Choosing the Perfect Rug Size

Buying a rug can be difficult and tricky – you want to make sure that you’re purchasing a rug that’s the correct size for the room it’s intended to be placed in. If it’s too big, or too small – it simply won’t work at all. Rugs can be expensive too, so you’re going to want to be spending your money productively and wisely. It’s common to purchase too small rugs since 5 by 7 and 6 by 9 inch rugs are much cheaper than 8 by 10 or 9 by 12 inchers, but if you get too small of a rug, your room can seem ill decorated, and just off. Here’s a quick guide prepared by the experts at Aladdin to help you figure out what size of rug is best for your room.

Measuring

Make sure to measure how big the room’s seating area is before you shop for the rug, and choose the closest rug size that corresponds for it. If you have a small room or small budget, try getting a smaller rug that floats in front of the furniture – which is a tactic that especially works for couches that are pushed up against the wall. If your room is too big or your furniture isn’t sitting against the wall, get a bigger rug or else the room will look strangely proportioned.

Orientation

If your rug is more long than wide, orient it in the room lengthwise. If your room is more wide than long, orient the rug in the room horizontally. You want to make sure that the rug covers a certain amount of space in the room that corresponds to their matching proportions between the rug and the room.

Furniture legs?

The best advice we can give for this contentious issue is to make sure to stay consistent with your practices. By this we mean, if you have a rug that doesn’t fit under all your furniture, but only some of it, make sure that either all the furniture legs are on the rug, or none of it is at all. If there’s a mixture, it will add a sense of scrambled discord to your living and seating area.

Well, okay, let’s backtrack. Sometimes all of the sofa legs are on the rug, and the chair legs are half on, or vice versa, and it looks alright – but this is mostly up to your opinion. Try it out and see how it looks, but just saying, it usually doesn’t look too good. If you’re deciding which legs you want to position on the rug, choose the most discreet and least obvious ones – for example, if you have a low to the ground sofa pressed up on or near the wall, it’s more likely that the floor under it won’t be visible so it’s less likely people will notice it’s not fully on the rug.

Additional Tips

• Square rugs are only ideal for square rooms. Round rugs are for more playful / social / family oriented rooms.
• If you have a too-small rug you’ve fallen in love with, purchase a big sisal, seagrass rug, or jute that fits the entire seating area, and put the rug on top of it.
• Ensure that your rug has at least six to ten inches of space on either side of the sofa. You want to make sure that the width of the rug isn’t the same width as the sofa, as it will create an visually unappetizing illusion of smallness.