Decorating with Runners

Rug runners are versatile and can be used in many areas of your home. In fact, if you counted the number of runners in your house, you might be surprised at how many you already have: in the hallway leading from your front and back doors, in the kitchen in front of the sink, in your upstairs hallways, up and down your stairs – that’s six runners that I have in my house and there are probably more.

Runners can help quiet and cushion the sound of footsteps on your stairs or in a hallway. They can protect your carpet or hardwood floors in high traffic areas. A beautiful, long runner down a long wooden staircase is very attractive.

You can change your runners with the season and you can take them with you if you move.

Decorating with area rug runners is an easy and less expensive way to update or revitalize the look in the rooms of your home. Sisal Rugs Direct is the best place to shop for runners. We offer runners in most of our rug styles in a wide variety of colors and border colors.  Order a runner to match the area rug in the same or adjoining room.

We have two standard width runners: 24” and 28” x whatever length you want (up to 98’!) Click on Runner as the Product Type in the Custom Options tab. You can also order a runner any width or length as a Custom Rug in the Custom Options tab.

Enjoy the beauty and durability of these runner area rugs in your home today.

It's Complicated L/R Makeover at an Uncomplicated Price!

Living Room designed by Ginger Rodriguez and intern Luc Thia. PHOTO BY DANIEL BLOOM OF WWW.DANIELBLOOM.COM

Have you seen the movie It's Complicated with Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin? If you have, you will probably remember the living room and maybe even wished your living room could look like that.  Well, Ginger Rodriguez in her column "Coffee with Ginger" in the North Virginia lifestyle magazine - Zebra - recreated the living room designed by movie set designers and did it at more down to earth prices.

Click to read the article: 

For the rug, that really anchors the whole room; she used our Sienna Brasilia rug with Honey Extra Wide Binding, Blind Stitched in the custom  size of 14' 4" x 14'4"  .

Shop Brasilia Sienna Rugs

If you missed the show, here it is: Tiny Apartment Makeover. Nate made over  a tiny – as in 375 sq. ft. -apartment in NY.  And I thought our first apartment in NY was tiny! He used all "Made in America" products, including a sisal rug from us. He chose a 6x9 Khaki Brasilia Sisal Rugs serged to match.  Check out the close up on our rug. The sisal rug defines her seating area and allowed Nate to match it with bright pinks, blacks and neutrals in the small space.  See him below with happy Apartment Makeover Recipient...

The Nate Berkus Show on FOX, www.thenateshow.com, has chosen one of our rugs for it's upcoming show featuring products “Made in the USA”!!  Each one of our rugs is made to order in our state-of-the-art workroom located in Minnesota.  This is why you can choose your size, shape, style, color, binding and binding color and we’ll make it just for you!

Watch the show Tuesday, November 22^nd on FOX.  We will be watching and updating everyone once it airs.

The rug to be shown is: Khaki Brasilia Sisal serged to match

Although there are no hard rules as to the size of rugs for various rooms and seating areas, here are some things to consider when choosing the size of a rug.

Measure the room: In order to decide on rug size, the first thing you should do is measure the room. If you have a wood floor, try to have at least 18-24 inches of flooring around the perimeter of the room.

Measure the space:  Measure the space that you wish to cover with a tape measure. Choose a standard size rug that comes closest to these measurements or have a custom size rug made for the space. Sounds expensive? It doesn’t’ have to be. At Sisal Rugs Direct we specialize in custom size rugs that are affordable and don’t take months to make. See for yourself on the “Custom Options” on all of our product pages.

Living Room/Family Room:  Arrange your furniture before determining the size of a new area rug. It makes a room look more pulled together for all of the legs of the furniture to be resting on a room sized area rug. Or, if you have a smaller area rug, you may want all of the legs of the furniture to be off the rug instead. All legs on, or all legs off is a good “rule of thumb” to keep in mind. You do not want to have your sofa half on and half off the rug.                                              

Dining Room/Kitchen:  Under the Dining Room table, or any table that has a rug under it, the rug should be large enough that the chairs can be easily pulled in and out from the table without catching on the edge of the rug. There should be at least 24” of rug from the edge of the table out on all sides. This will allow the back legs of the chairs to be on the rug, even when the chair is pulled out slightly while someone is sitting down. Do not have your chairs half on and half off the rug. It will be difficult to move the chairs over the rug all the time and it will not look right.

Bedroom:  For it to look balanced under a bed, the area rug should be large enough to extend beyond the side of the bed at least 18” for a King and Queen bed and at least 12” for a Full or Twin bed. If you have a larger bedroom you can extend the rug more around the bed, but you shouldn’t go smaller. 

High Traffic Areas:  It is generally considered awkward in a heavily traffic area to be half rug, and half "no rug". Basically, you don't want one foot on a rug and one foot off as you are walking through an area constantly.

As you can see there are no real rules about the size of a rug vs the size of the room or the space to be covered but hopefully this has given you some guidelines to follow when selecting your area rug.