How to Choose a Rug: Size, Color, Material and the Final Pick

To choose a rug, decide in this order: the room's job, size and shape, fiber, color against the floor and sofa, pattern or solid, then quality and price. Size is the decision that fails most often, and color the one people regret. When two rugs still fit, judge each against the room, not against each other.

1. The room's job. Anchor a seating group, soften a bedroom, take a hallway's traffic or sit under dining chairs.
2. Size. The furniture sets it: front legs of the seating on the rug, 8 to 18 in of floor to the walls. Most sofas take an 8x10 ft, a sectional a 9x12 ft; between two sizes, take the larger.
3. Shape. A straight-edged rug, a round rug or a runner, from the furniture's footprint and the walkways.
4. Fiber. Wool for rooms you live in; the other fibers have narrower jobs.
5. Color. A clear step lighter or darker than the floor, a step apart from the sofa.
6. Pattern or solid. Count the pattern the room already has.
7. Quality and price. Turn it over, press the pile, read the listing, then check the price against the construction.

Start with the room: what will the rug do?

A rug's job settles half the choice before you look at a single design. Write down what the rug is for and who uses the floor, because a design chosen for a photograph and put under a moving chair or across a doorway is the one that disappoints.

• Traffic. A doorway path, a family room or a floor shared with a dog wants wool and a mid-tone or a pattern that absorbs honest life. A quiet bedroom can take a pale field and a deep pile.
• Chairs and doors. Where dining chairs slide, an office chair rolls or a door sweeps over the rug, choose short pile, 0.4 in. Living rooms and bedrooms take any height: short, medium at 0.8 in or shag at 1.2 in.
• What the room needs from the floor. A room of hard surfaces needs warmth and quiet; a room already full of textiles needs the rug to hold still.

The room pages gather the rugs that suit each job, rugs for the living room and rugs for the bedroom first.

What size and shape of rug do you need?

The furniture sets the size of a rug, not the room. In a living room, the front legs of the sofa and chairs sit on the rug, which for most sofas means an 8x10 ft; sofas over 96 in and L-shaped sectionals take a 9x12 ft. Leave 8 to 18 in of floor between the rug and the walls.

• Living room. Front legs on, 6 to 12 in of rug past each arm of the sofa. The method, with a worked example, is in living room rug size.
• Dining room. The rug extends at least 24 in past the table on every side, so a pulled-back chair keeps all four legs on it. A table for 4 to 6 takes an 8x10 ft; a table for 6 to 8, a 9x12 ft.
• Bedroom. The rug shows at least 18 in past the sides and foot of the bed: an 8x10 ft under a queen, a 9x12 ft under a king. Runners beside the bed are the alternative.

Between two sizes, take the larger. A rug a little too big reads as generous; a rug a little too small shrinks the furniture around it. Every room, with plans, is in the room-by-room size guide.

Rug, round rug or runner?

Shape follows the footprint of the furniture and the paths people walk. A straight-edged rug suits a straight sofa or a bed; a round rug suits a round table, a curved sofa, a square room or an entry, where corners would only be walked around; a runner suits a hall, a kitchen line or the side of a bed. Where each shape earns its place is set out in when to use a round rug.

Shape is also a design question. We recompose the round and runner versions of every design for the shape rather than cropping them from the rectangle. A circle is built as a circle, so the motifs meet the edge where a circle wants them, and a runner is laid out long rather than sliced narrow. Choosing the round version of a design you like gives you a related composition, not the same rug in a different outline.

Which rug material is best?

For a living room, a bedroom or any floor you live on, wool is the best rug material: it springs back under furniture and feet, its natural lanolin slows spills from soaking in, and a well-made wool rug wears slowly and evenly. The other fibers each have a narrower job.

Construction matters as much as fiber. A hand-knotted rug is built knot by knot on the warp of a loom; a hand-tufted rug is yarn punched through a canvas and held with glue; a power-loomed rug is made by machine. The differences, and how to see them, are in how a Moroccan rug is made. If the choice in front of you is wool against a machine-washable rug, wool vs washable rugs weighs the two honestly.

A new wool rug sheds for its first weeks. That is loose fiber from the shearing working free, not the rug failing, and it settles with gentle vacuuming, no beater bar.

What color rug should you get?

Choose a rug's color against the three largest surfaces in the room: the floor, the sofa and the walls. A rug reads best a clear step lighter or darker than the floor, a step apart from the sofa, and carrying at least one color the room already holds, so it looks chosen for the room rather than added to it.

Should a rug be lighter or darker than the floor?

A rug can be lighter or darker than the floor; what matters is a clear step of contrast. On dark wood, dark tile or slate, a lighter rug in ivory, cream, sand or pale pink shows its own edges and lifts the room. On pale oak, whitewashed boards or light concrete, a deeper rug in rust, navy, forest green or brown grounds it. A rug in the floor's own tone disappears into it, and the room loses its middle.

On a mid-tone floor, a rug with both lighter and darker colors does the work: a pale field a step lighter than the wood and a pattern a step darker, so the rug holds its edges without a hard line.

Two practical points decide close calls. Light rugs show dirt and hair sooner; mid-tones and pattern hide them. And light changes everything: a north-facing room cools colors down and a south-facing room warms them, so look at your candidate in daylight and in lamplight before you decide.

Should your rug match your couch?

No. A rug in the sofa's exact color flattens both into one block. Keep them a clear step apart in depth, and let the rug carry the sofa's color as a minor note, a band or a motif, so the two look chosen together rather than matched. Pictured, the other safe route: an ivory rug under a navy sofa, its black dots answering the dark wood rather than the velvet.

Riad shows the idea. The rug's deep blue end band repeats the navy velvet sofa, and its rose and burnt orange pick up the rust cushion and the rust armchair, so the rug and the sofa agree without matching. Ivory florets keep the field lighter than the sofa, which lets the dark seat read against the floor.

What color rug makes a room look bigger?

A light rug with low contrast, sized generously. A pale field with a soft pattern lets the floor read as one surface, and a larger rug does more for a small room than a lighter one. A dark rug is not wrong in a small room: it makes the room feel enclosed and warm rather than open. To build the rest of the room from the rug's palette, pull three colors from the rug.

Patterned or solid rug?

Count the pattern the room already has before choosing between a patterned and a solid rug. Where curtains, cushions, art or a printed sofa are busy, a solid or quiet rug holds the room still; where the room is plain and undecided, the rug is the place for pattern. The room decides this, not the rug.

Pattern also works as camouflage. A patterned or mid-tone rug hides crumbs, paw prints and the path to the kitchen; a solid ivory field shows every one. And scale changes how pattern reads: a small repeat looks like texture from across the room, a large motif looks like a statement.

Our collections sit at different points on that line. The Dune collection is Beni Ourain rugs in solid colors, all texture and no motif. The checkered rugs of Dama bring ordered grids, and the tiled rugs of Mozaik bring florals and tiles with order under them. Bloom brings painterly color from Boujaad rugs, the loudest of the four.

How can you tell if a rug is good quality?

Turn the rug over: a well-made rug shows how it was built on the back. On a hand-knotted rug the design appears mirrored, knot by knot, because every knot is tied through the foundation; a tufted rug hides a glued canvas or cloth backing. Then run these checks, in the order that settles most rugs.

1. The back. Knotted rows and the design mirrored mean hand-knotted. A plain fabric cover means hand-tufted. A perfectly regular grid and a stiff back mean machine-made.
2. The fringe. On a hand-knotted rug the fringe is the warp itself, running out of the body of the rug. A fringe sewn or glued along the end was added afterwards.
3. The pile. Press it: good wool springs back. Push a finger in: in a dense rug you struggle to reach the foundation. High knot density is what makes a pile stand up for years.
4. The fiber. Wool feels warm and faintly waxy from its lanolin, like a wool sweater. A slick, cool, plastic feel or a strong glue smell points to synthetic fiber or a latex backing.
5. The edges and the pattern. Look for a hand-finished selvedge, the wrapped side edge that keeps a rug straight. A hand-knotted line wavers slightly and no two rows are identical; a printed or machine pattern is perfect.
6. The listing, when you buy online. A good listing states the fiber in percent, the construction by name (hand-knotted, hand-tufted, power-loomed), the pile height, where the rug was made, and shows a close-up of the back. If a seller cannot say, treat that as the answer.

The knot count is never the point; the back, the fringe and the fiber are, and we show all three in our photographs.

How much should a good rug cost?

A good rug is priced by its area and its construction, so the honest answer depends on the size. The price per square foot falls as the rug grows.

A machine-made or tufted rug of the same size costs a fraction of a hand-knotted one, and the gap is the construction and the fiber the checks above test. Whether that difference is worth it for your room, and what a rug costs to live with over the years, is its own question: what a Moroccan rug costs.

How to choose between two rugs

To choose between two rugs that both fit, score each one against the room rather than against the other. A side-by-side comparison rewards whichever photograph is more striking, which is a test of photography rather than of fit. One rug never beats another in the abstract; each one fits the room or fails it.

Six questions settle most ties, asked of one rug at a time with the answer written down. Scale: at the size the room needs, does the design still read, or does it get lost or crowded? Light: does it hold up in the room's light, morning and evening? Pattern load: does the room have enough plain surface left to carry it? Traffic: will it take the path through the room? Shape: is the footprint right for the furniture? The anchor: does it sit well beside the one piece you would never replace, whether that is a chair, a painting or the floor itself?

Four or more in one column is a decision. Three against three means both rugs fit this room, and the tiebreakers below settle it.

See the rug in your room first

Photographs settle ties badly, because a rug photographed from above fills the frame at any size. Ours are edited toward neutral light and the true color and texture of the piece, as close to the rug itself as we can make them, so they are a faithful starting point rather than a verdict.

The no-cost version of seeing it first is tape. Mark the rug's exact dimensions on the floor, put the furniture where it would go, and live with the outline for a day. Scale answers itself overnight.

The quicker version is on the rug's own page. See it in your room takes a photo of your space and lays the design you are weighing on your floor in about 20 seconds, at the size you choose, so two finalists can be compared in the same room. If neither is right and you want a design of your own, send us the room through our custom page.

If it is still a tie

Four tiebreakers, in the order they settle things.

1. Take the one whose colors you can already place twice in the room. A rug whose palette is already present is the one that will not feel imported.
2. Take the one you would still choose without the room. If a design only works as a solution, it stops working the moment the sofa changes.
3. Take the one that is a real design rather than a shape you have seen everywhere. The mass-market copy of a Moroccan rug repeats the same figure down the field; a hand-knotted pattern drifts, because the hand at the loom is deciding.
4. Take the larger one. Between two sizes the bigger is nearly always the right call; the smaller is the one people regret.

Would you rather change a design than choose between two? See how to order a custom Moroccan rug. Only one finalist so far? Put our Moroccan rug collection through the same six questions.