat expanses of wood need coverage to make them livable and appealing. A well-chosen rug can dominate a space not because it’s so much larger than other furnishings that it captures the eye, but because it’s designed in a way that makes it stand out, or it melds with patterned furniture in a way that creates architectural harmony.

Rugs can add depth to a room or simply create visual interest next to a hardwood floor, where they will provide a colour or pattern that reflects squares of atmosphere, offering the first impression guests receive as they enter or leave the home. Rugs do an excellent job of making a memorable first impression that sets the tone for what is to follow. A rug in an entryway or foyer is especially of value because the space provides just that – a place where an opening impression helps shape what is to follow for both homeowners and renters who have entered their prestigious sanctum.

If you are choosing a rug that will go on top or beside any type of hardwood flooring, its size is very important. you don’t want something that will completely overshadow its hardwood floor counterpart and completely take over the space, or you don’t want something that will make your floor look cramped.

Add Texture

Area rugs add colour and texture, comfort for the feet, visual interest, warmth, sound insulation and more to the spaces in which we spend our time. Between being a visual treat to the eye, area rugs are comforting since they absorb sound.

Loud-coloured or super-patterned rugs, on the other hand, can heighten our awareness of less-than-pleasant hardwood floors in small rooms, and act as the design focal point of a space. And open floor plans can use rugs to help define functional zones, even creating the illusion that spaces are bigger and more welcoming.

You can pair a short-pile carpet with a shag rug but be sure to make it interesting, like as in interesting construction, by blending flooring materials: laminate, hardwood, tile. Darker hardwood works well with darker rugs, and a lighter hardwood goes with a lighter rug. Another bonus tip: don’t hide all the hardwood flooring. Leave some around the perimeter of the rug. You’ll add texture and contrast to the design.

Create a Focal Point

Rugs are great for making a particular item or grouping of furniture (or a space) in your house the centre of attention. You might use an oversize rug to help define an intimate conversation zone of sofa, coffee table and chairs – the rug’s border should extend forward on all sides at least a foot or two past the end of each chair to corral the collection of furnishings while pulling people toward the middle of the room, and also help protect hardwood underneath from spills or stains.

Rugs can also lend extra visual impact by emphasising certain colours in your decor. Dark rugs over light wood floors will emphasise the darkness and maturity of the space; or select ones that are more neutral and blend in with wall art or furnishings to create a more wholly unified visual. However you approach it, be sure to cover enough of the hardwood floor to be encompassing enough.