Rules for Area Rugs
By : Alexa Hampton
What comprises the floor of a room is a central part (quite
literally) of one's experience of that space. Marble floors can feel
grand and imposing. Wood floors, stately. Tiled floors, bathroom-y. Rugs
also exert influence on the rooms in which they are placed. They
protect the floors, they muffle sound and they lend softness to the
hardscape. In New York, many apartment buildings even require tenants to
cover up to 80% of the floors with rugs or carpeting. Despite their
ubiquity, though, area rugs can be confusing to work with. But, like
with so many things, there is an intuitive aspect to finding the right
size rug for a room.
As a rule, I choose a square or a
rectangle. Round rugs always make me think of bath mats. Trapezoids and
other irregular shapes are simply too obtrusive. They become more about
their shape than about their pattern or texture. In rooms with
attractive floors, I prefer area rugs that show some of the surface
underneath—if it's a big room, this means leaving a foot (and sometimes
up to 18 inches) of floor exposed around the perimeter. If the room's
floors have their own border, I try to keep it visible. However, I am
always leery of leaving too big of a space around my rugs. Often the
result is that the rug appears to be a postage stamp floating on the
floor instead of being tied in to the room itself. In smaller rooms, I
reduce the floor exposure to 6 to 12 inches.
The biggest determining factor for sizing a rug is where the walkways
in the room will be. You must either cover the walkways or not. You
cannot bisect a walkway, because it will cause people to trip.
I
also think it is important to have some of the furniture be half-on and
half-off the rug, to tie all the room's elements together. Big pieces of
furniture at a room's edge—like a sofa, club chair or console table—are
perfect candidates for this approach. The obvious exception is in
dining rooms. Here, the rug must extend well beyond the table and chairs
so that when the chairs are pulled out, they're still on the rug.
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