Thanks for all the suggestions. Where the entrance widens is actually where to kitchen begins (appliances are hidden to the left), I've added a wooden bar table and black chairs that go up against the right wall in the kitchen. The length of the entrance before it widens is actually 10ft now that I'm measuring it with tape. I'm picturing a 6ft runner at the entrance and then a 3x5 area rug in the kitchen (where it widens in the pic). Do you think the runner and area rug should be a set that go together? Any help with that would be great!

Haha, in the 2.5 years we've lived in the house, I never noticed how poorly matched the existing stair runner was until you pointed it out! Thanks for the excellent input. Definitely, if we did go with one of these larger pattern repeat carpets, we would just run it continuously from top to bottom of the stairs without cutting it for each individual step and trying to pattern match it on each step as they had tried to do with the current stair runner. Each individual step would have a slightly different "look" about it rather than each step being almost uniform--do you think that would pose a problem?

I just went back to HomeSense and picked up two more rugs. They are softer blends. I agree with you. The bright teal is actually just a pillowcase I took from my stepson for now. But I have a soft blue teal sheets and my drapes have a greyish teal as well. Ill see if these work... hard to see but one has a bit of teal in it the other is more of a stone blue... I wanted the others to work because one of the rugs was over $1000 and marked down to $150!!!

You need some texture, and color. Sisal braided oval with color banding- same style in a runner. I would go red, but you need to duplicate what ever color you choose. The human eye likes to 'bounce' around, high to low ( or any combo.) Pick up the choice color in art, candle sticks, runners etc. Your hitchcock chairs, table base side table are leading in only one direction right now. Runner size choices are few. Assumption is you have between 36-42" in the galley? Oval size rugs are plentiful. Chose large enough to have at least the front legs of the buffet on the rug. good luck.