Accent Your Home: Area Rugs

A well-chosen area rug can be the foundation or starting point around which your entire room can be coordinated, a design centerpiece so to speak. Alternatively, the right area rug can deliver a tasteful finishing touch, complementing the rest of the room's atmosphere and colour scheme. Area rugs offer a sense of warmth,softness, and sound absorption on hard flooring surfaces such as stone and wood, and they add another layer of design and luxury when laid on top of wall-to-wall carpeting.

This article covers the following topics:
-Defining Space
-Budget
-Bind Your Own
-Outdoor Use
-Underpad
-Refresh Your Home
-Cleaning and Care
-Huge Selection

Defining Space

Area rugs are a great way to define spaces within your home. Whether you are creating distinction for the dining room under the table and chairs, or warming up the living room and entertaining spaces, area rugs can go a long way in defining the boundaries of different parts of your home. Especially useful in open floor plans, area rugs help to create cozy conversation areas, to designate eating and work spaces, and to warmly welcome guests into a foyer.

Tip: Try to use just one "statement" rug to define any given room. If you use too many small rugs in the same area, they can create visual clutter and make the room look piecemeal.

Budget Benefits

You can move them
Unlike most flooring, area rugs are transferable. They are one of the few flooring products that you can "install," and then pick up and move when you leave. They can be stored in relatively little space, so you can change them out season to season or as your style changes. It's easy to pack them up and deliver them to your kids as a housewarming gift. Furthermore, investing in a high quality area rug means that it could last in the family for generations as a beautiful, personal and decorative legacy.

Affordable Flooring
There are many inexpensive rugs available for more temporary use. Great for student housing, rental properties, and outdoor use, they come in many appealing designs and styles. They can also be used as a "cheap fix" to cover up defects in your existing flooring. If you have a beautiful hardwood or luxury vinyl floor that you are worried about damaging, an area rug can provide an affordable way to protect it. Put one in the foyer to preserve the flooring in this area, and encourage your guests to take off their shoes!

Bind Your Own

At End Of The Roll Flooring Centres, we can create custom area rugs from your choice of carpet that we have in stock. This allows you to create custom sizes, and is a fantastic option for home decorators who may not want all the printed design options that traditional area rugs offer. Simply ask one of our Flooring Advisors if you can have carpet bound to the size you need.

Outdoor Use

Our stores carry a wide variety of rugs, turf and carpet all for outdoor use. With a huge selection of different styles, colours and qualities to choose from, we can help with all of your outdoor flooring needs. Whether you want something long lasting for the deck, a throw away for the summer camping season, or grass for a trendy backyard putting green, we have it and more. Choose from outdoor plush, grass or berber, which all have different benefits allowing them to perform well for different purposes. Versatile, durable & inexpensive, outdoor floor coverings are a great way to enhance your outdoor experience underfoot!

Underpad

Underpad, or underlay, is used as cushioning under area rugs for three main reasons. First, it provides grip so that the area rug won't slip or shift around on the floor, particularly on hard surfaces. Second, the right under pad also helps extend the life of your rug, by minimizing the wear impact on the fibres and backing. Third, underlay provides cushion, which helps give that soft comfy feeling of carpet underfoot, and provides a measure of safety for small children.

Refresh Your Home

Area rugs are the easiest way to update your floors. By using a unique area rug you can revitalize and refresh your home's decor. Rugs can add colour and new accents to your room, protect your carpets and hard surface floors, and bring the room's theme together. Why not consider a contemporary design, a classic American braided, a traditional European theme, a botanical style, or a thick shag area rug to bring new life into your home?

Cleaning and Care

If you use area rugs on top of your carpet, be sure to clean them regularly, and make sure you clean and restore the pile of the carpet underneath as well. Also, be sure to check area rugs for colourfastness before placing them on carpet because the dye in some rugs may bleed through. After cleaning your carpet, allow it to dry completely before replacing rugs.

On your hard surface floors, vacuum area rugs regularly to remove dirt and dust. Protect them with a good underpad to help preserve the life of the fibres.

Huge Selection

Long story short, area rugs can be a simple, beautiful, fast and effective answer to many of your flooring needs. End Of The Roll Flooring Centres has a large selection of area rugs to choose from; you're sure to find the perfect style for any room in your house. Use them as a practical and fun design element to accent your home today!

Contributed by Stephanie Gilchrist.