How to Choose the Right Color for Your Custom Rug
Color is essential to the design of a room, especially the color of your rug. An area rug can completely transform the look and feel of a room, which is why you want to choose wisely. When designing a custom rug, you can choose from a variety of colors.
If you’re not sure what colors will work in your space, try asking yourself the following questions. Based on how you answer, we’ll supply a few tips to help you choose.
What’s the rug’s function?
The best way to start choosing a rug color is to carefully consider the rug's purpose in the room where you place it from various perspectives. Consider the interior design you’d like to evoke in the room and ask yourself how your new rug will affect it. Do you want your rug to stand out, blend in, complement your existing furniture, or create an eye-catching contrast?
If you want your new rug to stand out as a centerpiece or focal point in the room, for example, then you should choose a color that contrasts with the floor or even a heavily textured or patterned rug. If you’d rather the rug match or blend into the rest of the room’s decor effortlessly, shoot for a rug with a color similar to the floor or a timeless neutral rug that will fit right in with a wide variety of styles.
Rugs that stand out
Rugs that blend in
- Afton Sisal Rug collection
- Sofia Wool Rug collection
What are your practical considerations?
As you’re thinking about what you want your rug to do, spare a thought for what you’ll need it to do, as well. This can affect not only the rug size, material, and pattern you choose, but also the color scheme that will work best. Considerations such as whether you need the rug to be easy to clean, if you need an area rug that will cover a lot of space, or even who will be walking on the rug and when can affect the color you may want to choose.
For example, if you have pets you think will spend a lot of time on your rug, you may want to avoid a dark colored rug that will make their shed hair stand out in favor of a lighter rug that will help hide the hairs until you have a chance to brush them off. If you’re placing your rug in high traffic areas where people will walk over it all the time, then a light colored rug that will show wear and tear faster and could be harder to see might not be the best choice.
Light and neutral rugs
Darker, highly-visible rugs
What’s the ambiance in the room?
Think about the room feel when selecting a color for a rug. Is it a bright and open room full of movement and excitement? Or is it a calmer, quieter space? Typically, lighter colors add energy and expand a room, while darker tones make a room more intimate and cozy. Meanwhile, cool colors and neutral tones create a meditative, peaceful atmosphere, while vibrant colors enliven a space and make it feel more active.
Thanks to the Create a Rug tool, you can preview various combinations of colors, border colors and flooring backgrounds to see what a custom rug will look like in your room. Play around with a few options and then choose a color that’ll fit the best in your home.
Rugs for a vibrant ambiance
Rugs to calm things down
Does the room already have a prevailing style?
If the room you’re going to place your new rug in already has a style, then you’ll either want the rug you choose to match it… or you could use your rug as the first step toward changing it. Either way, it’s a big consideration when deciding on a rug color.
If your room already has an eclectic style with a range of complex textures and multiple colors, for example, then you could choose something with an elaborate pattern in contrasting colors. If you’re placing your rug in a more calm, homey “cottagecore” type living room, a rug with neutral or dark colors would probably make for a better fit.
If most of the furnishings in your room are matching colors, then consider how a rug would look either matching or contrasting with them. Think about how the rug will look against your hardwood or carpeted flooring, and how that will affect how the room feels.
Want to give the space a sense of exciting momentum and energy? A flat, bright rug might do the trick. But if you’d rather enhance the cozy style that’s already there, then you could try a few high pile rugs or rugs with thick weaves in dark or neutral colors to make the room feel even more comfortable and warm. Whatever the style of the room where you place it, the color of the rug you add will affect it in some way. What it does is up to you.
Rugs for a rugged style
Rugs to enhance elegance
Whether you’ve got your rug color all figured out or you want to spend more time mulling over your options, you can find your perfect fit using Sisal’s rug customization tool. Just choose the size, style, pattern, and - yes - color you prefer and we’ll do the rest.
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