I collect pricey antique rugs, but when it comes to finding well-priced area rugs for my apartment, here's where I shop
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- I consider myself to be mildly obsessed with rugs. I collect antique ones, but I prefer to layer them over more modern, neutral ones to help ground my space.
- RugsUSA is my go-to place for affordable rugs that aren't vintage. However, the site is huge, and can be a little difficult to navigate.
- Below, I'll walk you through my tips for sorting through the RugsUSA website, and show you how I styled some of its rugs in my own apartment.
I love rugs. I love them enough that my partner is probably considering getting the phrase "No more rugs!" tattooed on her face. I keep buying them anyway.
We moved into a new apartment in February, which gave me a perfect opportunity to acquire more rugs (oops, but not really) - and to switch them from room to room one hundred times before I got it right.
Pretty much all of the antique rugs in our apartment have come from small hole-in-the-wall shops in Brooklyn, but all the base layers have come from RugsUSA, a purveyor of what seems like one million styles, sizes, and shapes of rugs.
I'm more inclined to spend serious money on a unique antique rug than a brand-new one, so I turn to RugsUSA for the more affordable (sometimes downright cheap) base layers that help to ground a room. Of course, you can also find bold and eclectic styles there, but I personally lean toward simplicity when ordering online.
I recently got two rugs for our new apartment from RugsUSA; the Chunky Loop Maui area rug in off-white for our bedroom, and the Monochrome Texture Dunescape rug for our office (which only has one size currently in stock). Both are textured, neutral rugs that make great base layers in any room, and neither one was priced over $350; the cheaper of the two was under $200 - pretty good for a roughly 8-by-10-foot size if you ask me. Not to mention that they both look way more expensive than they really are.
How to efficiently sift through the tens of thousands of options
The overall shopping experience of sorting through styles at RugsUSA is made a lot less overwhelming by all of its clever filters. You can select everything from shape to size to color to material to patterns, and can even filter by best-selling rugs, ones with videos, and plenty of other features. Since there are tens of thousands of options on the site, you'll do well to apply as many filters as you can.
I found that searching terms like "textured white rugs" and "woven white rugs" yielded relevant results, and then I used additional filters from there to narrow down my choice. Just don't let the enormous number of rugs paralyze you! It's easy to get overwhelmed, but the more distinct a vision you have for your space, the easier it'll be to pinpoint the right rug for you. The surprisingly large numbers of customer reviews also help.
Even if you don't know exactly what you like, the site has really nicely staged lifestyle photos that let you see the rugs in an actual home setting, so you can envision what it'll look like in your space a little better.
How have the rugs I've tried held up?
As far as the rugs I chose go, I have some advice. If you have a pet who likes to chew things or a robot vacuum, a rug with chunky fringe probably isn't your best bet. I should have considered this when ordering since I have both of those things, but I just loved the look of the Chunky Loop Maui rug so much that I risked it. And while it does, in fact, look great in our bedroom, it also traps a lot of dust underneath since the weave is loose enough for small particles to fall through. It's also worth noting that the fringe has unraveled a bit because of the vacuum.
If you're willing to put in a little extra time to clean under the rug every once in a while, I think the Chunky Loop Maui rug is worth it simply for how gorgeous it is. It comes in a variety of colors and sizes, and it's the perfect base layer for enclosed rooms like bedrooms or large spaces like dining rooms that could use an area rug to ground the space.
As for the rug we put in our office, it has held up beautifully over time. It gets a ton of traffic since we have to walk through that room to get to the balcony, and it still looks brand new. There's only one size left of this particular rug, but I would recommend looking for other rugs specifically made by RugsUSA (over the third-party brands it carries) that are made with wool. I have a feeling that it's the durability of the materials that has kept it looking so nice all this time.
The bottom line
If you want to know whether or not RugsUSA is a solid place to shop for nice rugs that don't look cheap, the answer is that yes, it is. The rugs are great quality for the price, the sales are plentiful (never pay full price!), and the options are endless.
However, it's understandable that you may be skeptical of the quality when the site offers approximately one million styles. If that's the case for you, know this: I'm exceptionally snobby about rugs (thanks, Dad), and I feel confident that this is where I'll continue buying my non-antique rugs for as long as my partner doesn't kill me. As long as you go in with a general vision for the type of rug you want, you'll have an easy time sifting through options.