However, to tie the room's look together, you will want to choose a rug that complements the two or three primary colors of the room. Make sure a solid-color rug complements the color of your sofa and matches the accent colors in the room, like a work of art or pot.
Your rug needs to suit the space it's in and even more importantly, it needs to match your furniture. A badly matched rug can ruin the whole look of your space, but it's not difficult to find out how to pull this off.
Find a Color in Common
This is the easiest way to pair a rug with your couch. Simply identify a common color on your rug that's also on your couch, and voilà—you've done it!
Leave at least 6-8” between the rug and the floor on all sides. This will ensure the rug looks intentional in the space. At least two legs of all main furniture pieces should rest on the rug. The rug should extend 12-18” beyond the sides of the furniture underneath.
Decorating your home with large area rugs does several things for your interior design — the rug in each space will set a particular mood or tone for the whole room and help provide shape to an otherwise undefined space. But if you have multiple rugs in your home, do they all need to match? The immediate answer is: No!
Considering Wall Color
Your wall color should be two tones lighter than your carpet. If you have dark walls, you can also go a few tones lighter with your carpet. Since it's much easier to change your wall color than your carpet, choose your carpet color first and then match your wall color.
General Rules:
Make sure your rug is at least 6″ wider (8″ is ideal) than your sofa on both sides. Typically run the rug the length of the sofa. Give 30″ to 36″ of a walkway between large furniture pieces (if your living room allows for it) if not then at least 18″-24″. That will help to inform your rug size.
Beige is a warm-toned color that looks great with greys. This color works best if you look for a nicely balanced setup. A warm sofa and a dark beige rug make a perfect match. Another benefit of beige is that it looks good in any pattern and gives different impressions, from classic to modern.
In a living room, for instance, all of the furniture should be on top of the rug. If this isn't possible, it's okay to have the front legs of major upholstered pieces on the rug and the back legs off. However, all the legs of smaller pieces should be on the rug.
The most popular, perhaps unsurprisingly, is gray. Ben White, design and trade specialist at Swyft Home, explained why gray topped the list: “Gray is a likely a slightly more popular sofa color choice as it's the most versatile of all the neutral colors.
Dark, rich colors help define a more intimate space while lighter colors make a smaller space appear larger. Spicy hues such as yellow, orange or red add warmth while cool colors create calm, especially in a sunny room.
Matchy-Matchy. Matching your sofa to your wall color is a good, safe choice. Of course, that thinking ties you to a specific wall color and sofa color… for a long time. Instead, try thinking of your wall or sofa colors as the beginning of a palette.
White Rugs
A stark white rug will complement any style or color of furniture. White is an exceptional choice if there is a loud color scheme in the room or you have a couch in a dark color. The contrast of this light color next to dark colors will instantly enhance the visual appeal of the room.
White is safe, as long as you keep it slightly off white to keep the vibe soft. If you want to play a tad riskier, go with a (very, very) light shade of brown, which will enhance the warmth of the sofa without distracting from it.
Rug Size (Too Big or Too Small)
If it is too large it will overpower the room and make the room appear smaller than it is. Choosing the right size of rug for your room depends on your design objective.
If you have an L shaped sectional couch, put your rug in the middle of the space in front of the couch. Rectangular and square rugs can be lined up with the corners of the couch. Circular and oval rugs can simply be centered in this space. You can make this rug placement idea work with any shape of a rug.
The placement needs to make sense in the room
The rug really needs to be centered on a major architectural element (fireplace, large windows, main focal wall) in the room. It doesn't necessarily need to be smack dab in the middle of the room - you want its placement to be the island for the visual weight of the room.
'Cool greys are best paired with cooler colour schemes, such as blue, green, and light purple, while warm greys better complement reds, oranges, and yellows. For fans of the monochrome look, incorporate different shades of grey, alongside white and black, to create depth and visual interest.
Pair it with white, pink, or soft blue, and it inspires a calming essence. Team it up with vibrant reds and yellows, and you'll instantly feel its energizing effects. Regardless of what you do with gray, you can count on the fact that it will fit in with just about any decorative style or space.
Just be sure to choose a color that's different enough from your floor color to provide a bit of contrast. Step 3: Think about how lighting will affect the colors in the room. Also, don't just consider how dark your flooring is; consider how dark your room is in general.
Use light-colored rugs
The work of light colors is to brighten up a room and its décor. Rugs in tones of beige, sand, and taupe will make your room seem bigger and sprawling.
The most popular carpet colors are black and dark variants and for good reason. Black and dark gray carpets are found ubiquitously wherever carpeting is the flooring of choice. They also stand up to stains well, accentuate more vibrant decor choices, and will never go out of style.
Choose a light-colored rug to open up your space.
“Stick to light, cool tones as much as possible, as these will trick the eye into thinking the space is bigger than it is,” recommends Cristina.