Yellow, blue, green

Colorful Moroccan rug ideas start with one decision: which color leads the room. Yellow, blue and green each want a different room and different company. Ochre and mustard warm a room that gets cool daylight and sit best beside rust and walnut. Navy and teal settle a corner you use after dark. Sage and olive behave almost like neutrals beside oak, leather and rose.

Filed by eye

Every rug on the site sits under the colors you see first, not the wool underneath. We check each colorway by eye on that shape's own photograph and file the rug under the one or two colors it shows, or under Multi-color when several share the field. That is why Bejmat, a sage rug on an ivory ground, lives under Green. It is also why a round rug or a runner can read differently from the same design as a rug: the design is redrawn for the shape, never cropped, so its colors land in new proportions. Tarz reads navy as a rug and teal with mustard as a round. When you filter by color, check the color on the photograph of the shape you want, then read the room ideas below.

The yellow room

Yellow is the color for a sitting room that faces the garden or takes gray northern light. It puts warmth low, on the floor and under the furniture, and leaves the walls free to stay pale.

Zafran is named for saffron and is that color in the pan: a solid ochre-gold wool field with no motif and no border, the pile meeting in a soft cross at the center, pale blush-ivory tassels at each end. It comes from Dune, our solid-field Beni Ourain rugs. In a garden room it sits under a rust sofa, walnut shelving and brass floor lamps, and the plants at the window do the green for you.

Yellow's best partner is rust, not gray. The two share a warm base, so the room reads at one temperature, and gray beside ochre tends to look cold rather than calm.

Abrid, from the Amazigh word for path, keeps the same ochre and draws thin pale ivory lines up it, each one slightly jagged, running end to end. The lines do quiet work in a long room: they carry the eye down its length. Under rust velvet sofas and a pale stone table, Abrid brings pattern without adding a color. Every yellow design, solid or drawn, sits under yellow Moroccan rugs on the rugs page.

The blue corner

Blue is the color for the part of the house you use in the evening: a reading corner, a window seat, the bedroom. Navy holds the room still after the lamps come on. Left alone it can read cold, so give it warm company: rust, camel, brass, cane.

Itran means stars in Amazigh, and the rug takes the word literally: a deep navy field scattered evenly with small ivory dots, braided navy tassels at each end. Under a window banquette with rust cushions and a brass sconce, it turns a corner into a place to sit after dark, and the dots keep the navy from reading as a hole in the floor.

Tarz is the word for Fez embroidery. Its navy tiles, each with a small pink or camel center, sit inside stepped mauve and camel frames and alternate with ivory tiles that hold a single navy dot. It is the blue rug for a room that already carries warm color: beside a deep teal sofa and peach armchairs, the camel frames in the pattern pick up the chairs across the room. Solid, dotted or tiled, the full range sits under blue Moroccan rugs.

The green room

Green is the color for a living room already full of wood and plants. It comes in two kinds. Sage and olive behave like neutrals and sit under almost anything. Forest green is a statement and wants a lighter room around it.

Bejmat is named for the small terracotta floor tile of Fez and is built like a tiled floor: small raised squares of sage-gray wool set in flat ivory channels, like grout. It is a Beni Mrirt rug from Terrain, where the texture does the work a pattern would do elsewhere. In a loft living room it sits under rose and rust velvet sofas and cream chairs without competing with any of them.

Azetta means loom in Amazigh. Forest green and pale sage bars run its length like the reed of a loom, with nested green brackets at the top, one mustard bar across the middle and a row of blush and brown blocks below it. In a panelled sitting room with herringbone oak and tan leather chairs, the mustard bar picks up the leather and the forest green holds the floor. Sage, olive and forest green all sit under green Moroccan rugs.

• Zafran, Dune collection. /product/zafran-ochre-moroccan-rug
• Itran, Jibal collection. /product/itran-navy-ivory-moroccan-rug
• Bejmat, Terrain collection. /product/bejmat-sage-fez-tile-rug

At a glance

The cover rug, Lazward, is the case where you do not have to choose: cobalt blossoms with mustard centers and mustard blossoms with forest-green centers on an ivory and blush field, redrawn radially for the circle.

Choosing your shade

1. Start with the light. A room with cool or gray daylight takes ochre; a room you use after dark takes navy; a room full of wood takes sage.
2. Decide solid or drawn. A solid field puts the color on the floor as a surface. A pattern mixes it with ivory, so the same color reads lighter and softer.
3. Choose the shape, then check the color again. Every design comes as a rug, a round rug or a runner, and each shape has its own photograph.
4. Pick the company before the cushions. Settle the partner color from the table first; the small objects follow from it.

Placing those objects around the room is its own method, set out in decorating around a colorful rug.

Dyes that hold

A deep navy or a saturated ochre is worth the commitment when it stays that color. Our natural dyes are fixed so the color does not transfer or shift with use, and the wash in our workshop checks every color against the final design before the rug ships. We dye the wool in our workshop in the Middle Atlas the traditional way, and the wash is the last step before a rug leaves: it arrives ready to use, in the color you chose from the photograph.

Need a color the filter does not show? Start a custom design.