How to Choose Your Carpet Color
There is nothing better than a revamp of a tired room in your house to inspire you and invigorate your senses! A change is as good as a holiday, and when it’s a change that’s all around you, the holiday lasts and lasts! Tired carpet brings down a room like nothing else so putting in new carpet will change the whole look and feel of your home. But how do you know which carpet colour to choose when your overall décor remains the same? Carpeting your home can be a costly affair, which is why it is so important that choose your carpet colour well.
What Color to Choose First?
Which part of their room’s decor should you select first, when you are starting from scratch? For the main living spaces in the home, such as the family room, choose the sofa color first. The reason is that the selection of fabric colors is often more limited to sofas than with carpet or paint. Many sofa styles are offered in a choice of only four or five (or fewer) colors unless the sofa is being custom made. Therefore, if not chosen first, it can be difficult to find a sofa in the style you like, that matches the carpet you have already chosen.
Once the sofa is selected, then choose the carpet, and finally the paint. Again, this is because the paint has a virtually unlimited color selection. Start with the element that is most restricted in choice, and save the component with the biggest selection for last.
Room Colour Can Affect Your Mood
In home interior design, the overall shade or tone of a room can influence your mood, so it is it vital for your carpet colour match your current interior. What you want to avoid is an unsightly clash with your current wall shades and décor accent colours, but you also need to determine how you want feel in that particular room. Certain colour groups have been known to stimulate (reds, oranges) or relax (blues, greens) your mood, bring cheer (yellows) or induce a luxurious feeling (purple). Colours tend also to follow nature’s desires, for example blues and greens may denote a cooler feel, like a crisp winter’s morning. Reds and oranges create a warm glow to a room space, mirroring that of the bright sun or warming open fire.
Considering the overall colour of your room is important from a psychological perspective as well as a personal preference. It is important to hit the right balance with your chosen carpet colour and consider the overall temperature your room will radiate when your design is complete.
On-Trend Carpet Colour Vs Neutral Tones
Bear in mind that some carpet colours do follow trends, so if you choose a floor covering that may appear ‘in-fashion’ today, it might not be in years to come. Remember the bright feature wall craze? Within a year or two, the café latte and white look became oh so hot. Carpets are a big investment and a big job to need updating every year or two!
If you want to play it safe, then a neutral carpet colour would be a wise choice. A beige, oatmeal, pale-brown, taupe or stone coloured carpet would be your traditional fall-back option. Although some might consider them dull, bear in mind that you can add to neutral carpets by treating your floor covering as a palette to add accent colours via your choice of décor – walls, drapes, rugs blinds, scatter cushions, couches etc. Should your existing décor and wall colour be vibrant, a neutral colour can subdue and balance out your room interior.
If your room décor denotes pale furnishings or light-toned walls, then you could play around a little with your carpet colour. Would you feel comfortable using bold colours in your floor covering? A blue, red or orange carpet colour would certainly act as a focal point of your room. Consider the choice carefully though, focal points turn into eyesores in no time.
Use Of Your Room Vs Carpet Colour
One very important factor to consider when re-carpeting or fitting carpets for the first time, is how much foot traffic your room will get. Let’s be honest, if your family is large, and friends are always over, would light coloured carpets be a good idea? Will you be covering the floor of your lounge room, study, rumpus room, sun room or bedroom? You should most certainly consider the use of each room to establish the wear your carpet will get, and the potential discolouring you may experience over time.
Is your home filled with little people? If so, we all know kids magnetise mess, and will undoubtedly stain your carpets without even realising. Then there are pets, with fur and messy paws – not a pretty sight on a natural carpet colour. Yes you can call in carpet cleaning experts, but these are all factors to take on board when choosing an appropriate carpet colour for your home.
Patterned or colour blended carpets can obscure dirt and stains, accented neutral colours can help “kid proof” carpet better than a plain pale dyed colour motif and bold colours in kid’s bedrooms can create a wonderful play space – that hides all kinds of muck!
Decide which colours you DON’T want
Carpet sample boards are usually arranged by colour, from darkest to lightest and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the other samples on the board. Eliminating those samples can help to narrow down the REAL contenders. So, take a piece of paper and cover up the samples that you DON’T like. Since we are looking for a neutral carpet, I’ve covered up the obvious green/blue/plum tones.
Decide which undertones you don’t want
Now that we’ve done the easy part (bad colours/too light/too dark) we come to the tricky part – finding the undertones. The best way to figure out what the undertones are is via comparison. When you look at a sample all on its lonesome, it’s easy to think it’s ‘beige or gray’ with no undertone. However, it’s via COMPARISON that you will see how the samples are different from each other.
The most common undertones that you’ll want to avoid in carpet are yellow, green and pink. In the photo above, when compared to the left and right samples, the 4 in the middle look yellowish and pinkish so I covered them up. You can see that we’re now left with a reasonable selection of neutrals and have eliminated the ones that NOBODY picks because they are tragic.
Order large samples of your faves
You’re probably feeling brave now and want to jump ahead and order your carpet, but slow down there crazy-pants. Ask your flooring supplier to order some larger samples (usually takes no more than 5 working days). You’re spending 1000’s of dollars and another few days will be worth it.
Out of all of those samples, I narrowed it down to those 2 for my light to medium beige carpet. The one on the left is warmer feeling and a smidge more medium toned. The one on the right is more cool feeling – a bit more greige.
I would ask the carpet supplier to order large pieces of those 2 carpets. Even if you think you’ve found your fave, order your 2nd fave as well just in case.
Large samples are the best way to choose carpet because…
- It will be easier to see the undertones
- It’s easier to see how the overall texture of the carpet will act when you walk on it
- The lighting in the flooring store will likely be different from the lighting in your home. This can affect not only the colour of the carpet but also how the texture appears.
- You can see clearly how the color reacts with your furnishings, paint color, etc…
Choosing A Carpet Dealer
When choosing a carpet that is suitable for your home, you really need to call in the professionals. There are so many flooring options available, it can be overwhelming to cover all the possible options for your carpet choice. A flooring focused company is fully trained to help bring your interior décor ideas into reality, by helping you choose the right style and carpet colour for your home.
Flooring specialists will present you with a showroom filled with floor coverings, rugs and carpet tiles, ready for you get a feel of the style, texture and carpet colour that is right for your home. Showrooms offer a fabulous opportunity to relax and take the stress out of choosing the appropriate floor furnishing for your home. Touch, feel and get a real sense of the type of carpet, the carpet colour and the overall colour scheme that’s right for you.
Ask for removable carpet samples to take home and have a play around with, and see whether the style you think would look best in the showroom, actually presents in the same way in your future room revamp. As previously mentioned, a carpet is a costly investment to your home, but if chosen correctly, and with the assistance of a flooring expert , your floor covering will make the world of difference to your home lifestyle.