How to make your home look expensive on a budget using only rugs, according to a TikTok-famous home stylist

• A home stylist on TikTok shared tips for cheap ways to make your home look expensive using only rugs.
• The key is finding a rug that's the right size for your room and positioning it correctly.
• A Google search with the dimensions, style, color, and budget can help zero in on the right rug.

An interior-design expert has a very simple hack for making your space look expensive on a budget: Create an illusion that you have a big space by properly positioning the right-size rug around the furniture you already have.

Julie Sousa, a home stylist in Boston, shared her tips in a TikTok video that has been viewed 1.4 million times at the time of writing.

"When we think bougie, we think large spaces, right? Typically. But a lot of us don't have that luxury," Sousa said at the beginning of the video.

"So, instead, we're going to create the illusion that we have a bigger space even though we don't have one," she added. "I'm going to show you how to do it using rugs."

Insider spoke with Sousa to get more insight and tips for following her budget-friendly interior-design trick.

Both the size of the rug and the position make a difference

Sousa recommended finding a rug that complements the size of the room you're decorating.

"Design is all about scale: the size of a room, relative to the sizes of furniture, and any other object or piece within the space - rugs in this case," Sousa said.

"When the rug properly fits a space, it becomes more visually cohesive. A rug too small, for example, creates visual clutter," she added.

"It's one additional thing our eyes have to notice, and in a space that already has a lot going on, such as a coffee table or the couch surrounding it," Sousa said.

She added that, on the other hand, a rug too large "gives a sense as though the furniture is floating, because there is nothing to tie the furniture in the space together."

Rugs should be used differently depending on which room they're in

In her TikTok video, Sousa said that you want all the front legs of your furniture in the living room to be on top of the rug, as pictured below.

But in the bedroom, more than half of the bed should rest on the rug, like in the photo below, instead of keeping it at the foot of the bed.

The rug in the dining room should be big enough that even after all the chairs are pulled out, the rug can fit them.

Sousa also has tips on how to find affordable rugs

In a follow-up video, Sousa shared her advice for finding relatively inexpensive large rugs.

The home stylist recommended doing a Google search with the dimensions you're looking for and then heading over to the shopping tab to set the price range that suits you. You can also filter by color and shapes.

"The larger the living room, the more expensive it can get," she said in the voice-over.

Well-placed rugs aren't the only inexpensive way to make your home look fancier - check out these other affordable tricks for making a home look expensive.