It may seem strange to adorn your hardwood flooring with rugs, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the right rugs can perfectly compliment not only the colors, but even patterns of your hardwood flooring. Even better, they don’t always have be identical – or even close – to work.
Why It’s A Good Idea To Use Rugs With Hardwoods
Hardwood floors look great, but it takes effort to walk across them quietly. And if walking barefoot, they tend to get cold during those long winter months. Carefully placed rugs will help avoid both problems while enhancing your room’s overall style.
Rugs often define subsections and bring elements together when used on hardwood flooring. For example, you may want to use a large rug to set your family room’s lounging area. Another could then be used under your television or home theater system, especially if noise reduction is needed (tip: consider placing one under your subwoofer if you have surround sound). A separate rug could be used to soften a children’s play area (and also help protect your hardwood panels).
Matching Rugs And Runners
Although your rugs and runners don’t need to match the hardwood, it’s helpful if they are quite similar or identical themselves. However, you can make an exception to this rule is a particular room’s segment contrasts starkly from the rest of the room. For example, remember the play are that we mentioned previously? It makes perfect sense for such a contrasting segment to reflect its own style.
Matching Hardwood To Rugs
The patterns and tones of rugs can perfectly match those of hardwood floors despite being very different types of materials. However, this isn’t always necessary. In fact, a growing trend actually uses rugs to intentionally contrast wood panels, thereby adding a sense of charm. This design technique is also used to make rooms seem more spacious visually when dark colored flooring is used.
Shifting Colors
To further put you at ease over non-matching rugs, remember that many wood panels will actually undergo color shifts over time. Take the American Cherry, for example: oxidization will naturally cause its color to become darker. Consequently, some rugs also tend to fade with time. The effect of both become much more noticeable if they were originally intended to match.
Matching Other Elements
Typically, you’re better off matching your rugs to furniture, tables, decor and other bold elements found in the room. This creates an overall sense of cohesion and gives greater control of the overall design.
Ready To Choose?
If you’re consider a redesign for your home’s flooring, be sure to stop by Rugs, Rolls and More! Our Plaistow flooring gallery features a vast selection of rugs and runners to choose from, along with a variety of other hard and soft surface flooring.
