Area Rugs For Luxury, Color & Comfort

With today's modern choices of hard floors throughout every room in your house, area rugs have become an essential part of room decoration and function. They can add comfort, softness, and color to a hard floor. And with so many fantastic styles, materials, and textures available, the choice of area rugs is both personal and one of personality.

Environment, Climate & Location

Where you live and how you live will play a big part in your flooring choices - area rugs or otherwise.

Way down in southern Florida I needed cool tile throughout the house to offset the fantastically warm and humid climate. But I still went with carpets in the bedrooms as I loved a luxurious wall to wall softness under my feet in the mornings.

In a temperate northern California climate, my floors in each room were mixed. Stone in bathrooms, wood plank with rugs in living areas, and large thick pile rugs in bedrooms. And a beautiful patterned, soft-under-foot vinyl in the kitchen which fooled the eye into believing a craftsman had elegantly crafted the floor in marble.

A two-storey London townhouse often has carpets throughout and area rugs thrown over the carpet. Vibrant, jazzy, rich rugs to brighten an old victorian house. During my years spent living in Sydney, I wanted quarry tiles everywhere with no carpet or rugs because it suited my tall ceilings and vast expanse of windows everywhere. On the island of Madeira floors came to life with intricate patterns of laced bamboo. Rugs were roughly wovern with sturdy, colorful fabrics.

Now my permanent home is a much cooler climate and I combine wood, tile, and stone with under-floor heating and area rugs. A minimalist approach keeps living areas defined and precise in true Scandinavian style.

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