In the case of a sofa or a chair, you don’t have to put much of the rug under them. Traditional decorating advice says to anchor rooms with rugs that fill the room except for a one to two-foot perimeter of bare floor. Avoid cutting into the walkways between the living, dining, and kitchen. Small rugs won’t work well in other living areas. In a living room, for instance, all of the furniture should be on top of the rug. {{headerController.searchText}} in Virtual Rooms, {{headerController.searchText}} in Housetips, {{headerController.searchText}} in Media List, {{headerController.searchText}} in Find a Pro, {{headerController.searchText}} in Gallery. A dining room rug, for example, should be centered beneath the dining room table and chairs. Pretty simple, right? Images used with permission, courtesy of www.shutterstock.com, {{::footerCtrl.footerModel.aboutUs.mainText}}, {{::footerCtrl.footerModel.aboutUs.leftText}}, {{::footerCtrl.footerModel.aboutUs.rightText}}, {{'Like' + oneTipController.getActionEnding(oneTipController.articleLiked)}}, {{'Share' + oneTipController.getActionEnding(oneTipController.articleShared)}}, Everything You Need to Know About the Pixel Palette Design Trend, {{::footerCtrl.footerModel.contacts.phoneNumber}}, {{::footerCtrl.footerModel.contacts.email}}. When people are walking through, they shouldn't have one foot on the rug and one foot off. Match the third rug color to your pillows, drapes, wall color or other accents in the room. You'll end up stepping out onto a cold, hard floor in the morning, rather than a soft rug. Make sure that any heavily trafficked areas are fully covered by the rug you choose. COLOR: Don’t spend hours trying to match colors exactly. The most important thing to remember about indoor area rugs is that they aren’t art. You can go bigger, but these numbers should be the minimums you want to look for. With this size rug placed beneath your sectional sofa, all sofa legs should be off the rug. But they’re not art. Each rule has one “do” and one “don’t” that go with it. https://housetipster.com/housetips/1566/3-rudimentary-rules-for-rug-placement 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. In the case of a room with furniture, ideally you want to position your rug so that it’s beneath at least a portion of one piece of furniture at the minimum. How To Place A Rug Under Sectional Sofa Home Decor Bliss Rug under a sectional couch sectional sofas guide to sofa shape care and more living how to place a rug under sectional sofa spring sectional sofa lighting ideas. 8×10 Rug With a Chaise Sofa + Accent Chair. For small spaces, you can reduce this distance to 8 inches. Area rugs are a terrific alternative to wall-to-wall carpet, namely because they're easier to remove and clean. (no other place to put desk). If that’s how you’re using your rug, make that platform count. Here’s what I mean by that: You can get away with hanging a piece of art on an expanse of wall, positioning the art in a way that doesn’t connect it to other elements in the room. The rug also makes the furniture appear fanned out, creating an appearance of fluid movement in a smaller room that otherwise might feel cluttered with furniture. Getting a rug large enough to suit a space is mostly a matter of “feel.” Although you can follow some loose guidelines for picking the right rug, you can rely primarily on your instincts about how it looks in a space. Just a few inches can do the trick. Make sure your rug is at least 6″ wider (8″ is ideal) than your sofa on both sides. Before buying, check out these do's and don'ts for decorating with area rugs. Be flexible. A carelessly-positioned area rug can throw the design of an entire room out of balance. In general, a 1.6m x 2.3m rug is the same width and length as an average three-seater sofa, Joanne adds. However, going big now will save you from replacing one that doesn't work later. It’ll also be inconvenient because a rug that doesn’t extend beyond a dining room table’s edges will get caught up as people pull the chairs in and out. In the living room, a rug that isn’t tucked at least a few inches under the largest piece of furniture in the room is going to look transient and nearly as disconnected as the floating rugs mentioned in Rule 1. An area rug should fit under all of the key furniture pieces in a room. Thankfully, given that area rugs are such an integral part of creating a cohesive interior design, the list of area rug rules is actually quite short. The amount of the rug you place under the furniture will vary depending on what furniture the rug is paired with. If you follow these three simple rules for rug placements, no matter how creative you get with your rug sizes and positioning, you can’t go wrong when marrying your rugs with the other interior design elements of your home. Make sure a solid-colored rug complements your sofa color, and match it to the accent colors in the room, such as artwork or a vase. But what does this mean? In a sofa and chair grouping, this means the rug should extend 12 to 18 inches beyond the ends of the sofa. To achieve a sophisticated look, we recommend that you match a secondary color within a patterned Oriental rug to your sofa. Should you have your sofa … This isn’t the ideal way to display art in your home décor, but if an art piece is interesting enough, it doesn’t have to be grouped with furniture. Either way, you’ll create an attractive and united grouping. It this isn’t possible, you should be able to fit at least the front legs of major upholstered pieces on the rug (the back legs can be off). If the size of your area rug is wrong, the room will look awkward. The top of the rug starts in front of the nightstand legs and roughly lines up with the bottom of the pillows. In most rooms, the rules are simple: Leave at least six inches between the end of the rug and the walls (or counters in the case of kitchens); leave all furniture legs off rugs in busy thoroughfares like entryways and hallways, and let the space dictate your choice of rug size. I couldn’t find one rug large enough for the front feet of all the furniture … If you have chairs in the space as well, then the front legs of the chair should be touching or "hovering" on the rug. Instead of completing a design look, a rug in the middle of a room partitions the space and draws the eye to the spaces between the design elements instead of to the design elements themselves. A 9- by 12-foot or larger rug can go underneath the front legs of a sofa. Match the secondary color in a patterned rug to your sofa. Sofa up to 4′ long – 5′ x 7′ area rug or larger; Sofa up to 5′ long – 6′ x 9′ area rug or larger; Sofa up to 6′ long – 7′ x 10′ area rug or larger Area rugs are a great way to inject playfulness and fun into the room, so embrace color and pattern while shopping. One rug size issue that almost everyone does agree on, however, is the problem of rugs being too tiny for a space. And make sure the rug is centered under the sofa, so it goes evenly beyond each side of the sofa! A good rule of thumb to follow is that a rug should extend 12 to 18 inches beyond the furniture it’s underneath. If your brown couch's leather has a visual texture, consider the subtle shades already present in the leather, which can range from red to taupe to yellow, when selecting a rug. Give yourself anywhere from about eight to 24 inches on all sides. What Size Rug Should You Use for a Queen Bed? The Spruce uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. The following are useful ideas for placing a rectangular rug under a sectional sofa in a room of your home: • Rug Size: 5 by 8 feet or larger. I know I said that a rug only needs a few inches of connection with furniture, but that few inches must be with a furniture piece that’s large enough to anchor the rug. Use this handy furniture sizing guide to make sure you have selected the right size rug for the living room based on your sofa size. Rugs, on the other hand, don’t work well as without a reasonably cozy connection to the furniture or walls. Oriental rugs offer an excellent accent for a vividly complex room because of the high knots per square inch count or (KPI). Check out these tips and tricks on decorating with area rugs from top designers. Lauren Flanagan has more than 15 years of experience working in home decor and has written extensively for a variety of publications about home decor. Match a third rug color to your throw pillows in the room. Large rooms, for example, need larger furniture pieces and artwork — and rugs. Sisal, jute, and other natural fiber rugs are inexpensive, but they can't be cleaned so you might have to replace them if there's a big spill. Place one near a bed or sofa, and it will look inadequate, detracting from your room styling. You can then either place your table and chairs atop the rug in the same way (read: partially), or you can place your table and chairs completely on top of the rug. The general rules about how to choose a rug size are quite broad, primarily because there’s little agreement on any specific parameters. Place an 8- by 10-foot rug in front of a sofa, allowing a few inches of open floor space in front. Introducing "One Thing": A New Video Series. Rugs are crucial to create separate spaces. It doesn’t happen in nature, and if you try … It is mostly used to anchor furniture in a space. Then, hang art from the same color family as your rug and your furniture for a more mellow feel.