In most of the rooms, the small area rugs were insignificant. When you put down an undersized rug, it only emphasizes an already small room or makes a larger room appear smaller. Attention goes to the bright addition to the floor & suddenly it sucks in the largess.
Either use a larger rug with a 12"-16" carpet border or define a particular space, but just don't drop it down willy nilly.

When you put a rug over carpeting doesn't it usually bunch up and end up as a tripping hazard?

I was so excited when I saw the title of this post -- and then I saw only nurseries!!! I wanted to see rugs in living rooms, dining rooms, etc. 3/4s of these photos show how well rugs work with CRIBS. Could there be a "part two" to this post where non-parents can draw inspiration?

Where can I get the "zig zag" black and white rug? Is it IKEA's?

I put a rug over my off-white carpet in my living room. It stays in place thanks to a sticky pad. However, the carpet underneath is now yellow and it won't come clean.

Our rental carpet looks like a shaved wookie. Same color, same shagginess, and no amount of cleaning will solve it. I found a large, nice rug at the thrift store and put it in the bedroom. Makes a huge difference! For what it's worth, my rug doesn't curl up at the edges or bunch, but that could be because it has a rubber backing, is large and quite heavy.

^^^ AGREED. I understand there are alot of parents who read, but I am confident there are just as many non-parents, and seeing pictures of rooms with cribs although nice, are not the only rooms where an area rug would benefit...

I'd love to see some grown up spaces with rugs as well, with perhaps a guide on where to find some affordable options. I've been thinking of doing this for my bedroom but most of the rugs I see are either really ugly or waaaay outside my price range.

I feel the pain of trying to work with something you wish weren't there -- my rental has industrial brown rug in some of the rooms -- but by using throw rugs it just seems like pretending something isn't there that unfortunately is. The end result, regardless of how nice or design-appropriate the throw or area rugs are, always makes me kind of sad.

@ Rachele... I bought my rugs from Crate + Barrel. Their regular prices are outside my price range, but they have great sale prices -- and a 14-day price adjustment period! Maybe they have some in your style.

6, 15, and 16 are neither nurseries nor the bedrooms of small children... but they all seem to be from AT house tours, so I guess it says something about whether ppl who submit their houses for tours 1) have carpet (we know it's rarer) and 2) put rugs on them.....

Why are there no links? I must've missed a couple of these tours - very frustrating to not be able to click through to the original post, especially as you've put the little cop-out "attribution" at the bottom Carrie, which infers that the images link to their original sources.

@Rachele - They have them at Urban Outfitters too.

@hinmelb
There are links; they show up as the captions for each picture.

There are no captions when I view the images. I tried on different browsers (Safari/IE) and on Mac and PC. Definitely no captions.

Which is the first image? Both the Joyful Nursery and the first image lead to the Joyful Nursery ie the one with the golden dots.

As you can imagine from my user name (!), I'm intrigued by the dresser in the first pic, so it would be good if you could correct the link- thanks!

In the 3rd picture, I was wondering where the rugs are from? Thanks!