It is challenging to know what goes into a quality rug. It's also hard, when you are eco-friendly and trying to consume fewer products made in unethical factories (I conveniently decided this after we bought everything from Ikea), to know where to buy a rug that is going to be durable and also not made by children in a third world country.
We also need an oddly sized rug for our living room if we want it to run the full length of both couches - about 5'x13' should do it. Which is a weird rug size, since 5x7 or 8x10 seems to be the norm. All of this is how I ended up on the FLOR website lusting after carpet tiles.
FLOR tiles are made in the USA with recycled carpet tiles and they take your old floor tiles for recycling and if you stain one of them you can just buy a new one and swap it out. They are also significantly cheaper than pretty much all of the area rugs I've been eyeing.
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I'm a really big fan of the striped one above - I think it'll look great with our couch, bring some color into the room without going overboard, and since the tiles themselves are about 20" square, a long rug in this scheme would be about $300, which seems pretty reasonable. (Plus there is a sale going on right now that would bring it closer to $200.)We also need a dining room rug, and since we are trending towards greys/blacks for our dining rooms, I'm leaning towards something bold and graphic for that space. Unfortunately, I also favor bold and graphic tablecloths so maybe we should go neutral.
We don't just need to find a rug for the middle of our living room though. We also need a thoroughly absorbent entry mat and a rug for under our bikes. I love this indoor/outdoor option for under our bike rack - we need something absorbent that protects the floors and will hold up to stains, etc. At $33, the price is right but I don't know where it is made, etc. so we may have to pass.
Any suggestions for where to go to buy rugs? Any ethically sourced/environmentally friendly companies that you know of out there?
I really like the "Modern Mix" Solid options :-) I think that the tiles look great for the dining room, but I would worry that they wouldn't be very soft or plush for a living room.
ReplyDeleteYou can also get rugs cut and bound for pretty reasonable prices. We had one cut and sized from Home Depot (under $300 for a ~12x11 rug), but I'm not sure if they offer as many eco friendly carpet options. With a little more research, our home depot rug is Martha Stewart Living, which says nothing on their website about being not from a sweatshop and something still rubs me wrong about MS in general, so while I love our rug it might not fit your criteria.
I'm sure the smaller local companies offer the same services, and they might have more options for non-sweatshop carpets. All of our wall-to-wall carpets are from a small local company because we didn't want to deal with Home depot. (Plus we like to support local business)