I like rugs, they anchor furniture nicely.

Yes, they present some care issues, but its still do-able.

The rule is, furniture is all on or all off a rug. So under a table, it has to be all on, even when you pull out the chairs. It can be hard to find a rug that wont move with the chairs but you dont need to fight with either.

To me round rugs are for square rooms.

thanks mtnrdredux, I think I will like a rug as well. We have kind of a weird space, it is a 24x36 great room, no dividers, the lr is marked by carpet that comes up agaisnt the ceramic, all off-white so it seems like one large room. I think an area rug with some color will mark the dr space nicely.

This forum is so handy - when I get some picked out I will post for color hints!

{{!gwi}}

This is the table - all the weird brown ceramic (in front of a woodstove) and vinyl will go away and the new ceramic is off white....I still can't tell what shape rug to buy, or color! Any ideas?

Not a really great situation when the rug meets floor right in a number of walkpaths. Probably not a problem if you are young and kids are able, but we had a rectangular rug which turned up at the edges and it was in walkpath--you went over it in two spots on your journey. It was a hazard. Our last two rugs have been better behaved but I still have to angle across the two junctions. Will need to remove it once I'm older if I have trouble walking carefully. What about you--how much foot traffic in that area and how likely that the rug will trip someone?

If you don't need the rug to warm up the room physically and if the center of table is fixed (under a light fixture perhaps?), could you make a pattern in the floor to mark the circle of the table and radiates out from it somehow?

How important is that round table?

By the way, we had a well-used oriental rug under our dining table when kids were little. Camouflaged everything.

Thanks florantha for your thoughts. I am a little worried about traffic now that you say that - you can see there is a door (to a screened porch) right by the table. We don't use it in the winter, brrrr, but there is traffic out there all the time in the summer.

The table is not tied to lighting, it just floats between fixtures. I think it has to stay because it was handmade by local Amish and my husband did all the finishing, it is sturdy as heck and heavy too. I just can't see replacing it for esthetics.....but I am afraid when we get the ceramic that it will be colder than the vinyl, thus the rug idea.

I think a rectangle rug would be out of foot traffic more than round except for the porch. The woodstove is just for when we lose power, which can be frequent. We are pulling out all the old brown ceramic that is in front of it, that ceramic was put in years ago when the kids were little - we had a fence around the stove for kiddie safety and we used it for all our heat, piled wood on the tile. Now, it is just the two of us and we have natural gas heat - yay!

Any more thoughts, opinions, etc are welcome. We have ended up using the new island space to eat at - which I enjoy, our old island was just a base cabinet in the middle of the floor, this one has an overhang. We could not make a peninsula b/c we have a wall of glass in front of the table. Here is another vantage:

{{!gwi}}

If I'm understanding you correctly, you don't really use that table very much, it's mainly a beloved piece of furniture you can't get rid of? If that's the case then I would go for a round rug one foot in diameter larger than your table; that way the chairs sit on top of it when they are pushed under, but not when they are being used. This leaves a bit more clearance around the rug.

You would have to get a non-slip pad to put underneath, but I would make it so that I had enough room to put rug tape under the rug, it secures the edges pretty well. I've used that combination before and was very happy with it.

As for color, if you don't have a lot of other patterns that are not visible in the picture, I would use a patterned rug that incorporates a bit of that (sage?) green on your chair pads, or a color that coordinates with your decor.

If any of my advice seems completely ridiculous, I blame it on it being almost 2 in the morning, lol. I'm having a sleepless night over a kitchen dilemma of my own.

Sallysue,

Love the overhead pictures -- for just one second I thought, "Good grief, she's shinnied out on a beam to get a good shot. That's dedication!"

We have tribal-type oriental rugs all over our house, and they are indeed wonderful for messy families. Years ago we started springing for special pads to go under them -- they really work to keep everything in place. Ours have waffle weave on one side for noncarpeted floors and a textured wool(?) side that grabs the carpet.

Even though they cost significantly more than other pads, they last forever and unlike the other pads we've tried, they really do the trick. We get ours from Mussallem Carpets in Jacksonville, FL. So you might want to look at what they offer and see if you can find something equally good.

Here's how the top of our rug pads look, in case you're interested.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{!gwi}}

Maria - thanks for the advice, not ridiculous at ALL, I am really clueless about this stuff and looking for words of wisdom from people who enjoy decorating. My big issue is not buying stuff that won't work - I am the queen of not knowing how things will actually look and then hauling them to Goodwill when I hate them. I usually reserve my bad choices for sheets and posters, am tickled pink that I got such good input from the folks on this website. You guys rock!

I think that the space is pretty small now that i walk around it all day - a smaller round rug would solve the traffic issue and add some color. i am looking at sage-ish colors but have some blue going on too, hmmm.

Mary - I love your post! I am dedicated to this project, but would probably not crawl on the beams - tho you never know, I never thought i would check Garden Web every day to see if anyone read my post - thanks for answering! (I took the pic from the loft)

I love the idea of the wooly rug pad, i want some oriental rugs in my kitchen as well once the ceramic is in and I bet they would work well. Am worried about standing on ceramic without rug/pad......