Online interior design · Portland & remote · Est. 2019
Taking rooms for October
hello@alcovea.studio
Online interior design · Portland & remote · Est. 2019
Taking rooms for October
hello@alcovea.studio
Nine rugs went onto shopping lists this year. Five were under $300, four were over $700, and by March we could tell which was which without looking at the price.
The difference is not the pattern. It is pile weight, what the pile is anchored to, and how the edge is finished, three things almost no product page states, and all three decide whether a rug still looks like itself after a winter of boots and a dog.
A cheap wool rug typically runs 1,600 to 2,000 grams per square metre. The rugs we specify sit between 2,800 and 3,600. You feel it immediately underfoot, but the real difference shows six months later: low-weight pile flattens along the walking line and never recovers, so the rug develops a path across it.
Suppliers will tell you the weight if you ask. If they cannot, that is an answer too.
Latex backing is cheap, and it hardens. Two winters of underfloor heating and it cracks along the folds, which is why a bargain rug often arrives at the charity shop shedding grey dust. Cotton or jute backing costs more and stays flexible; a rug you can roll in five years is a rug you can take to the next flat.
The cheapest rug on any of our lists is not the cheapest rug we could find. It is the cheapest one we would still specify.
Machine-serged edges unravel where the vacuum catches them. Hand-bound edges cost about $60 more on an 8 × 10 and outlast the rug. On the Alberta Street loft we took the alternate on almost everything, and the rug was the one line where we did not.
A rental you will leave in two years. A room where a dog is still learning. A nursery that becomes an office in three. In those cases the $240 rug is the correct answer, and every list we write says so beside the line rather than pretending otherwise.
What we will not do is put a $240 rug on the list and describe it as an investment.
From the pack
This post is drawn from the sourcing notes that ship with every full-room package, the same lines, with prices attached.
Measured here
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Est. 2019 · Rooms designed remotely, from the first one
