A practical guide to ensure that your rug will look its best with your wood flooring and your home design.

If you’ve chosen a beautiful new engineered wood floor for your home, you may also be considering buying a rug to add the finishing touch. Here is a guide to what you should consider in terms of size and design when deciding on the ideal rug to complement your wood floors.

The power of rugs cannot be overstated. They can be good at opening up a space or making a room feel cosier.

Rug Pattern and Colour

Smaller Rooms

If you have a smaller room, then there are some easy ways to make it feel more open and spacious.

Lighter colours, and plain or simple designs, are the way forward if you want to create a feeling of space. The simplicity helps to make the room feel less busy and therefore more open.

This is especially important if you have chosen a dark coloured wood floor in a smaller room. A lighter rug adds contrast and can help the room to feel lighter as a whole.

Larger Rooms

More dense patterns, ornate designs and darker shades can add to the cosy feel of a room.

If you have a large room with a light coloured wood floor, then a darker rug can help bring it together, adding interest to the design as well as making the room feel cosier as a whole.

Light coloured rugs can still work in larger rooms, but they tend to emphasise the openness of the space. This can be a good thing, depending on your style and room design.

Rug Size

A too-large rug can make a room feel cluttered or smaller than it is. If the rug is too large, it will also cover too much of your new wood floor and you’ll lose the natural effect of real wood flooring.

A too-small choice could end up looking misplaced in the room, like it’s not part of the space as a whole.

If you have a large enough room, a combination of different-sized rugs can work well. A smaller rug can be used to highlight items of furniture, such as a coffee table or a bed, whilst larger versions can be used to add interest to large areas of wood flooring.

To find out the size you want, lay out sheets of newspaper until you have the desired dimensions and then measure. There are standard-sized rugs available, or you could have one made to measure, according to what size you need.

Creating Focal Points

You will also need to think about the focal points of your room and how a rug can complement them, or you may decide you want a rug that will become a focal point in itself.

Complementary rugs should be more muted in colour, and often plain or minimally patterned.

With focal point rugs, however, you are free to go to town in terms of colour and design! Choose ones that fit with your wall colour, but it’s a good idea to contrast with the colour of your wooden floor if you want to create a focal point. If you have a dark wood floor, choose a lighter coloured rug or vise versa.

Placement

Ensure any rug you choose will not cause obstruction. If it is to be placed near an entry point, for example, check that it will not impede the movement of the door and pose a tripping hazard. You do not want to invest in a rug only to find that it becomes an inconvenience rather than an asset in your home!

Start your flooring revamp by browsing the Flooring Village online collection! Why not read our blog post on caring for your rug?