apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

oo, i like maxwell's second pick. the golden yellow would be lovely in contrast to the grey walls and eames.

What a beautiful room!

A nice dark grey carpet would look really nice under the table. The chairs provide enough color "punch" in the room--you want people to notice the table and what's on and around it, not what's under it. A good color is the "Working Class" dark grey on the Flor website--though I'm suggesting the color, not neccessarily the carpet itself.

A light colored background such as shown above will be more likely to show stains than a darker one.

Another hint: make sure to get one large enough--you don't want the chairs half-on and half-off the carpet even when they're pulled out from the table.

There are a lot of carpets made with natural materials, or of recycled materials, instead of petroleum products, so please consider the environmental impact of your purchase so you can feel good about your rug in every possble way!

You might also consider a large beveled mirror on the grey wall--it will pick up the sunlight during the day, and the candle-light at night. Something with a silver-leafed frame would be nice.

Budget?

Depending on what kind of artwork you're putting on that big expanse of wall, I would definitely suggest a pattern in the rug. Dare I suggest a Persian?

I would do a chocolate. It would look great with the colorful chairs in the room.

http://www.bobbyberkhome.com

i thought rug company also, but i use a paul smith swirl rug.check their website.

I would do a print that had grey, the orange/red and maybe a turquise (sp?)or other warm blue-something geometric

I guess I'm weird, but I've always thought rugs under dining tables are a big mistake. At least, if they are going to be used for dining. Besides the stains, bits of food, and associated hungry critters living in them, those beautiful Eames chairs will be a nightmare to move around, and will make crazy indents in your rug.
If you need to put a floorcovering there (for reasons of delineation I assume), I'd go with a hard surface like bamboo or cheap sisal (so you can throw it away when someone spills there glass of red on it, NOT GREEN!)

OFF-WHITE
no doubt !!!

Love both rugs featured by Maxwell. Just between those two is a tough choice!

kirk lenard, you can always compost a sisal carpet. Sisal is renewable. VERY GREEN!!!

If you were really worried about spills, say you have a friend with some sort of spastic disorder who is just hooked on red wine, you could always get sisal squares.

i'd do something black and white. like a zigzag or something with an African feel to it. not necessarily tribal, but with an worldly feel to it. check out the rug in Krista's bedroom in the latest issue of Domino...i'd do that, but black/white not red/white.

Here's a practical alternative: these can be rinsed in the sink if they get spilled on.

http://www.florcatalog.com/service/flor/shop_detail.html?mv_arg=137071195_02

Thanks for the very helpful comments, everyone! Probably should've mentioned some kind of budgetary figure ... I love the two rugs that Maxwell selected too, but we want to keep it in the sub-$500 range - ESPECIALLY since it's going under a dining table where, yes, someone (probably me) will spill red wine on it (soon). We've leafed through the FLOR catalog, and while tiles wouldn't normally be our first choice, they do seem like a good compromise between the practical and the beautiful in this case.

That said, these comments have given us some alternatives to consider - feel free to keep them coming!

Oh, and re: the artwork going on that wall ... not sure about that yet either, though the idea of a large mirror has been bandied about.

Thanks again!

Andy

Why would you want to cover those incredible floors?

before MrGreen gets too upset (though never so much that he'd act like a "spastic", or somone equally physically challenged, and spill his drink!), I want it known that I do appreciate his intentions and his usually very insightful and intelligent, design responses. As most readers seem to agree, it's the pre-determined, holier-than-thou posts that can be off-putting.
Further to an earlier exchange of ours, some of my comments and a link I posted http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/ask/stove clearly suggest that ANY burning of wood for heating water (not just "advanced design combustion systems") is "greener than most conventional" methods. Hence a wood-burning water-heater for an outdoor tub, may not be NOT GREEN. I was just trying to point out that it's important to understand your subjects thoroughly before getting up on that soapbox and grandstanding.
Perhaps it'd be appreciated if MrGreen stuck more to what he's good at (design suggestions) and saved the lambasting (and his attacks on the handicapped) for the real eco-nasties.

I could see a nice tan/beige sissal rug underneath the table, bound with any color that you feel would work well with your floors or table.

Beautiful room! Love the color of the walls and the pop the chairs provide. Not sure why you want a rug, though. The table is delineation enough. And I am with the poster above who commented about indentations. The chairs will leave indentations in the rug, which become very unsightly.

In any event, you are off to a great start. Would love to see an after post with your decision.

Kirk Lenard, what was that?
If you have a problem with another member for something they wrote on another thread, why are you calling him out on this one?

Back to the thread at hand:
Andy, with the current colors being black, red, and gray, I think you have all the other colors in the world to choose from. However, I suggest a print instead of a solid color. Try something graphic with straight lines and angles to complement the curves of the chairs.

Great room! I would definitely go for the Interface FLOR series...it would make alot of sense especially under a dining table so that if anything spills, stains, etc. you could just replace one tile. I have the B&W series in a pattern under my dining table...you may not have seen it in the FLOR catalog because it is in the commercial line. I love the patterns they have in this series, and I think the black and white would look amazing with your chairs. My favorite patterns are: Hound Dog, French Quarter, and Ink Blot. The tiles would also look great with a mirror if you chose that for your wall. Good luck!

I wouldn't bother with a rug, either. There's the mess/cleaning nightmares to consider; then also, your floors are beautiful as is, why cover them up? And I think you'd have a hard time finding a rug large enough for less than $500. I like FLOR tiles, but I wouldn't be confident that they'd stay stuck - I could see the chair legs catching the edges of the tiles and pulling them up.

I have the same chairs and indeed they are hard to move around on carpet. What about something more flat like the Chilewich floor mats?

http://www.velocityartanddesign.com/ch_fm_basket.html

I have the same chairs, same colour and a cyclone dining table. I haven't put a rug under it.
With the budget, I would buy two more chairs because the table feel a little bit heavy when you compare it to the delicate structure of the eiffel base, and I feel something is a little out of proportions.

Whatever you do don't use sisal! Forget the wine stains, every time you drop water on it (even a tiny droplet off someone's wet trouser-bottoms in slushy weather) it will stain and the stain will remain there FOREVER. Try seagrass matting instead

The beauty of your space is that it is a blank canvas, waiting for you to imbue it with your own personality. With the neutral gray walls, and equally non-competing beautiful wood floors, the sky is the limit.

Here's an approach I use (I'm a color consultant) when assisting clients in determining a color scheme for a space:

Try thinking about the mood you want to create in the room. Is it casual, sophisticated, formal, youthful, stately, funky, modern, eclectic... Then chose colors that reinforce that mood.

Don't forget the option of creating your own low-pile (no chair "dents" or snagging), custom-sized, bound rug from the carpet selections at Home Depot or Lowe's or any of those competitor....

It'll definitely come in under your price range, and allows you to pick from a huge selection of patterns/textures/tones AND get a perfectly custom size for your dining area. It's a really practical option, and I'm surprised at how rarely folks use it!

There are a couple of affordable rugs over at home decorators that might look nice in your room, though not quite the style of the two nice ones already suggested.

If you don't think so ignore me :) but:

http://www.homedecoratorsoutlet.com/P/Panache_Area_Rug/270/

Is simple, though cooler rather than warmer shades it would tie in the orange and grey

http://www.homedecoratorsoutlet.com/P/Forsquare_Area_Rug/210/

Is again, rather simple but interesting, with the whole dark warm feel that would tie in the color of the chairs.

~B

One of the very good reasons you *do* put a rug under a dining table is to prevent the wear and tear on the floors from sliding chairs in and out at every mealtime.

Easier to clean red wine out of a carpet than resand and refinish a whole loft's worth of flooring.

For the same reason (sliding chairs), I'd be really reluctant to use Flor in this application.

And a true sisal stains waaaay worse than a wool, so I'd avoid that choice too, not to mention a sisal allows debris to get beneath it much easier than a typical rug.

Depending on what's goin on in the rest of the place, I'd pick a solid field colored rug... of a color not already represented in the pic currently, perhaps a color already represented as an accent in an adjoining space.

Or bind a piece pf Berber carpet with a higher than usual synthetic content, to repel stains.

But, to you and the AT audience at large, is there *really* that much Merlot splashing all over the place with such alarming frequency as these discussions would indicate?

kirk lenard, unfortunately you can't just separate environmental impact from design any longer, just like you can't separate form or color from design. It's part of the package. You can't say, "wow, that's a really well-designed rug" and be correct in saying that if it's made out of non-recycled, non-recyclable, non-renewable materials with a polluting, energy- and water-intensive manufacturing process. Everything that goes into the final design of the object must be considered. You also have to consider what happens to the product AFTER it has been created, as well as the impact it has while being used. A 12 mpg petroleum-guzzling polluting SUV cannot be well-designed no matter what it looks like.

This concept is hard for a lot of older designers to understand, but once you "get it", it seems very intuitive.

If you make an effort, you enter into the larger conversation, and learn with the rest of the inhabitants of this wonderful planet earth! Otherwise, you're just part of the problem.

I'm for no rug. The floor is beautiful & a sealed floor can easily take all the daily scuffing & chair movement (mine does!). Instead use the money to buy a fab art piece for your wall!

So, how "green" is beating a dead horse?

I would consider spending more attention to a nice piece of art for your wall prior to a carpet for this area. Also, sliding chairs and table will not wear and tear your gorgeous floor if you attach felt sliders underneath their legs.

You can find pads just about anywhere for the bottoms of the chair legs to prevent scuffing. I vote leave the floor bare.

Forgot to add, beautiful setup and I can't wait to see some art on the walls. But is it just me, or does it seem like the table is a bit high for those chairs? I envision feeling like a tot sitting in one of those chairs, at chin height to the table. I've never seen either in person, though, so perhaps it's just a trick of the camera?

Thanks for the continued input, all! Leaving the floors bare is definitely an option - but I should clarify: the dining area is part of a larger, open living space (while I wouldn't call our apartment a loft, the kitchen/living space/dining space is open). So a big reason we're thinking "rug under the dining table" is spatial dilineation (and yes, Patrick, to protect the floors, since we eat most meals on that table and the chairs move a lot).

Sounds like the FLOR tiles might be the best option; and surfing the website, I came across the following, which looks like a nice middle ground between the two designs Maxwell selected above:

http://www.florcatalog.com/service/flor/shop_detail.html?mv_arg=1243302500%2d6806_02

Oh, and pollyhyper - I agree, the table looks a little big for the chairs in the photo. But the feel, when you're seated, is right on. Table top is 29.5" off the floor, and seat height is 17.5". That's pretty standard, no? Also looking for art for the walls - I'd love something more mod-looking, like three of Rothko's red/orange/yellow prints next to each other or something. The wife wants a big mirror on that wall. So ... we'll have to duke that one out a while longer. All just ideas at this point.

Thanks again, all!


Andy

Not everyone likes to stare at their own reflection while they eat.

Even us narcissitic ones.

ps: Like that FLOR pattern a LOT, but wonder how practical where chairs are regularly moved.

I'm just not that familiar with FLOR in "real life" so maybe someone else has some anecdotes?

I used to work at a store that carried Flor, and we had pretty good experiences with the company. They ship very fast, and customer service is quite good. You just have to be aware of the different ratings for durability. Some tiles are not reccommended for high traffic areas (areas that will take a lot of abrasion) I really liked the tiles that looked like felt (I can't remember what they are called) but couldn't order them because they were having trouble producing them. I'm not sure if they are available now or not. We had some more traditional pile carpet tiles from them in store. It was definitely a plus that we could move them around easily if we wanted to change up the configuration. I'd suggest either ordering some samples or going to a retailer that has the full sample kits to take a look at the tiles you're interested in, because the catalog/website can be a bit decieving.

If you have a large piece of art that's bold on the wall, then you won't need a rug. I feel like rugs cut up the space.