Rugs by Colour: Grey, Green, Blue, White and Cream

Colour is the first thing anyone decides about a rug and usually the only thing they are sure of when they start looking. These are the fourteen we group by.

The pages below are grouped by what the colour does in a room rather than by where it sits on a colour wheel, because that is the decision you are actually making.

Neutral rugs

Six of the fourteen are neutrals, and they are the largest part of what people buy. They differ less in colour than in what they do to a floor.

White rugs and cream rugs lighten a floor. Neither is a bright white — the white rugs are ivory and off white, warm enough to sit with wood and pale walls, and cream goes a step further towards yellow. Both suit a bedroom or a quiet room better than a hallway.

Beige rugs and brown rugs do the opposite and ground a room. Beige is the pale end and includes natural undyed fibre; brown goes darker and is the most forgiving colour there is for traffic.

Grey rugs are the safest choice and the most bought, because grey goes with what is already in the room and does not date. Black rugs work by contrast instead, and they need a bright room to do it.

Cool colours

Three collections, and they behave differently from the neutrals because they change the temperature of a room rather than just its weight.

Blue rugs are the only colour that actively cools a space. That suits a room with too much afternoon sun and works against a room that is already cold. Navy rugs take the same colour to its darkest point and behave more like a dark neutral than a colour.

Green rugs are the most bought colour after the neutrals, and the reason is that green is already in most rooms — in wood, in plants, in the light through a window.

Warm colours

Four collections, and all of them add warmth that a British room does not get from daylight for half the year.

Pink rugs run from blush, which behaves almost like a neutral, to bright pink for a child's room. Red rugs are the oldest rug colour there is and still the boldest.

Orange rugs means terracotta and rust rather than a true orange — the clay colours that came back after twenty years away. Yellow rugs means mustard and ochre, and it is the colour to reach for if a grey room has tipped into feeling cold.

Multicoloured rugs

Multicoloured rugs sit outside the other thirteen because they are not a colour choice, they are a palette. A rug carrying five or six colours gives you something for every cushion and every painting to agree with afterwards, rather than one colour that everything else has to match.

Choose one by its dominant colour rather than by all of them — the shade that comes forward when you look at it from across a room is the one it will read as.

Rug colour FAQs

What colour rug is the safest choice?

Grey, and it is the most bought for that reason. It goes with what is already in the room, works in modern and traditional spaces, and takes traffic better than any pale neutral.

What colour rug hides dirt best?

Brown, followed by mid grey and terracotta. Anything pale shows marks and anything very dark shows dust and thread, so mid tones are the forgiving ground.

Should a rug match the sofa or the walls?

The walls. A rug that fights the wall colour is noticeable from the doorway; a rug that fights the sofa is only noticeable from the sofa.

What colour rug makes a room look bigger?

A pale one. Ivory, off white and cream make the floor recede, which reads as more space. The trade-off is that all three show everything in a room that gets walked through in shoes.

Do you sell white rugs?

Ivory and off white rather than a bright white. A true white reads as cold on a floor and shows the first mark, so what people usually want when they ask for white is one of the warmer two.