Rugs - Who needs ‘em?
Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s with wall to wall carpet, I found that living in base housing and European houses without carpet, I really missed it. Vacuuming is much less labor intensive than mopping and requires less drying time. Besides, all that tile was cold and ugly and slippery. My oldest daughter was 15 months old and still not walking. We went home for a visit and she started walking the first day home. Apparently my little 5x8 area rug was not enough real estate for her to practice on.
13 years ago we were getting ready to leave Germany and although I left there under protest, kicking and screaming the whole way, there were some things I was looking forward to in The States. One of those was real, honest to goodness closets. The other was carpet. We bought our first house and it had wall to wall carpet. I was so excited. We lived there six months and I tore it all out. I hated it.
After 17 years of living without it, I realized that I liked being able to thoroughly clean the daily grime off my floors instead of it getting ground into the floor upholstery where the vacuum picks up some of it and the rest gets beaten into the pad underneath with a beater bar. Then you get out the shampooer every few months and turn it into sludge. I did not, however, replace it with cold, ugly tile. We went with a wood laminate, and later as technology advanced, water-proof wood plank luxury vinyl.
So in this house I have hardwood throughout, except for a couple bedrooms and a hall upstairs. That carpet is about to get an eviction notice as soon as I can afford to replace it with matching hardwood. But all these hard floors come with a need for area rugs. And yes, you heard me right, we NEED area rugs. Here’s why:
1 - Hard floors are loud and echoey (Is echoey a word? I may have just made it up). Rugs absorb sound and cut down on the noise. We lived in a duplex once with tile throughout and we could hear every argument, tv show, and sneeze through our bedroom wall because without rugs our bedrooms acted as echo chambers.
2 - Hard floors are hard and cold (we already mentioned that).
3 - A rug can be used to unify a color scheme.
Here’s a room from a past life where I used a rug to bring a blue gray sectional and a teal love seat together. Both colors are found in the rug so the furniture gets along. (Ignore the ugly lampshade. What was I thinking?!)
4 - Rugs help to define a space. Without a rug, furniture can appear disjointed and unconnected. Here are some examples:
See how in the first picture the furniture just seems to float in the room? It’s a room with some furniture scattered around it, where in the second picture the rug brings it together into an actual seating area. You can also see how the colors in the rug unify the colors of the furniture, tying the blue throw pillows in with the bits of blue from the rug and giving them something to relate to.
From rugsdirect.com
In this dining room the rug anchors and defines the dining area. It also adds some color to an otherwise neutral room.
Rugs are one of the hardest things for me to choose. There are so many styles, colors, materials, price ranges, the choices are endless. But I have learned some things over the years, from experience, but also from the materials class I had to take for my degree, so I’ll pass that wisdom on. My kids may read this and most likely disregard it, thinking they know better and make some of the same mistakes, but maybe someone out there will read this and learn from it and the effort I put into it will be worth it.
A) If you find a beautiful rug that you love, it can be like artwork and used as a starting point for a color palette for your room. Just keep in mind that if you have a very colorful rug, or one with lots of pattern, it is now the boss and you have to be choosy about the other colors and patterns in the room - unless you are the gifted, artsy, bohemian type who can throw it all together and make it work.
Here’s an example of a rug that makes a statement and is the centerpiece of the room. Everything else is secondary, and the colors are pulled from the rug.
B) A rug can also be neutral and fade into the background, just quietly doing its job of defining the space, warming your feet, and dampening noise. The rugs in my living room in my last blog post are a perfect example of that.
C) Wool is the most durable carpet fiber there is. Nothing can beat the way it absorbs dyes and color and it has been used in rugs for thousands of years. Wool rugs are soft but they shed at first. They will eventually stop, but they are not naturally stain resistant because of that wonderful way in which they absorb colors. They are also more expensive than rugs made with synthetic fibers.
D) Nylon is considered a premium synthetic fiber, as it is stain resistant, crush resistant, all the resistants except fade resistant. However, I had a nylon rug once that did not meet up to those expectations. It looked terrible within a year, except under the coffee table. It was crushed flat. I have learned since then to use a rug pad and vacuum with the brush turned off and my rugs look nicer much longer.
E) Polyester rugs tend to get matted in high traffic areas fairly quickly. I’ve learned this from my materials class and from experience. Unfortunately, my class came after my experience. I avoid polyester rugs.
F) My favorite synthetic fiber is polypropylene. It seems to be naturally stain resistant and durable, but look for rugs that are dense or they will crush. I bought some Turkish rugs while we were in Germany and used them for years. They still looked brand new. Unfortunately when my mother-in-law came to live with us so did her dog. It’s amazing the amount of damage one little dog can do to a rug.
G) Unless you are independently wealthy, expensive rugs may not be your best option. I’ve learned some things the hard way. Cats will snag a sculptured rug, those little loops are just too tempting to leave alone, and then to add insult to injury your new puppy will chew up the snags. A flat weave cotton rug may not be colorfast, so even if it is under your bed where there isn’t much traffic, when your adult son walks into your bedroom carrying a half-frozen 20lb turkey dripping with condensation, the colors will run. Then when your husband inevitably drops his 32oz diet coke off of his nightstand, there is no way to clean it up without the blue dye coloring all the white fibers. Finally, a jute rug cannot be washed on gentle and cold and hung up to dry, it will still shrink. The lesson here is don’t have pets. Or kids. Or a husband. If you still insist on having these things, less expensive rugs are the way to go. There will be a lot less crying when they have to be replaced.