Very rarely does someone select a rug that is too big for a space. Instead, you often see rugs that are far too small for a room, and there’s a few reasons why! Rugs are expensive, so the larger you go, the more they cost, and the more intimidating it becomes to purchase them for your home. Today, I’m hoping to help you feel more confident in knowing what size is right for your space!

—LIVING ROOMS RUGS—

Emily Henderson showed a great example of the difference it can make to select the right sized rug. Below is the image she shared of a well designed room (of course! It’s from her own home!) showing a rug that’s too small. You can see how the furniture feels like it’s floating in the room and doesn’t feel like it relates to each other; the rug almost feels like a little rug island just floating in the middle of the space.

It’s important that your rug is large enough that the front legs of all of your furniture are able to touch it. In addition, Emily recommends having at least 6-10” of rug on either side of your sofas. Look at the difference it makes to have a properly sized rug in the space! She also has a few additional great tips in her blog linked above, so check those out as well.

See how the rug shown above comfortably sits underneath each piece of furniture? Recently, I was browsing Pottery Barn’s website, and I saw that they have great illustrations for selecting the perfect sized rug. Lots of people aim for a 5x8 rug for their living room, but look how small that truly is in the diagrams below!

One size not shown on the Pottery Barn living room illustrations above is a 6’ x 9’ rug. Below is a sitting space we designed that perfectly incorporated this size.

—BEDROOM RUGS —

Bedrooms is another common area where people often select a rug that’s too small. If you have wood or tile floors in your bedroom and you’re putting a rug in your space, you want your feet to hit a soft rug when you step out of bed in the morning. A rug also visually anchors a bed in the space. I don’t like to showcase specific homeowner’s spaces that I feel are wrong, so instead I’ve borrowed an advertisement photo for a bed to illustrate my point. Below, you can see how the rug isn’t living up to it’s full potential and it’s actually making the space feel smaller.

Below: See how a large rug can really anchor a bed and visually make a space feel bigger? Keep scrolling for a bedroom size recommendation breakdown for both queen and king sized beds.

— DINING ROOM RUGS —

Have you ever sat in a dining room chair and your chair is half on the rug and half off the rug. Then, you go to pull your chair in and perhaps it gets stuck on the rug? It can be a frustrating experience. So, what size is right for your home? You want to make sure that when your chairs are fully pulled out they are still sitting on the rug.

Here’s a great example of a rug that is the perfect size for the dining room table sitting on top of it. You can see that even if the chairs and bench are pulled out, the legs will not catch on the edge of the rug.

— FOYER RUGS —

Foyer rugs can be tricky! Do you want a runner or an area rug? Below is a great diagram that shows how different sizes work in different foyer shapes and layouts.

I love how this runner draws your eye down the space but doesn’t compete with the striped tiled floor. This was a very long space, and this particular runner was 16’ long!

— BATHROOM RUGS —

Sometimes, a bathroom calls for a rug, and sometimes it doesn’t. If you’re thinking about putting a rug in your bathroom, here’s some guidelines to keep in mind!

So there you have it! What questions do you have for picking the perfect sized rug for your space?

Happy decorating!