How to Find the Perfect Rug: My 3-Year Search and Lessons Learned

"Life is a journey and so is finding a rug." -Unknown

Spoiler alert...

Last summer I ended a 3 year journey I was on to find the right rug for my living room. I’m here to share a few tips with you that I learned along the way so your next rug purchase decision does NOT take years. But first - some background. 

My husband and I purchased our home in 2019 as first time homebuyers thinking it was a starter home we would move out of in 3-5 years. Fast forward almost 5 years later and we’re still in this small (but ADORED) house unsure of whether we will be moving anytime soon due to the current housing market. We moved into our house from what was at one time my husband’s bachelor pad apartment with our combined eccentric collection of furniture which included hand-me-downs from family, remnants of cheap college stuff and a couple pieces we had purchased together as newlyweds to upscale that bachelor pad a bit.  One of those was a new rug– nothing fancy–a Moroccan-boho style white shag area rug with gray pattern. 

We brought that rug with us into our new living room and it was fine! It was neutral and matched (enough) the rest of the furniture we had. But over time it became the bane of my existence, peaking in 2020 when we spent a LOT of pandemic time within the four walls of our living room and I just decided I couldn’t stand it anymore with its fraying tassels and matted wool. So began my quest for a new living room rug. A quest I took very seriously since I needed hobbies during lockdown.

Here are my tips for how to find the perfect rug for your space based on my experience!

Create a visual that represents the space where your rug will be

An area rug tends to be a financially and physically large purchase, so not an easy item to purchase and try in your space and simply return if it doesn’t work. Because of this , I decided I needed to create a visual representation of my living room on my computer and swap different rug images into that representation to visualize how it would look in my room. SO, naturally I opened PowerPoint on my computer. WHY you ask? Because I’m a millennial in corporate America who has created more than my fair share of PowerPoint ‘decks’ and as a result have become a PPT whiz, no cap. It is my canvas. Of course, a visual can be created in any software you are comfortable with, like Canva or Adobe Illustrator. Anyways, to create my visual I Googled furniture pieces that looked like the hodge podge of things in my living room and as I shopped for rugs I’d insert images of the ones I liked into a new PPT slide. I was then able to try out as many rugs as I wanted without buying them and hauling them in and out of my house to return if I didn’t like them. 

Does the Calibri font give away the fact I made these in PowerPoint??

After a couple months of this exercise, I finally decided on a rug. It arrived and I eagerly enlisted my husband to help me move all the furniture, remove the old rug, and roll out the new one…

Wah wahhh. It is a lovely rug. But it was too dark, too busy for all the other busy-ness that was happening in this room of mis-matched furniture, a paint color we were not planning on investing in changing, and new baby supplies. So you know what I did? Returned that rug!! Leading me to tip #2 for how to choose the right rug for you. 

DON’T settle for a rug you don’t like (or any décor piece for that matter)

This may sound obvious, but as I mentioned - purchasing an area rug is not a simple purchase, and you want to make sure the investment you are making is one you are happy with. SO, yes, returning the rug required having to wrap that baby back up tight enough to fit back into its packaging and schedule a pick up and move the furniture again and put the old rug back. It was all a pain, but I wasn’t keeping or spending a lot of money on something I didn’t love. And it was in compliance with the return policy!

It was a good lesson in intentional spending and making sure I kept that mindset even though I really just didn’t want to have to keep looking for a rug. But I did continue on that treacherous journey, and eventually found this rug from West Elm that seemed like it would be a nice fit for the room. 

I was confident in this visual and photos I saw of it online and purchased the rug. And guess what? I RETURNED THAT ONE TOO. I so wanted to love it in the room. It was a lovely rug. And my husband helped me move all the furniture so we could put the new rug in and I saw it and said ‘OK it’s..fine…’ and 10 minutes later I confessed to him that no, it wasn’t fine. It wasn’t working. I nearly settled for it but then thought of the time and money invested and to my husband’s dismay, we had to move the furniture AGAIN and ship back another rug.

Top: West Elm rug experiment | Bottom: Husband being a great helper and a great sport

This story does have a happy ending though…resulting from my third tip for choosing a perfect rug design for your room:

Expand your color palette horizons 

I found myself getting stuck on the color palette of black and white and green and that a lot of my home adhered to until one day I realized how black and white and green our home actually was. Having two toddlers and all of their belongings accumulating in our home like brightly colored toys, fun-patterned bed linens and playful clothes has made me want more color in our home’s décor. According to a prominent trend forecaster, interior design trends are moving in the direction of more childlike and colorful spaces , so it sounds like I'm a subconscious trend forecaster myself!

Colors, Colors Everywhere

My quest changed from finding a perfect rug to incorporating more colors into our house to create a less stark environment. I want a cozier space with new hues – MUTED ones because I’m not trying to make our house the inside of a Fisher Price fun house but new colors nonetheless.

I added a swatch of the weird yellowish beige color of our living room to my very professional interior designer PPT rug visual and started to try new rug colors, including a light blue patterned one from Pottery Barn that I surprisingly loved. When I saw it next to the paint color swatch it was an aha moment. My eyeballs were pleased. I was so surprised that this color I never considered looked so perfect in this context. It was a lesson I needed to help me make this decision - that tastes and preferences and perspectives change. I was stuck on what I was used to even though it continually didn’t work. 

This aha moment that a light blue rug was REALLY what I was looking for ultimately led me to this beauty from Rifle Paper Co. 

Winner, winner

It was not a black and white contemporary design I thought I was looking for the whole time–but a completely new introduction of color and character and pattern and a touch of femininity into my home. And look who loved playing on it the moment we unrolled it! A true crowd pleaser. 

The CHOSEN rug from Rifle Paper Co

Slow & steady changes

The new rug is just one of a million changes I want to make to our living room–like replacing our hodge podge of furniture pieces–but time and budgets don’t allow me to do a total overhaul all at once. However, this new rug is a big inspiration to build my new vision as I’m able. Rugs certainly act as a great centerpiece to a space, binding everything together. While the florals and color of the rug aren’t reflected in my existing living room décor, it will be fun to see the evolution of the whole room as little changes take shape just as they have been over the past 5 years. From a young couple’s pandemic hideaway to a newborn’s tummy-time playground to now two toddlers’ dance floor, the room doesn’t need coordinating furniture to be a beautiful place! 

The best rugs from my quest

Here are some of my favorite rugs I came across during my 3-year search for the perfect living room rug. You can tell I am into a floral vibe:

Rilfe Paper Co

Ruggable

Pottery Barn

Rifle Paper Co