17 living room rug ideas to elevate your home
BY LOUISE, RUG EXPERT AT RUGVISTA | PUBLISHED: 07/26/24
8 MIN READ
It’s a tight race between the living room and the kitchen for being the heart of the home – but our votes go to the living room! This room is a chameleon, serving both as a social area for parties and gatherings and a place for peace and quiet where you can sit back and relax. Decorating a room like that can feel tricky, but no worries! Here, we’ll answer the question of how to style your living room and share our top 17 living room rug ideas that’ll help get you inspired.
1. Finding your personal style
Decorating a room that feels homey and personal without appearing staged can be tricky, but we’re here to help! When it comes to living room rug ideas, identifying your style is a great starting point. Look at the existing furniture in your living room and find some key pieces or details you’re most fond of. Then, head over and browse among our collections. That way, you can find a matching living room rug that expresses your style with patterns, colours or materials.
2. Make it a double feature
If your room is big enough, divide it into smaller sections where each section gets its own rug. This layout is excellent if your living room is rectangular, and you can, for instance, use one rug for a seating area and another for your TV nook. If your living room is large enough to accommodate a dining table, you can use a rug to divide that part of the room from your more cosy hang-out spot.
3. Not all rugs are squares
Using rugs with different shapes for different purposes and areas, you can maximise comfort and add rugs to parts of the room where a traditional rectangular shape won’t fit. Depending on your floor plan, a living room runner rug can be a superb choice for a more narrow part of the room with heavy foot traffic. And with a round living room rug, you can create a cosy reading nook with your favourite armchair and a small side table.
4. Different areas for different activities
A rug is a perfect choice for dividing the living room into different areas, and it’s also a great way of grouping furniture together. A washable living room rug offers the ideal solution for a seating arrangement where you also want to be able to eat and drink without worrying about spills and stains. Depending on the size of your rug and the layout of the room, you either want to place your furniture entirely on a large rug, or place just the front legs of your sofa and armchairs on the rug. This will create a harmonic and coherent impression in the room, without pieces of furniture floating around on their own.
5. Pick up surrounding colours
If your home features an open floor plan, one way of tying together the different areas without decorating them in the exact same colour scheme is to pick up an accent colour from the adjacent room. If you style your open-area kitchen with red cabinets, you can place a red living room rug or a rug with red details in the living room part of the space. That way, the room gives a coherent and well-thought-out impression without decorating the different parts in the same colour scheme.
6. Bring in the calmness of nature with jute
Looking for living room rug inspiration? With light colours and beautiful textures, jute living room rugs are an excellent choice for your room. Their natural fibres bring an organic and rustic feeling to your living room, almost like you’re adding a touch of nature to your interior decoration. Our jute rugs are available in various colours and sizes, so it’s easy to find the perfect match for your style.
7. Style with stripes
A classic striped pattern can be traditional and modern, colourful and discrete, adding a subtle direction where you want the eyes to focus. This is one of our favourite rug ideas for the living room! Stripes can be narrow, wide or uneven, and you can use the pattern to elongate and broaden the impression of the room visually. By picking up accents from your other home decoration with a striped living room rug, you can create a cohesive look that adds personality and a stylish look.
8. Go for modern monochromes
Sometimes, bright colours just don’t fit with your style or with the atmosphere in the room. Adapt an elegant and modern look by decorating with monochromes instead, and classics like black living room rugs and white living room rugs never go out of style. Indulge in the look by adding interior details in the same colours, or mix it up using the rug as a backdrop for a colourful sofa or painting.
9. Be consistent with solids
Single coloured living room rugs are the perfect way of creating a coherent style, where you can match your rug to the walls or other textiles in the room. A green living room rug adds a sense of calm and serenity to the room, whether you’re opting for a deep jade hue or a light olive green one. With a blue living room rug, you’re adding elegance to the space, from frozen pastels to nuances reminiscent of the Mediterranean sea.
10. Add a statement rug
Make the rug the centre of attention by opting for a living room rug with an abstract pattern. These rugs are not for the fainthearted; they are vibrant, bold, and contemporary in their design, always making a statement. Brush strokes, landscapes or a kaleidoscope? You’ll discover new details each time you look at the rug. Adding an abstract rug to your living room will make your floors vivid canvases of colourful creativity.
11. Add layers – why settle for just one rug?!
When it comes to living room rug rules, there’s no rule stating that you can have one rug simultaneously! Enhance the cosiness ever more by adding rugs in layers; for instance, you can have a jute rug or a large living room rug in a neutral colour as a base, and add a colourful or patterned rug on top. You can use the larger rug to create a framing effect, making the top rug the focal point of your room.
12. Create a cosy corner for relaxation with a shaggy rug
A soft, shaggy living room rug is the perfect way to add comfort to the room. These plush rugs come in a wide variety of sizes and colours, so you can easily find the right one for your living room. Place the rug under your sofa for a smooth and cloud-like feeling anytime you enter or exit your favourite hang-out spot. A shaggy rug gives the room a warm and welcoming atmosphere, perfect for a living room.
13. Decorate with oriental rugs to create a traditional warmth
With their intricate designs and intense colours, oriental rugs for the living room are a perfect choice when looking for living room rug ideas. The patterns and colourways on oriental rugs are often unique to the geographical area of manufacturing, and there are tons of style options to choose from. Oriental rugs bring a warm and welcoming atmosphere to your home that’s easy to match with different interior styles.
14. A piece of art for your floor
If you want to truly embrace craftsmanship and exclusivity, a unique living room carpet is your top choice. These handcrafted rugs are pieces of art for your floors that rightfully demand their space – they’re not to be placed entirely under a large table or sofa! As these rugs are one of a kind, you’ll be decorating with an exceptional carpet that holds both heritage and culture between its warp. The rugs’ motifs are traditional, often inspired by the life of the carpet weavers and the nature surrounding them.
15. Balance with soft neutrals
Whether you’re looking for a minimalistic impression or a tranquil atmosphere, a rug in neutral colours is the right way. A beige living room rug brings the perfect blend of warmth, versatility and style to your room, with hues ranging from sun-warm sand to pale creamy white. Grey living room rugs, on the other hand, can be inspired by mountains, metals or charcoal, depending on the hue. Both colours are easy to mix and match with various colours, and you can either use them as a subtle background to let other design pieces shine, but they are also the perfect choice to create a serene atmosphere in the living room.
16. Play with structures
When a plush shaggy rug or a colourful patterned rug might feel a bit too much, you can add a stylish layer of structure to the room with a living room rug with both high and low pile. Using differences in pile height to create patterns, these rugs easily fit in a modernly decorated room and a more bohemian setting, creating a cosy atmosphere without being too eye-catching. Depending on the design, the pattern can feel smooth and organic or strict and geometrical; it all comes down to personal preferences.
17. Go with the flow
Interior details, architecture or ways of moving throughout a room – everything has a flow. A living room rug with geometric patterns can amplify that flow, having odd shapes, bold patterns and vibrant colours. These rugs immediately become the focal point of any room, and you can play around by placing them so that they mirror or accentuate other interior elements in your living room. For instance, a rug with round shapes can mimic a softly shaped sofa, but it can also contrast with the clean lines in a very strict and taut room. A living room rug idea that goes with the flow, simply put!