Do you ever walk into a room and feel like something is just…. off? Not the kind of off where something is obviously wrong. I mean the kind of off where you think someone has placed the furniture randomly without caring how people actually function in rooms?
Yeah, that was how my bedroom was for months after moving into our house in Bulwell. Ok so excuse my randomness here, but when we moved into the house I was so busy worrying about bigger things like painting the walls, dealing with temperamental radiators and changing the ancient curtains (those from the previous owners – listen, they were shite flower ones that looked like a packet of crisps sneezed all over them) I just never noticed. Noticed that something felt odd.
The bed was on one wall. The chest of drawers was on the opposite wall.
And there we were…… living with this massive gap of naked floor between the two.
See!? Stupid. My boyfriend Danny kept telling me it was fine.
And I know my boyfriend Danny. He would be happy living in an empty cardboard box, as long as it had Sky TV and a kettle. But I knew something was missing.
It just wasn’t sitting right. When my Mum came round one afternoon, she dropped the Mother-load bomb on me. She walked into my room, ooohed and aaahed at the fresh coat of paint and said “It’s very… functional.” Yep.
Functional. To me, that means “it looks like a hospital room, but I don’t wanna upset you by saying that because I love you.” Eventually, months later I accepted defeat. Moved with my husband into our newly decorated bedroom and STILL lived with that bizarre floating- furniture concept.
Then it hit me. What my room was missing was something to anchor all of the furniture to. To connect the pieces of furniture together.
A rug. “A picture paints a thousand words.” Obviously a rug says far more than that. But choosing a small bedroom rug can leave you open to creating a bit of a disaster. Learn from my mistakes and spend days researching before you buy – obviously.
I jumped straight into buying ours with no prior knowledge. And boy did I regret it. My first rug was a pathetic excuse for a rug.
It was a small Dunelm rug that was about 4ft by 6ft. I thought it would look cute tucked underneath the end of our bed. It looked stupid.
It made our bedroom look worse than before we bought any rug. Back it went. I did heaps of research.
Oh my god, did I research rugs. Hours upon hours looking at bedroom Pinterest inspo, blogs on how to position rugs (yes, people have blogs about rug positioning. Who knew.) and traipsing Danny around our bedroom measuring and remeasuring.
He even got bored of me crawling around on hands and knees with a tape measure. Our bedroom is just shy of 10ft by 11ft. Small but perfectly functional.
Blogs advised to buy a rug bigger than you think you need. WHAT?! When you’ve already got small dimensions to work WITH that’s laughable.
Buy a bigger rug? No thanks. But low and behold.
I found the rug. Trawling through Facebook Marketplace one night I came across a lovely lady in West Bridgford selling just about everything she owned as she was moving house. A gorgeous rug was up for sale.
Already taken from her main bedroom and cut to fit a smaller space, it was hardly used and of great quality. I snapped it up for about half the price of buying brand new. Cue me having to struggle up and down my stairs with this rug (had to borrow my brothers van as it was way too big for our Corsa) while Danny moaned the whole way about how it was too big, too much money, too this and that.
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We finally got it upstairs and unraveled it (haz cheers Marie Portas) and I started to regret buying it as it was literally MASSIVE. But when we started moving our furniture back into place, something clicked. Our rug anchored our bed to the floor.
Instead of the foot-end of the bed sitting on JUST the wood, it sat on the rug. Our bedside tables- the wonky ones I had painstakingly painted white to make it seem like we put some thought into it- sat partly on the rug too. It was the missing piece that we’d been living without for months.
It finally felt like everything IN the room belonged in the same room. Our rug is a cream coloured rug with subtle grey/blue botanic print all over it. It’s nothing bold or bright.
As I’d learned my lesson with a previous bright coloured geometric rug that made our bedroom look like someone threw a pin- kaleidoscope up. This rug has pattern to it so it’s interesting enough for people to look twice when they enter your room. But not crazy enough that it shouts at you when your trying to get a good nights kip.
Finding the perfect placement took a lot of trial and error. At first I mirrored what should be – my bed sat perfectly centred on the rug. It SHOULD have looked perfect.
Right? Wrong. It actually looked awful.
Too much empty space on each side of the rug showing the naked floor and not enough room to actually walk around the bed without being swallowed up by the rug. I tried moving the furniture and rug around about three times before it finally clicked. Instead of centring the bed on top of the rug I pushed it forward slightly.
And instead of having a tiny bit of rug showing at the foot end of our bed, I actually left more rug showing. And like magic. Bam.
It transformed our room from feeling like we were just living in a random assortment of furniture, to actually liking the room. Friends even commented how it now looked “complete” when they came over. And that was the problem.
Our room was missing that completeness factor. It finally felt like each piece of furniture was placed there for a reason rather than having been tossed around like a wild game of pinball. The thing I didn’t expect was how our rug would actually impact my day-to-day living.
Previously when I got out of bed each morning I would have to gingerly step straight onto a cold floorboard. It was SUCH a shock to the body. Now I have somewhere to gracefully roll out of bed into.
And believe me, it makes your mornings so much nicer when you have that little luxury. I have even found myself sitting on the edge of our bed more often now. I use the expanse of rug to help pull on my trousers/ sit and enjoy a hot coffee/tea before facing the day.
All in all, I wouldn’t hesitate to spend the money on a rug. Yup, I did spend more than I wanted on ours. But morals were loosened when I bought mine second hand for only around £250.
Will we keep our rug when we change up our bedding? When we decide to upgrade our furniture? Hell yeah.
Will it outlive multiple moves I hope so. If your struggling for space in your bedroom when picking a rug, opt for something bigger than you’d normally go for. I know, it sounds insane to purchase an 8ft by 10ft rug when your bedroom isn’t even that big.
Trust me when I say that when that rug starts connecting your furniture to the rest of your bedroom it opens up the room, rather than closes it off.
And finally, when picking a pattern for your rug. Keep it subtle.
Unless your rooms bland as hell and could do with a punchy rug, keep the crazy patterns to a minimum. Let your rug be the canvas your bedroom decor is built on. Don’t make your rug fight against the other stuff in your room.
Measure TWICE buy once! As I mentioned before, DON’T just measure where you WANT your furniture to go based on a cute bedroom setup on Pinterest. Measure where YOUR furniture is ACTUALLY going to go and buy your rug based on that!
You wont regret it. I promise. Jess x
