Rugs for Rented Rooms and Small Flats

The rug is the lever you actually have

In a rented flat the floor is usually the largest surface you are not allowed to touch, and very often the least attractive. A rug is the only intervention that covers a lot of it, costs nothing to reverse, and leaves with you.

That changes what you should optimise for. Buy for the rug rather than for the room, because you will have several rooms and only one rug.

Covering a floor you did not choose

You can put a rug over fitted carpet, and in a rental it is often the fastest improvement available. It needs to be dense and it needs a pad made for carpet, otherwise it creeps and ripples underfoot. A flatweave over a soft carpet is the worst combination there is, it will not sit still.

Over a hard floor you did not choose, go larger rather than smaller. A rug that covers most of the visible floor reads as a decision. A small rug marooned in the middle of an unattractive floor draws attention to the floor.

Do not fight the existing colour, absorb it. If the floor is orange-toned pine, a rug with warmth in it will make the floor look intentional. A cool grey rug will make it look like a mistake you were stuck with.

Size in a small room

The reflex in a small room is to buy a small rug. It is almost always wrong. A small rug cuts the floor into pieces and makes the room read smaller. One large rug that runs close to the walls unifies the floor and makes it read larger.

The workable rule for a small sitting room is that the front legs of every seat should sit on the rug. That alone ties the furniture into one group. If you cannot manage that, put all the furniture fully off the rug and let it float as a defined island, but do not do the half-measure where some legs are on and some are off.

Leave a consistent border of bare floor around the edge, roughly twenty to forty centimetres, and keep it even. An uneven border is what makes a room look badly proportioned.

Because everything in the store is woven to your size, you are not choosing from five standard boxes. Measure the space you have and ask for that.

Pieces that move well

Choose a size that works in more than one room. A rug sized precisely to one alcove is a rug you will leave behind.

Choose wool. It survives being rolled, moved, and put down on a different floor, and it recovers from compression. A very fine bamboo silk piece is a beautiful thing that does not enjoy being moved every eighteen months.

Pick a mid-tone rather than a very pale one. Pale rugs are wonderful in a house you control and punishing in a flat where the front door opens onto the sitting room.

Poufs are worth a mention here: they are seating that stores flat against a wall, they weigh nothing, and they solve the problem of a room that occasionally needs to seat five people and normally seats two.