Unlock the Secrets of Rug Decor & Find 7 Popular Layouts

Creating a home is fun.

The decor elements, from rug to curtain to upholstery to furniture, are ingredients for your inner artist.

And your home is the blank slate you have the privilege of filling.

But the uninitiated layman may find this process a bit overwhelming. The choice of colours and textures and materials are endless, so it may be a situation of having too much to choose from and not knowing where to start.

In this post, we’ll outline steps to bridge that learning gap. It’s not hard. In fact, it is akin to choosing an outfit for a weekend—pairing off colours and contrasts.

We’ll focus on the tenets of rug decor. Then, later, we’ll share popular layouts of hand-knotted rugs meant for the main types of rooms: bedroom, dining room, and living room.

3 Rug Decor Tenets for the Learning Layman

Rugs can be dramatic “agents of disorder” for the interior.

Think of a rug as a major influencer of a room’s ambience.  

A room with otherwise-muted colours suddenly livens up with a fiesta of bright colours from an area rug’s pile. The space cheers up. This is a logic of disorder, going against the order of muted colours.

Or you can use busy patterns to disrupt a solid colour palette. Like in the picture above, the arresting zebra lines of the rug go against the solid colours of the rest of the room.  
 
Conversely, if you add solid colours on your carpets, it can disrupt a room that has surrounding décor with busy patterns and lines.

It works both ways! 

Rugs can fit in too i.e. act as conforming “agents of order” for the interior.

Maybe you have already picked a theme for the room.

If its decor is in the bohemian or cottagecore aesthetic, with naturally-sourced objects populating the space—such as cane chairs and rattan screens—then it would be unwise to place a modern, abstract rug in that room.  

You would want to choose something that goes along with the natural aesthetic of the space, like the Papyrus or Zen Garden rugs from our collection of flat woven rugs and dhurries. Just like in the picture above, the rug stays true to the bohemian look of the room.

The idea is for the rug to overlay the decor's theme, falling in line with its colours, textures, and materials.

Rugs can demarcate spatial logic within your home’s interiors.

Do you know you can use rugs much like you use grid lines in a notebook?

Yes, rugs can be used as reference points.

An elongated runner rug, for instance, can be placed to designate a visual axis across the house, along which people can sense they have to move. It could also liven up a corridor, which is an overlooked space.

Living room rugs can anchor a space to create a focal point where people are directed to gather; several sofas, accent tables, and plant pots can be set here, such as in the picture above.

For the next section, we reveal the common rug layouts used by homeowners.

For The Living Room

#1 Place a coffee table over the rug, with a 2-foot offset on all sides.

Placing a coffee table on a small-sized rug is an interesting option for smaller rooms because it optically plays with the scale of the room; the mind thinks the room is larger. With an offset of roughly 2 feet on each side of the table, the picture is perfectly symmetrical. 

Take into account the interior’s dimensions to find the proper ratio. For example, if a bigger room is to be filled out, you could use a more expansive carpet and table. In this way, a reasonable degree of negative space will be filled out.

#2 Place the rug in such a way that it covers the entire underside of the couch.

An expansive area rug, such as our 9x12 Marra, is needed to cover and then create an offset under the sofa's entire base structure. This works well for anchoring a floating island in the middle of a living room, and not in the case of sofas and other furniture units anchored against a wall.

#3 Place the rug in such a way that the front sofa legs touch it.

This choice is flexible, but it typically functions best when one of the group's edges is against a wall. The rug's size should allow for the front legs of all pieces to rest on it while keeping all of the rear legs off the rug because consistency is crucial for a coherent appearance.

#4 For The Dining Room

Arranging rugs in dining rooms is pretty straightforward: set the table's legs entirely on the rug. Make sure the rug extends at least 2 feet past the table legs. By doing this, you ensure that the chairs won't move when guests get up from the table and push them back onto the rug.

For The Bedroom

#5 Cover the entire underside of the bed with the rug.

A general rule of thumb is to keep approximately 2 feet of space around the rug and avoid encroaching on any walkways. This gives the room a sense of symmetry and completeness.

#6 Position the rug so that two-thirds of it is covered by the bed.

This bedroom rug arrangement maintains a border of 2 feet on all sides, plus a small amount at the foot of the bed. Consider an 8×10 area rug for queen-sized beds and a 9x12 version for king-sized ones to maintain the room's symmetrical appearance.

#7 Put two narrow runners on each side of the bed.

This solution is flexible to all sizes and types of beds. It is a particularly wise decision if both of your bed's sides are next to a wall. When considering this design, scale must be taken into account. The two runners should be slightly broader than the nightstand and should not go past the edge of the bed for the perfect look and feel.

We hope you found this article helpful—on how to arrange rugs in rooms. It is a matter of logic and space. And it is also a matter of having a wide range of designs to choose from, such as you would find in a well-established carpet store.

You can buy silk rugs, handwoven rugs, and a host of other unique picks at our rug stores in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Jaipur. Cocoon Fine Rugs is a haven for such indigenous, far-reaching art. We have also explained several aspects of decor in other posts, which you can read on our website.