9×12 Area Rugs for Hardwood Floors


9×12 area rugs are among the most popular rug sizes available for living rooms and dining rooms, and with good reason. While hardwood floors can be beautiful, they can also be hard, cold and slippery underfoot; especially if you have a habit of walking around in socks. For most living rooms, a well selected 9×12 area rug can provide a stylish solution to the problems presented by hardwood floors without sacrificing the beauty and charm hardwood floors can add to a home. By placing them in your large rooms you can use 9×12 area rugs to add warmth, softness and traction to your hardwood floors, especially if you use a rug pad.

You can have much of the underfoot comfort of wall to wall carpeting while still showcasing your hardwood floor by placing 9×12 area rugs at the center of your living dining room floors. This will also help to protect your floor against scratches from shifting coffee table, couch and chair feet. At the same time, the exposed portion of your hardwood floor is still shown to good effect as a border for your living room rug. Covering the better part of your floors with large rugs will also help your house to retain warmth. Much of your household heat is through the floor as heat seeps through the wood floor and into your basement. Reach down and touch your living room floor. If the floor beneath your feet is cooler that the air temperature of your living room you are losing heat into your slab or basement. By putting 9×12 area rugs on your floors you can create a barrier between the warm air of your living room and the coolness of your basement. In short, by insulating your floor rugs can help, in part, to reduce your heating bills in winter.

Beyond their practical applications, 9×12 area rugs can also make excellent accent rugs. A red area rug contrasting with tan walls may add brightness and color to a room with a dark floor. A brown area rug will help to conceal wear and dirt in high traffic areas. A dark green area rug can go equally well with both the tan of lightly stained wood furniture or with the ever popular white baseboard. You can also alternate color schemes between rooms more easily with 9×12 area rugs than you can with a wall to wall carpet. While a red rug may add life and energy to the atmosphere of your living room, you might want something calmer in your dining room. With wall to wall carpeting a sudden transition in color may appear awkward and tasteless. The separation provided by your hardwood floor between the 9×12 area rug in your living room and the one in your dining room can help to minimize the potential for clashes of color between rooms. This leaves you free to have a stylish black area rug in your living room and a subtler cream colored rug or even a brilliant Persian area rug under your dining room table without worrying about the contrast. Then again, perhaps you find my suggestions of color simply awful. It doesn’t matter. Let your own style guide you. By choosing 9×12 area rugs as a compliment to your hardwood floors, you gain a flexibility of style and design that wall to wall carpet simply cannot offer while still retaining many of the functional benefits of wall to wall carpet.

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