Decorating without area rugs – a beginner’s guide

Who wouldn’t want t home that is nice, practical, trendy, and has good vibes? Cliché has it, that area rugs will “anchor rooms”, and “tie rooms together”, but the problem is that they can also be rather expensive. So the question comes naturally: is decorating without area rugs even possible?

I remember moving into my first apartment: I was excited, happy, optimistic – and completely broke. Even though I wanted my home to feel cozy, homely, and even sexy, area rugs weren’t high up on my shopping list, as so many other things needed to be taken care of.

Rooms without area rugs

The lack of financial resources might be something that resonates with many, but being broke (or cheap for that matter) is not the only possible reason you might consider going with your bare floor instead of an area rug.

Here are a few reasons why you might be better off without an area rug in your home.

• Your bare floor looks amazing
  Sure, if you have amazing-looking floors, like Mediterranean-style tiles, vintage herringbone hardwood floors, or beautiful wide plank floors you want to show off, you would not want to hide your floor with an area rug. Who would?
• You have a tiny space, and don’t want to divide it with rugs
  So when you have a studio apartment, and your dining room, sofa, and bed are all in the same space, you don’t necessarily want to divide that space into even tinier chunks by putting down area rugs.
  While area rugs are a great tool when you want to anchor a room or separate various functions of a room visually, a tiny room often doesn’t need to be made even smaller.
• You often rearrange stuff
  When your apartment gets frequent rearrangements, area rugs tend to get in the way. They both get in the way quite literally (and physically), and they also limit your options by their fixed sizes and aspect ratios.
• You’re not into rugs
  You’re not like us, but we get it – to each his/her own. We don’t judge you (maybe just a tiny bit).

While area rugs are considered “must-haves” by many, and putting rugs in homes is the “default” way of decorating, it’s easy to see that having nice, practical, and well-decorated homes is perfectly possible without area rugs, too.

This is particularly true if your home is decorated in the modern, minimalistic, Scandinavian or japandi styles.

Like with most style-related questions, there are no absolute rights and absolute wrongs here, but let me offer a few pointers:

• If you have plenty of wood and natural, earth-tone colors in your apartment, and you have wooden furniture, it will be easier to decorate without area rugs.
• It’s better to have hardwood floors without area rugs, than tiles without area rugs, both in terms of comfort, and aesthetics.
• If you have a living room without an area rug, make sure your space has other design focal points (wall art, for example, or furniture with a character and style).

Hardwood floors without area rugs

Of all the most popular flooring types, hardwood floors go easiest without area rugs.

Hardwood floors will not feel as cold underfoot as tiles would, and they are likely to have a cozy, natural, homely feel even without an area rug.

This is particularly true if the tone of the hardwood floor has some warm yellow or red to it, but lighter, Scandinavian-style pine or oak shades can also go well without an area rug.

You just need to be cognizant of the different look and feel of a space without an area rug, and pull it off well: hardwood floors are a great match with other natural fabrics and materials, earth-tone colors, and even with purist black and white.

Epoxy floor without area rugs

Another type of flooring that cries out to be displayed without being covered is epoxy.

Epoxy flooring is one of the most popular and effective industrial-grade floor treatments available today, and it is surely having its moment in private homes, too.

Living room without area rugs

As much as area rugs can be supporting elements of a room’s décor, or can be bold, design statements, not having an area rug in a living room (which, in most cases, is the most important space of a home) is a statement in itself.

One thing you have to make sure of is not to appear as though you have “forgotten” about your area rug. It must be obvious and self-evident at first sight that the absence of the area rug is fully intentional and thought-over.

Ways to achieve 

Bedrooms without area rugs

Bedrooms without area rugs (or without rugs altogether) are perhaps the most difficult to pull off because you will eventually need the comfort of a rug when you step out of bed barefoot in the middle of the night to go to use the bathroom.

But when it comes to pure aesthetics (or when you live in an area where it’s warm enough all year round), having a bedroom without area rugs is completely acceptable.

Dining room without an area rug

Okay, so this one is easy since whether or not a dining room needs a rug is a debated question in itself. There are pros and cons of having a rug in a dining room, but if your preference, for whatever reason, is to go rugless, you’re most likely to get away with it, and still have a well-decorated, trendy dining room.

One thing to bear in mind, though, that a rug is a great tool to separate your dining room area from your kitchen, and in an open space setting from your living room, so in the absence of an area rug, you will need other visual cues to take care of that separation for you. This can be a piece of art, or the lighting, or even a bookshelf between the two functional spaces.

Entryway without an area rug

Entryways are tricky because in a way they shield the rest of the home from all the dirt and dust of the outside world, and rugs are great in collecting this dirt, to make it as easy to maintain and clean as possible.

Entryways are usually among the highest-traffic areas of a home, and it should be, out of practicality, a default to put rugs in high-traffic areas of your house.

Rugs also provide entryways with a welcoming look and feel.

But if you are keen on making a rugless first impression, a rug-free entryway, while surely less homely and inviting, can still be trendy, chic, and both literally and figuratively cool.

So should you go with or without a rug?

While it is definitely possible to pull of a nice design without an area rug, I would still argue that, unless you have a very specific reason not to(for good reasons see above), your default should be putting area rugs in your home.

But if you, in spite of all the social pressure, make a conscious decision, and decide to put your bare floor on display – well, you have my permission.