Collection: Design Rugs

A design rug is one that somebody drew. Not a pattern pulled off a shelf, but a piece with a shape, a palette and a composition that had to be decided on purpose. That sounds like a small distinction. In a room it is the whole difference.

Most people buy the rug last. The sofa is there, the table is there, and the rug gets chosen to fill what is left over. That works, and it gets you a rug that is fine. It almost never gets you a room anyone remembers. A design rug asks for the opposite order.

Choose the Rug First

Pick the rug before the sofa and everything after it gets easier. The rug sets the palette, so you stop guessing at cushion colours. It sets the scale, so you know how big the seating can be. And it fixes where the room starts and stops, which is the hardest thing to judge on an empty floor.

Do it the other way round and the rug has to agree with four things that were chosen without it. That is why so many rugs end up beige. Beige is what is left when nothing else is allowed to move.

So if you are furnishing from scratch, or properly redoing a room rather than topping it up, this is the moment. Buy the rug first and let it lead.

What You Are Asking the Rug to Do

Before the look, settle the job. There are three, and they want different rugs.

Anchoring is the common one. One seating group, one rug, everything standing on it or touching it. The rug holds the furniture together and says this is the room. For that you want a rug big enough that the front legs of every seat are on it, and a design that still reads with a sofa sitting on top of it.

Dividing is for open plan. Kitchen, dining and living in one long space with no walls to explain where one ends. A rug does that better than furniture, and it does it without blocking the view. Here you want two rugs that are clearly different, not two that nearly match. Nearly matching looks like a mistake.

Softening is for a hard room. Concrete, oak, glass, straight lines, plenty of light and nothing to absorb the sound. The rug is usually the only soft thing that goes in. Texture matters more than pattern for this, and it is where wool earns its price.

Round Changes a Room More Than a Pattern Does

Almost everything in a house is square. Walls, windows, tables, the floorboards. Put one circle into that and the room reads differently straight away, without needing a loud pattern to do it.

Round is where this collection runs unusually deep, and it is worth knowing before you settle on a rectangle. A circle suits a square room, where four equal walls want breaking up. It suits a round table, where the shapes simply agree. Under a rectangular table it is a deliberate contrast that works better than people expect. And in a hallway or a reading corner it makes somewhere to arrive rather than a path to walk down.

The sizing is different though. Under a round dining table the rug has to clear the table edge by 60 to 70 cm all the way round, so chairs stay on it when they are pushed back. For a table of 120 cm across that already means 250 cm, which is bigger than most people picture. As an accent beside seating, 160 to 200 cm across is the diameter that looks right. Below that it reads as a mat. Our round rugs show the full range.

Design Is Not a Price Bracket

Worth saying plainly, because the word design is so often used to mean expensive.

In this collection the cheapest rug and the dearest one sit side by side, and both were properly designed. At one end, flat woven jacquard made in Belgium, machine woven, holding a drawn line with real precision and priced within reach of an ordinary room. At the other, wool tufted or knotted by hand, where the surface itself is what you are paying for and the rug will outlive the room it was bought for.

What changes with the price is not whether a designer was involved. It is how the rug feels underfoot, how long it lasts, and how deep the colour sits in the fibre. So set your budget honestly, then take the best design inside it. Better that than the best construction in a design you only half like, because the design is the part you look at every day.

Getting the Size Right When the Rug Is the Point

A design rug that is too small is money thrown away, because the part you paid for disappears under the furniture.

In a living room, 200 x 300 cm carries a three seater with armchairs, front legs on the rug. Anything smaller floats and the room comes apart around it. In a dining room the rug has to be big enough that a chair stays on it when it is pushed back, so 200 x 300 cm for a small table of four and 240 x 340 cm once you are at six. Leave clear floor in front of the sofa as well, so the design reads as a whole instead of as a border around your furniture.

Caught between two sizes, take the bigger one. That is true of any rug and it is doubly true here.

Design That Goes Outside

A good number of these designs are made to live outdoors as well as in, which widens what you can do with them.

They are flat woven from recycled fibre, so rain does not finish them and a hose and a brush is a normal way to clean one. That makes them the sensible answer for a covered terrace, a veranda, a garden room, or the end of an open kitchen where a wool rug would not survive a summer. A terrace with a real rug on it stops being an outdoor space with furniture in it and starts being a room.

The same construction is why these designs hold up under a dining table indoors. Chairs slide, crumbs do not bury themselves, and there is no pile to crush.

Living With a Design Rug

One last thing, since this is the piece you will look at longest.

Judge it standing up, not from a photograph taken from a stepladder. A photograph flattens the scale, and scale is most of what a design does. A shape that looks neat on a screen can be half a metre wide on your floor. Judge it in the light the room actually gets, too, because wool and viscose both shift through the day while a flat weave stays put.

And if it is really a pattern you are after rather than the object itself, our abstract rugs are the better place to start.

We have been choosing rugs since 1907, long enough to know that the rug people regret is nearly always the one they bought last and too small. The design collection can be seen in our rug shop and showroom in Willebroek, in the Antwerp region, easily accessible from Antwerp, Brussels, Mechelen and Sint-Niklaas, where the round formats are worth standing on before you decide. Free EU delivery on every order.