Rug buying - suggestions

[Gem13]

We're moving soon and have been given money by the in-laws to buy a rug for our new home.
We want something contemporary as the house is modern (it's a conversion - very Grand Designs!) but can only think of Habitat. We haven't been to check them out yet (cheque arrived this morning!) and we haven't looked at them for a while as they were out of our price range.

It needs to be big and quite dominant as it's an open plan living room.

Any suggestions for good places to check out?

John Lewis? Heals? Dare I say Ikea?
or try www.the-rug-shop.com/

How about an antique rug? I think they look lovely in a contemporary setting, they are no more expensive than modern ones and they hold their value too. We have loads as we have a friend who lives in Thailand and travels around buying them and brings them back to the uk. Some of them are incredible and we always get comments about our fantastic rugs from people.

Thanks for those. The Ikea ones we've always thought were too thin. We're after the thicker ones - so DS can dance on it and D? can learn to crawl on it. The house is wooden floors throughout. Should be easier to keep clean but not so great for small people.

I'm just looking at the rug shop ones now, there's some really interesting ones there. We don't have a JL near us but I'll check out their website and Heals too the next time I'm up in London.

Do your friends have a website. I suspect they may be too thin for what we're after but we can always broaden our thinking!

he does but it's not v comprehensive

www.asianart.com/smith/index.html

He comes over every November and May and has exhibitions in London and Derbyshire and often other places too, I can put you in contact with him, he would do you a good deal I'm sure. He is a mad hippie!

As for the thinnness issue, you can alway get old rugs backed with thicker rugs to achieve the thickness you want.

www.loophouse.com are based in the Oxo Tower on the South Bank in London. They have some lovely rugs in their signature collection, but rather worryingly prices aren't listed which probably means they're hideously expensive!

No suggestions Gem but your new house sounds lovely!
Actually one bad suggestion: the thickest (and nicest) rug we've got was made by my mum while she was at school, so get weaving
In all of your spare time

I got a red rug from Ikea, which seems to have the rug version of alopecia (sp?) and, 9 months later, am still sweeping up red balls of fluff from EVERYWHERE in the house. Grrrrrrrrr.

OliveOil - I think I've got that one & one in white as well. Its a beep beep pain the beep beep. My naughty noonoo is just about given up the ghost picking the stuff up & the kids always have their biccies/toast covered in red or white hair. I would chuck it but can't afford another one............

Ive got the green one. Nightmare

we bought a rug from M&s - nice contemporary design - thick and also stain resistant - was about £120 i think - what sort of colours are you looking for?

FF/Lazyeye - We should do a collective collect of all the fur balls and Jiffy them off to Ikea head office. My dd has red toast too.

Thanks for the warning about the Ikea rugs - I won't be getting the green or red ones!

The Loophouse ones are fantastic. Difficult to tell the thickness, etc. Rugs really have to be felt and I guess the lack of the price is a worrying sign. DH likes them too so we will follow it up (until we hear the price!)

The paint is neutral (from the Fired Earth taupe range) and we need to replace our sofas so we really have free reign.

we had a real problem getting a rug big enough. some of the john lewis ones weren't bad but in the end we opted for a slightly trendier one in various sized blocks of red/pink (sounds yuk, but it's nice really ) from the Conran shop. a couple of hundred quid, I think, and delivery was fairly quick. it's quite thick too
there was a place in west london where they could make up your own designs too - but it was overpriced IMO

Hi,

Last my rug was from https://sayrug.co.uk
Amazing quality

Many furniture stores carry rugs, so it's worth checking out what options they have available.