Interior Designers Share Their Favorite Ways To Style Homes With Oriental Rugs
Pro decorating ideas that bring the timelessness of Rug Source’s handmade Oriental rugs into all home styles
Key Takeaways
- Oriental rugs offer incredible décor versatility by elevating both contemporary and traditional interiors.
- Many of today’s leading interior designers begin a room’s look by first selecting an area rug, mainly because this allows for a more cohesive color palette and overall aesthetic influence.
- Mixing vintage and antique Oriental rugs with modern furnishings is a popular way to create balance, warmth, and added visual interest.
- Proper rug placements and sizes are equally as important as colors and patterns.
- Authentic handmade Oriental rugs from Rug Source are a long-term investment that can be passed down to future generations.
Essential Décor Lessons We’ve Learned From Years Of Working With Interior Designers
One of the more unexpected joys of being a renowned online rug outlet is seeing where our rugs end up.

Over the years, we’ve had the incredible privilege of working alongside top interior designers on a wide range of projects, including new family homes, historic home restorations, and all sorts of sleek downtown lofts. Although every designer brings a unique perspective, we’ve noticed after countless collaborations that many of them share a similar philosophy in terms of decorating homes with Oriental rugs.
This is because pro designers rarely consider high-quality rugs as a finishing touch, and instead they see rugs more as a room’s décor foundation.
Our entire team remembers one designer searching for the perfect rug to go in a century-old home, and rather than first selecting furniture, she spent hours comparing our Oriental rugs by closely examining the wool subtleties, color variations, and each rug’s specific patterns. Once she discovered the right rugs, everything else naturally fell into place.
Another very talented interior designer once told us, “Beautiful handmade rugs already tell a story. It’s my job to allow the rest of a room to tell that story as well.”
Client experiences like these have truly shaped how all of us at Rug Source view decorating, because as internet trends inevitably come and go, we know that carefully curated Oriental rugs provide the type of warmth and authenticity that few design elements can match!
Start By Designing Rooms With Rugs, Not Furniture
A lot of homeowners begin decorating their spaces by shopping for products like dining tables or sofas, but the vast majority of professional designers often reverse this type of selection process.
Authentic Oriental rugs usually contain a wide range of intricate motifs, colors, and handcrafted details that end up providing a seemingly endless amount of décor inspiration. Instead of finding rugs that match your existing furniture, designers often recommend first choosing a rug and allowing its colors to ultimately guide the rest of your furnishing options.
We’ve personally seen how pro designers will combine soft blue rugs with accent pillows and artwork, or use warm wood finishes to complement a rug’s natural palette. Oriental rugs will always beautifully blend with a wide range of decorating styles, but the trick here is to develop rooms that feel layered and collected—as opposed to overly coordinated!
Don’t Be Afraid To Mix Modern Furniture With Traditional Rugs
One common misconception that we hear from our customers is that they assume Oriental rugs solely belong in more traditional homes.
The truth is that so many of our designer partners intentionally pair clean-lined contemporary furniture with vintage rugs, because this creates a sophisticated contrast that isn’t overly formal.
One designer we’ve collaborated with recently put a vintage Persian rug beneath a minimalist sectional inside a new construction home. Although the property’s architecture was modern and crisp, featuring expansive windows and white walls, the rug was able to introduce a sense of history, texture, and warmth that made the space feel far more welcoming.
This exact same principle also applies to transitional, industrial, and mid-century modern home influences as well. This is because handcrafted rugs simply do a wonderful job of softening hard surfaces and balancing modern furnishings in ways that make modern rooms feel more permanent!
Utilizing Oriental Rugs To Define Individual Household Spaces
There’s no denying the growing popularity of open-concept floorplans, as well as the basic fact that these large spaces often come off as undefined when not properly decorated.
This is why a lot of today’s interior designers will utilize Oriental rugs to firmly establish separate spaces within these types of larger rooms, all while also maintaining cohesive design themes.
A common example of this would be placing a rug underneath a living room seating arrangement to create a more inviting conversation zone, while also placing a different rug underneath a dining table to distinguish it as where a family eats meals. Smaller Oriental rugs also do a great job of transforming relatively unused corners like home offices and reading nooks into more enticing household destinations.
We’ve also clearly seen how the most experienced designers pay very close attention to factors like proportion. They’re not so focused on covering up flooring as they are about choosing rug sizes that relate to furniture setups and still leave enough balance for visible flooring.
Layering Textures, Instead Of Perfectly Matching Everything

If there’s one piece of advice that we’ve repeatedly heard from pro decorators, it’s this: stop trying to perfectly match everything together.
What a lot of homeowners don’t realize is that beautiful rooms are actually built through contrast, and not coordination. This is why designers will often combine Oriental rugs with all sorts of natural materials like reclaimed wood furniture, linen upholstery, woven baskets, leather chairs, brass accents, and stone fireplaces.
Each material ends up contributing its own unique texture, which subsequently allows spaces to feel more lived-in and inviting. And the goal here isn’t to create perfection, because it’s actually all about developing rooms that reflect the personalities of the people who live there!
Thinking Beyond Living Rooms
Although Oriental rugs are often associated with formal living room rugs, a lot of our interior designer friends will find all sorts of creative ways to utilize them throughout a home.
Hallways are now becoming popular places for handwoven runner rugs, home offices feel more inspiring with high-quality rugs, and guest bedrooms are instantly elevated when anchored by traditional wool rugs.
One of our designer partners is known for placing small Oriental rugs in kitchens, and these types of unexpected arrangements can go a long way to add character and underfoot comfort in high-traffic areas.
So, it goes to show how handmade rugs aren’t limited to any kind of tradition—because they’re actually very adaptable in today’s décor world!
Prioritizing Authentic & Ageless Craftsmanship
By far one of the most consistent messages we get from pro designers is that quality never truly goes out of style.
Authentic handmade Oriental rugs will always be very different than their mass-produced counterparts because they’re made from artisanal techniques that have been passed down over several centuries. This intricate level of craftsmanship creates rugs that become even more appealing as they get older and develop a patina.
Designers of all stripes appreciate the history behind vintage Oriental rugs because they evoke a sense of authenticity in any room that’s nearly impossible to replicate. That’s why lasting value is often the X-factor when homeowners are making décor investments, and handmade Oriental rugs are at the top of this list!
Reach Out To The Rug Source Experts To Create A Timeless Home Style With Our Oriental Rug Collection
The best home designs rarely feel as though they were quickly assembled, because they’re instead evolved over time and reflect a homeowner’s experiences, personality, and individual taste.
This is a huge reason why interior designers consistently return to Rug Source for our top-quality Oriental rugs, because our collection provides artistry, warmth, and a genuine sense of permanence that complements all décor styles.
Oriental rugs aren’t just another decorative accessory, because they can easily be the foundation of your space that helps every other element feel more vibrant and intentional.
Here at Rug Source, we’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with interior designers, renowned rug collectors, and countless homeowners who appreciate the craftsmanship associated with handmade area rugs.
Reach out to our experts online or give us a call at 980-422-4080 for assistance as you explore our curated collection and discover your inspiration!