How to Style a Rug in a Living Room
A rug can be the perfect complement to a living room, bringing style and sophistication. Choosing the ideal living room rug can be a stressful process, with a wide range of materials. Colours, and sizes available. Once you’ve chosen the right rug for your living room, another challenge you’ll face is deciding where to place it within the room. In this quick guide from Rugs Direct, we’ll talk you through the best ways to style a rug in your living room, helping you to choose a rug and place it.
Choosing the Perfect Rug for Your Living Room
It’s important to buy a rug that fits the style and size of your living room. Planning ahead can help you avoid choosing a rug that clashes stylistically with the colour scheme or aesthetics of your living room. The first decision you make should be the size of rug you want for your living room. It’s worth measuring out potential rug sizes on your floor space, using masking tape to mark out boundaries.
As we lay out in our handy Rug Size Guide, our smallest rugs are perfect for compact spaces, slightly bigger than a coffee table, while our largest options will cover a living room area with multiple sofas. The 18-inch rule is a good strategy for normal or large living rooms; leaving an 18-inch gap between the edges of your rug and the walls of your room.
Once you’ve settled on a size for your rug, you’ll need to choose a material and style. Your choice of living room rug will have a considerable impact on the theme and ambience of your room, so it’s important to make an informed decision.
ANKARA GLOBAL Rugs
For a relaxed, classical vibe, you can choose a traditional rug, which often feature intricate floral patterns. A traditional Persian rug can bring a sense of comfort to a living room, particularly when contrasted with more contemporary decor.
Celestial Rugs
A statement rug in bold colours can help command attention in your living room. Uneven patterns, like our range of celestial rugs, give an attention-grabbing look. Choosing an eye-popping rug, brightly coloured in blues, greens, and purples, can give your living room a sense of vibrancy and passion.
Polar Rugs
If you’d like to use a rug as the centrepiece of a larger living room, a polar rug is a luxurious contemporary choice. With a shaggy, tufted look, polar rugs can be surrounded by chairs or sofas, giving a comfortable look that will blend with both modern and classical home decor. Polar rugs come in solid colours, with muted options like cream or beige available, or more vibrant options like lavender and terracotta.
Geometric Wool Rugs
Geometric wool rugs are a great choice for those searching for a more modern look in their living room. Featuring eye-catching styles and colours, geometric rugs make use of repeating shapes and lines. Our range of geometric living room rugs features everything from the Mondrian-esque Portland 8425 to the psychedelic Nomad Nourison Red Multi Rug. These rugs can come in attention-grabbing colours, or in neutral colours like black and white, to give a starker look. A geometric rug can be a conversation piece within your living room, bringing an up to date focal point to your social space.
For even more living room rug ideas, check out our great article on living room rug ideas.
Styling a Rug Within Your Living Room
Once you’ve chosen the perfect rug, it’s vital to place it properly within your living room. If using a rug as a centrepiece, such as a polar rug, then it shouldn’t necessarily be placed in the centre of the room, rather in the centre of the empty space. If certain walls of your room are bordered by sofas, then you will want to place your rug further away, so it will properly complement the layout of your room. Using a centred rug can also be an affordable choice within a larger living room.
For larger rugs, designed to fill the room, furniture will need to be placed over them. There are a few ways to arrange furniture on your rugs, with the common wisdom being that furniture should be either entirely on the rug, or half on half off.
A larger rug can create a more defined seating area in a living room, with all legs of chairs or sofas positioned on the rug. This will of course require a larger rug and tends to work better in more open-plan spaces. Make sure that the legs of your furniture are not within a few inches of the edge of your rug.
The half on half off method is another option for styling your living room rug, with only the front legs of your furniture reaching onto the rug. This can give your room a cohesive look, and also allow you to fit both a rug and sofa within a smaller room. It can also help to create an illusion of space within a room.
How to Style a Rug Within a Smaller Living Room
If you don’t have the space for a larger rug there are still a lot of great choices available to you. Small rugs can create a great centrepiece, perhaps with a coffee table placed on top or even as a standalone. A more unusual shape like a circular rug could also lend a smaller living room a unique style.
Explore Our Excellent Range of Living Room Rugs
At Rugs Direct, we offer a huge range of high-quality living room rugs for sale through our website. We have both classical and modern styles, like the Persian inspired ANKARA range, and the modernist Portland rugs range.
We offer a range of sizes and shapes, allowing you to pick the ideal rug for your living room, whether you want a small centrepiece or a larger colourful rug big enough to fit your furniture. You are sure to find living room rug ideas within our wide range of beautiful, high-quality rugs. We offer free UK delivery on all of our items, with a low price guarantee. We also have an amazing customer service team available to speak to you over the phone if you have any questions about our many styles of living room rugs.