You have to think about all of your factors; environment, location, usage etc…Viscose is not suitable if you have pets or children. It wears quickly and can lose its luster. Some natural rugs aren’t good in direct sunlight, as they can fade, other materials don’t handle stains well and so on.

Annie Selke is great because they take the guessing out of selecting a rug for you! Every product page offers a detailed blurb on material, how to clean and where to use! This was tremendously helpful for me because I made my decision, confident I wasn’t wasting my time! Love this one! Nope, not good for stairs. Have to have this! Wait, it won’t do well in a dining room…but then, it all fell into place.

First up is this gorgeous stair runner! Yep, I did it myself too! I explain how and include the step by step process with photos in this tutorial. I didn’t know this when I picked it out, but this runner is their best-selling herringbone woven cotton rug and it’s back with a beautiful update. In a timeless black hue, this classic menswear inspired pattern is the perfect way to add a touch of understated pattern to bedrooms, hallways, stairs, and more. [That’s another feature I love; almost all of their products can be full sized rugs or runner! So, if I wanted, I could’ve also had this as a 10×14 in my dining room!]

• FEATURES & BENEFITS: Durable construction; soft underfoot; lightweight.
• WHERE TO USE: High and low-traffic spaces; well-used family areas like hallways, bedrooms, and stairs.
• 100% Cotton

Next is my dining room and oh em gee…is this rug not everything?! I unknowingly chose another best seller, the Kali Woven Jute Rug; a large ivory latticework pattern that emerges from the relaxed natural jute kilim weave foundation with a punctuating charcoal dot at the interstices. This simple flatwoven jute design offers beauty and appeal on a scale that makes it modern and timeless. Eco-friendly, ultra durable and great for any indoor room.

• FEATURES & BENEFITS: Eco-friendly, sustainable, natural materials; tightly woven, ultra-durable construction; lightweight, sophisticated, natural earthen charm.
• WHERE TO USE: Great in high-traffic indoor areas and on covered porches. Placement of these rugs is important, as our Jute rugs are dyed with vegetable based dyes that can fade if exposed to frequent sunlight.
• 80% Jute/15% Cotton/5% Polyester

Size Selection…

When thinking about the size of your rug, you should make sure that when people are sitting, their chairs remain on the rug. We have a table that we keep the leaves in, making it 8 feet long. We have 4 chairs on the sides and 1 at each end, so we went with a 10×14 rug. Our room is 13×20, so it fills the space beautifully and adds warmth, softness and contrast to the white brick fireplace and hardwood floors.

Our stairs come down into the dining room, so visually, the runner and dining room rug had to tie into one another. I didn’t want them to be too matchy, matchy but they needed to compliment one another. I also had the difficult design task of not clashing with our floors or table tones, but making sure that the rug stood out from the floor and didn’t blend in. Our floor stains were such a process and I’ll discuss that in another post soon, but in short, they have a mixture of classic gray in them. This makes that charcoal punctuation flow seamlessly with the wood tones and tie in nicely with the black and ivory runner.