Choosing An Area Rug For The Family Room

A few weeks ago, after we painted, I started to think about choosing an area rug for the family room.

I had a natural jute rug in the room a few years back. It wasn’t an expensive purchase. I think I found it at “Tuesday Morning” for about $100.  I liked that look a lot, and still do, but it did have some drawbacks.  The biggest nuisance was that it collected a considerable amount of dirt underneath it.

We also happened to get a puppy goldendoodle shortly after I purchased that rug. Bentley was really fond of chewing on just about everything at the time and the jute rug was beginning to unravel at the edges where he had pulled on it with his puppy teeth.

This is how the space looked then.

I ended up taking that rug up to my shop at Sweet Clover Barn to soften up my space and give it a little stamp of my style. Meanwhile my family room has been without a rug for a couple of years now.

Because my family room is now white, I’ve decided to stray away from the jute rugs and try to bring in some color on the floor. I have always liked the look of oriental rugs. I’m a bit picky about color and style, but age and worn spots don’t bother me at all.

I grew up in Upstate New York in a little resort town. The old historic Inn in our town was filled with antique colonial furniture and big old oriental rugs. I loved the warmth and sense of history that those rooms exuded.

I saw this rug that I’m crazy about on Jillian Harris’s Instagram feed recently.  This is the Kismat Rug in Navy by Caitlin Wilson.  I love the navy and pink colorway and the design of this rug. The price is a  little higher than I had budgeted though for this room, but I still have a big crush on this rug!

I hit some estate sales, but missed out on a couple beauties that would have worked.  I was looking for an oriental with navy and muted red tones in it.  And I was shooting for a 5×8 foot rug so that it would just fit in the “L” shape that the two couches made.  If the rug was larger I could have it under the couches, but extending past the couches didn’t look right.

Then a few weeks ago I saw a message from one of the ladies at the barn about a piece of furniture she was selling. In the picture I noticed that there was an oriental rug under the piece of furniture. It looked worn, but the colors were very similar to the Instagram rug I was admiring.  So I asked my friend if it was for sale.

It was Liela’s last month at the barn and she was closing up shop, so she offered it to me for just $10! I thought even if it didn’t work in the house I could use it in my space at Sweet Clover, so I purchased it.

It was pretty worn and dirty from years of use and from being on the floor of her shop space at Sweet Clover Barn.

The print is much smaller than the new rug I was looking at, but the colors are very similar.  I was able to clean it up considerably.  Which by the way wasn’t difficult at all.  I will write a post on the cleaning process I used soon.

And here is how it looks in our family room!

I still have some finishing touches to put on this room and while I saved a considerable amount of money choosing an area rug for the family room, I recently splurged on something that I think will have a big impact on the overall look.  I can’t wait to show you, but it will take a few weeks for it to arrive.  If you want to keep tabs on my shop happenings and what’s going on at the house, be sure to follow me on http://www.instagram.com/anticamarket and http://www.facebook.com/pages/anticamarket too!

Thanks for stopping by.

Fondly, Michele