Update: Living Room Rug
Hi everyone, happy Wednesday! Today I’m sharing a little update on our living room rug. I’ve been getting some questions about where it’s from and how it’s worn. It’s been about two years since we bought it so it felt like a good time to share.
We ordered the rug online from Rugs USA. I know a lot of people are skeptical about ordering rugs online, and I totally get that, but I have to say we’ve had a lot of success with it. Over the last few years we’ve gotten 4 from Rugs USA and all have been good quality and at really good prices. This living room rug is by far the biggest and most expensive one we’ve gotten and honestly its been totally worth it. We both absolutely love it and so does almost everyone who comes over, because it adds so much to the room. It’s an 8’x10’ 100% wool beauty that’s warm and cozy underfoot, it brings a little bit of color with the gray while still remaining neutral and has the added interest of the braid detailing without feeling busy. Honestly it’s an amazing rug. Considering something of this size and material can easily cost thousands of dollars our price tag of $450 was kind of a steal.
Wool Living Room Rug Wear and Tear Update
Overall the rug is doing really well, but let’s start from the beginning. When the rug arrived it came with some instructions that recommended thoroughly vacuuming it several times. Because it’s wool it tends to shed and the vacuuming was supposed to help with that. And I’m sure it did, but it still shed for a long time after we first put it down. For about 8 months after we got it we vacuumed it once a week. Though, that’s not completely the rug’s fault, that’s about how frequently we cleaned and of course vacuuming was a part of the routine. We made sure to not use the beater, which seemed to really help and eventually the shedding disappeared. It was by no means a deal breaker to me, but it is something to know going in.
The other thing that seemed to really help keep it in good condition was not wearing shoes on it. For the first year and half that we had it we lived in San Francisco and as a way to keep all that city grime out we were a shoes-off household anyway so it wasn’t a big deal. However, in the six months or so since we’ve moved we’ve been wearing shoes inside a lot more. The streets and sidewalks are so much cleaner here that it doesn’t feel quite as necessary to take them off and I can already tell a big difference in how quickly that’s taking a toll on the rug. We don’t plan on becoming a shoeless household again for a while so I can see a lot more wear and tear coming its way. Because of that we’ve been talking about moving it to the master bedroom where we rarely wear shoes and is just a much lower traffic area in general.
So far we’ve just been spot cleaning it, but I’ll be honest we haven’t had many spills. We don’t have kids or pets and the majority of the time we’ve owned it we were in SF where all our friends were adults and none of them had kids or pets either. So we definitely haven’t really had to test its ability to clean up well. The times we have, though, we’ve found that blotting continuously with an extremely diluted solution of dish soap and water is the best way. We used rug cleaner a couple times and it ended up lightening the spot permanently. So, even though the stain was there was still a spot.
Conclusion: If you’re considering it for a high traffic, shoes-on area it may not be the right fit. But if you’re a shoes-off household or using it in a bedroom then I highly encourage it! If you have kids, pets, or anything else that makes for a messier house and are considering it I’d go with the navy (or other dark color – it seems like they’re always rotating the colors slightly). We have the grey and it’s very light. I’m sure it hides more than the cream, but not as much the darker colors.