Completely Floored by Rugs and Mats

I’ve realised we have rugs everywhere!

When we first built our home, seven years ago now, we chose a mix of hard flooring including oak, stone and ceramic tiles. This was for a number of reasons:

• Preference – we liked , and still like, oak wood flooring, so apart from bathrooms and hallways, we have it throughout.
• Practicality – hard floors are so easy to keep clean; sweep, hoover, swoosh (that’s to represent the e-cloth type mop/broom thingy) or traditional mop – simples!
• Prevention of allergies – dust, pet hair and dust mites are much easier to minimise with hard floors as they are not absorbed, thus helping with rhinitis and asthma.

Hard floors have lots of advantages, such as being really easy to keep clean, but the disadvantages are that they can be hard underfoot, as well echoey, as there’s little to absorb sound, particularly footsteps. And if you accidentally drop something precious, well lets just say it probably won’t bounce, but this is where a rug, mat or runner comes into its own!

Rugs don’t demand as a big an investment as carpets do, so with a neutral hard floor, you can add that perfect colour accent without thinking you’ll have to live with it forever! Plus they come in so many sizes, shapes, colours, patterns and textures, your inner style guru can go to town and find the perfect one for every spot!

The other big plus with a rug, runner or mat is the feel good factor – they are soft and comforting underfoot. Some are positively strokeable…….

……the trend for sheepskin at the moment means you can sink those just out of bed feet into the feeling of pure luxury and warmth, and that can only help with getting up in the morning!

Mats are essential in bathrooms for soaking up drips, and preventing said drips from skidding across the floor with wet feet! They are also perfectly practical for stopping, kids, big kids, dogs and all other menagerie members from trailing dirt and mud through the house upon entry – I have coir matting in foot-wells at every major entrance, and failing that then super absorbent, washable mats to deal with wet and dirty paws of all shapes and sizes!

I seem to have nearly as many rugs as mirrors – it appears there is a rug for every occasion, after all they don’t say ‘roll out the red carpet’ for nothing! It seems that I am completely floored!