Designing with Vintage Rugs

Scroll through Pinterest or Instagram and you see them. Interior designers are LOVING them right now and sometimes they are THE focal point of the room.

Vintage Rugs.

They're the runners on freshly laid kitchen floors, layered on textured jute rugs in living and dining spaces and they're even showing up in carefully crafted bathrooms with patterned tile floors. It's become clear that vintage rugs are having a moment!

Sites like The Southern Loom, The Vintage Rug Shop, and Experimental Vintage are selling them like hot cakes and they even have Instagram accounts devoted to their vintage beauty: @hamletinteriors, @easternboho, @shopfleamarketfab and @kennedyroseinteriors just to mention a few.

Now that we know vintage rugs are on trend, the real question is: how do you design with and around them? The options - thankfully - are truly endless but we've pulled together a few themes for inspiration.

Global & Eclectic

In global and eclectic interiors, we're seeing vintage rugs at the forefront of these spaces. Selecting the right fabrics and accessories, however, is also important for successfully creating a room displaying this interior trend.

We love how Lenora DeMars of 9TenDesigns framed this stunning blue and adobe rug with a contempoary leather sofa featuring S.Harris' Viveca in color Iron Black on the lumbar pillows.

A post shared by Lenora DeMars Home Stylist CA. (@9tendesign) on Aug 18, 2017 at 6:17am PDT

Both Stroheim's Black and White Collection and S.Harris Home's Urban Nomad Collection feature many great black and white fabric options to pair with your vintage rug find to help create a global or eclectic room design. A few of our favorite black and white beauties include:


Stroheim Sodwana Salt and Pepper	Fabricut Innate Charcoal

S. Harris Zola Noir	S. Harris Mirabai Modern Noir

S. Harris Alasha Noir Ivory	Stroheim Gaspar Pitch

And we’re crushing on this carefully curated guest room in Michelle Adams of The Maryn's Michigan home!

Michelle paired S. Harris perfectly with her gorgeous vintage rug to create this oh-so-eclectic and inviting space. Get the look:


S. Harris Tango Linen Barolo	S. Harris Space X Sheer Saturn Return

Fresh Traditional

Adding a one-of-a-kind find to your space provides a great foundation for your room design. Vintage rugs can be tonal or multicolored, saturated or muted creating the color palette for your finished room. Adding fresh traditional floral fabrics that complement or coordinate with colors in your rug, just as Nashville designer Eric Ross did in the hallway below, creates a fresh traditional vibe that instantly adds a breath of fresh air to any space.

A post shared by EricRossInteriors (@ericrossinteriors) on Oct 20, 2017 at 5:24am PDT

Eric pulled in the brown tones from the rug with Stroheim Dorset in Denim for his pinch pleat drapery panels to create this fresh traditional space. Here are a few more fresh florals:


Vervain Buchoz Floral Claret	Stroheim Pemberly Primrose

Stroheim Dorset Denim	Vervain Amiliana Poppy

A Pop of Vintage Rug

The neutral color trend or white rooms are also here to stay but add a colorful vintage rug to the mix for a pop of color (and focal point) in your space. We love how lifestyle blogger Sarah Sherman Samuel used this rug as her pop of color in this calming bedroom nook space.