These Are The Best Carpet Colors
Unless you've been living beneath a piece of laminate flooring for the last few years, you'd know that carpets are back with a vengeance – bigger, brighter, and bolder than ever before. Carpets don't just feel great underfoot and serve as another layer of insulation in your home, their color and dynamic can enhance the aesthetic and atmosphere of any room. With the right color carpet, you can transform the most mundane and unassuming space into a thing of great beauty. There are many things to factor in when picking a carpet for your home, but the most important thing to get right is selecting a color that works!
People have been making and admiring carpets for several thousand years. They are both practical and decorative and help to make a house a home. After a domestic dominance that lasted centuries, the reign of the carpet king was usurped in recent decades by a succession of pretenders to the throne. While hardwoods, luxury vinyls, and laminates may all have their place in the pecking order, only one head can wear the crown. Once again more and more people are opting for the inviting plushness of carpet because it offers both comfort and color in a way other types of flooring simply cannot. If you're thinking about going on a magical carpet ride in your home, but are unsure of what color to opt for, read on because help is at hand.
What carpet colors should I be wary of?
Before we unfold the various shades and hues of carpet and study the benefits of each one, it's important to remember there is no such thing as the wrong carpet color! There are simply certain colors that you should avoid depending on your circumstances. For example, a cream or white shag may reek of luxury and boast an old-world elegance. However, it's simply impractical and hard to maintain, particularly if you have a young family or pets. A white carpet does not handle spills well. The slightest stain from red wine, cola, or coffee will turn into an ugly blemish, and forget to take your shoes off more than once or let your dog run riot and you'll know about it.
It may be a time-honored tradition to roll out the red carpet for the great and the good. Yet, what may appear opulent and iconic at glitzy awards ceremonies and glamorous events, can be claustrophobic and unsettling in your home. Red is culturally associated with danger. It is a very intense, dramatic, and emotive color. In small doses, it works well but when you have an abundance of it covering your floors, it can make a soul feel agitated and distressed. And don't make the common mistake that a black carpet will hide a multitude of sins, it won't! Its starkness will highlight the mess and modern debris of modern life just as much as white. Enough of the negatives; it's time to focus on the positives.
Tangled up in blue
Blue is perhaps the most soothing of all the colors. Its tranquil and sublime shades belong to the sea and the sky. It is considered a color that is calming, relaxing, stable and reliable. The color blue is widely acknowledged as the most popular color in the world and is a very popular choice for carpets. Studies suggest that the color blue can help reduce stress at the end of a tiring day by helping to slow your heart rate and your breathing. This makes a robin's egg blue carpet the perfect choice for the bedroom. If you have a room where you meditate or practice yoga, then a blue carpet is only going to enhance the positive vibes of such a space. Research also shows that blue also helps focus the mind and boosts productivity – making a blue carpet the ideal fit for a home office.
Blue carpets come in a variety of shades and matching the right color with your interior will only enhance and deepen its well-being properties. Dark blue carpets make a good contrast with neutral colors and are an ideal choice if you have young children. Pair them with white walls for a nautical theme that'll help you envisage new horizons. Navy blue carpets, with their connotations of power and authority, can add a regal sophistication to your home. Light blue carpets help to maximize light in rooms that don't get much sun, and a sky blue carpet is picture postcard perfect when it comes to evoking an airy and transcendental feel.
Mellow yellow
Associated with the sun's warming and nourishing rays, the color yellow symbolizes cheerfulness, optimism, and positivity. It is an inviting, energetic, and friendly color. However, interior designers have historically been extremely selective when picking particular shades of yellow due to its negative connotations. A vibrant canary yellow is often associated with sickness, mental illness, cowardice, and excess. This type of yellow should be used with caution, particularly when it comes to carpets. The shade can easily overpower a room and become quite nauseating over time. However, if you're feeling particularly bold and experimental, a bright yellow carpet matched with black walls or furniture provides just enough contrast to take the edge off.
For most households though, a pale or mustard yellow carpet would be the preferred option to add a little sparkle and zing into a room. Lorna Haigh, Creative Director at Alternative Flooring, explained to Livingetc, "Yellow is the color of optimism and happiness and it also amplifies light which can make rooms seem brighter. There are lots of shades to choose from – deeper mustard shades suit bedrooms, whereas you might want to go for a softer yellow in living rooms. Plus, there are lots of colors that go with yellow." Elizabeth Graziolo of Yellow House Architects has had a lifelong love for yellow. She explained she couldn't think of a color more associated with joy, lightness, sunrises, and new beginnings than yellow. She attributed its growing popularity to the world's need for a color that represented hope in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Pretty green
Green was another color that enjoyed a boost in popularity in the wake of the pandemic. Green's connotations with tranquility and mother nature struck a chord with people decorating their homes. According to West Fraser, a 2022 survey suggested that over half of Americans would use green as their choice of color for home decor. Sue Wadden from Sherwin-Williams explained, "Green has become such a popular color because people are wanting to add life to their spaces and bring nature inside." The Behr Paint Co's Erika Woelfel added, "Adding cool greens to a family room or casual dining room area can encourage you to unwind and get comfortable." He added that the color green can also add a little calming Zen to bedrooms.
Green carpets can help create a refreshing, energized, and healthy space. Adding a few plants to a room with a green carpet will create a spring-like atmosphere that will restore calm and balance. Green sits in the middle of the color wheel, making it extremely versatile in terms of mixing it with other colors. A green carpet allows you to experiment quite boldly with the furnishings and wall colors in your home. Interior designer, Melanie Jade explained, "Green has always been my favorite color. It is extremely versatile, goes with pretty much every color on the spectrum, and most importantly, it helps to connect you with nature and bring the outside in. Depending on the shade you use, it can have an extremely calming effect in a room."
Fade to grey
Grey is one of those colors that often gets a bad rap. It lacks the stark contrasts and simplicity of black or white and it doesn't boast the indulgent or engaging tones of one of the rainbow colors. However, what it does have is an understated eloquence and classic timelessness that looks great on a carpet. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar a grey carpet gives you a great return on your investment. It is easy on the eye and adds an air of sophistication to any room. Despite what the famous book tells you, there are more than "Fifty Shades Of Grey." The human eye is capable of detecting more than 500 hues of this particular color. From grey-beige (AKA greige) to grey-blue and grey-brown, there's an abundance of choices of grey carpet to decorate your home with
Grey carpets are a great match for cream walls and when paired with the warm tones of oak furniture, create a calm, laid-back look. Compared with other colors, grey carpets can be relatively inexpensive and practical. Grey is a neutral color and will look great with a host of other colors, but getting the shade of grey carpet right is important. A darker grey carpet will work better with a room that is decorated predominantly in one of the cooler colors such as blue or green. However, a lighter-colored grey carpet is great for creating a balance in a room decorated with warmer colors such as red or orange.
Pretty in pink
Traditionally, the color pink is often viewed as a feminine color. At its most vibrant it can be quite outrageous, and at its most subtle can be very relaxing and warm. A pink room can be both a welcoming and warm one. Carpet specialist Punam Chada explained, "People are now increasingly bold when it comes to choosing flooring for bedrooms and living rooms, with neutral carpets no longer necessarily the automatic choice. Instead, we're seeing more on-trend patterns and colors being used for a far more aspirational room scheme." Although pale and soft pinks may be on trend, there's still room in the hearts of adventurous souls for hot pink or bubblegum pink carpets.
According to interior designer Maria Killam, if you're going to make the bold leap and roll out the pink carpets in your home, then you must embrace and incorporate the theme into other facets of your room. She explained, "If you have this much of any bossy color, you cannot ignore it. You must embrace it like the long-lost love of your life." She added, "Because the color is trending it's easy to find coordinated pink decor." She added that light grey furniture and curtains are a great way of softening and cooling a pink carpet. And a pink and navy or pink and deep green color scheme works well.
Embrace natural tones
If cool colors leave you cold, hotter shades make you break out in a sweat, black is too dark, and white is too colorless, then there's only one place left for you to go when choosing a carpet. And that's into the world of natural and neutral colors. Often considered to be a tried and tested go-to for interior designers the world over, carpets with earthy hues are considered a great base to introduce more colorful and loud elements into a room. Beige has always been a popular choice of carpet for those who don't want the impracticality of white but are not too keen on the razzle and dazzle of color. Beige carpets are a happy compromise that is both sustainable and easy on the eye.
Neutral carpets remain the most popular for a reason. With a neutral carpet, you can change the color of the walls as often as you like and get creative as Picasso in the process. There's a common misconception that neutral carpets are a little boring. Yet opting for a carpet with friezes, flecked color, or cut and loop style can add personality and punch to a carpet. According to LivingEtc, co-founder of HAM Interiors, Tom Fox explained that when choosing a natural carpet, "Sisal is ideal for high-traffic areas like hallways or stairs, while the softness of wool in a bedroom is hard to beat. Wool has so many great things going for it; it's natural, easily cleaned, sustainable, and a great insulator."
Saturn's patterns
Each color of the carpet has its appeal and season to take to the floor and steal the show. Whatever shade you choose to throw down and walk all over is a highly personal preference. You could be a blue, pink, green, or yellow kind of person, or you could be someone who wants to have their cake and endlessly eat it. In this case, a patterned carpet might be the one that floats your boat and rocks your world. The stripes, diamonds, tartan, and geometrical designs of patterned carpets can add an element of intrigue and imagination to your home, and help introduce a more diverse and extensive color scheme.
A lot is going on with patterned carpets and a good tip before you go all in is to check there's nothing in the color palette of the rest of your room that clashes with it. The key is to ensure each element in your patterned carpet effortlessly weaves with the tones already established within your room. Patterned carpets often work well on stairs and can help widen a narrow room. From nautical pinstripes, and country tartan to botanical motifs and animal prints, you can be as brave and bold as you wish to be with patterned carpets. Whatever magical carpet ride you choose to embark on, remember you're not alone. Alternative Flooring director, Lorna Haigh told ELLE Decoration, "There is something about the feel of soft carpet underfoot which is reassuring." Amen to that!