How to Pull Colors from a Rug

Use a rug as an inspiration piece or as a color scheme starter is common advice.  However, no one ever tells you how to do it.  Closest you’ll get is “match the background color of the rug”.

But what if you don’t like that color?  What if there isn’t suitable quality of inherent light to support said background color?  What if?

This colorgraphical event, How to Pull Colors from a Rug, features a rug with a colorway that would prove challenging for many.  It’s challenging because there are A LOT of different colors AND the background is a dark red.  Again, what if you don’t want to paint the walls a dark red to match the background of the rug?

Which color can you choose?

How to Pull Colors from a Rug

I can answer that question with 48 colors. Even better, I’m going to teach YOU how to think color like I do.  For this blog post, I swapped in a rug picture courtesy of  NW Rugs.

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9 thoughts on “How to Pull Colors from a Rug”

  1. Super easy way to choose color for an entire neighborhood let alone for just one house. The trick is to just choose a pretty inspiration piece. Nice range of color in that rug to – from the lighter colors for common areas of the home to darker colors that can be used as accents. Nice!

  2. Awesome. Great explanation. Tip for  mental blending: stand back from the rug to see how the colors read from a distance. This is how you will view it on a daily basis. It cracks me up when people hold the paint chip directly next to the area rug, two inches from their eyeballs! Bottom line – be inspired by rug colors, but know it’s not an exact science. This is a wonderful, visual explanation, Lori. Thanks.

  3. So THAT’S how it’s done. 🙂 I definitely have not seen this explanation before and I have looked everywhere.
    Awesome!

  4. So thrilled that Lori chose one of our unique hand knotted oriental rugs for this color-graphic. It really shows how versatile rugs are when it comes to color matching. The options are endless and makes the rug easy to work with as your home evolves (or changes) over the lifetime of the rug. Thanks again, Lori. We’re honored you took the time to do this wonderful work. Cheers.

  5. You know I love this advice – rugs are a great starting point for paint color, and if you don’t like one, usually there is another color to chose from. Can’t go wrong…

    Lori, I love the graphics!

  6. Lynne Whiteside – just viewed your website! WOW! I lived in SF for 23 years. I recognize several of the houses. How gratifying it must be for you and your team to know that you make a significant contribution to making SF one of the most beautiful and visited cities in the world.
    I didn’t see links to any social media channels – are you connected that way? Would love to follow you.
    Cheers.

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