Here at Lavender Oriental Carpets  we are always aware of the most au courant trends in interior design and how oriental rugs, especially ours, can help advance them. Thus we begin a blog post series commenting on recently published interiors employing oriental rugs with our pieces instead of the illustrated examples.

Open and modern, clean and uncluttered, reduced to the essentials. A recent article in Elle Décor shows off a modernist Mexican villa with lots of glass and plentiful wood accents everywhere. In the living room copious light brown neutral wood accents are splashed with colorful scarlet chairs. Simplicity reigns. The carpet is the only visually complex object in the room. A bedroom in the same house has one royal blue wall and wood floors. The blue is picked up by the throw pillows on the bed and reappears in the darkish blue of the Kerman medallion carpet on the polished floor. Rust, cream and powder blue are the detail tones. Our Kerman, is a perfect piece for this space, picking up the neutrals of grey and light brown. Again, the carpet is the only visually complex object. The wall art is abstract and the furniture is crisply contemporary. A well patterned carpet is a welcome contrast to the large plain areas of the walls and ceiling. We have less blue, more ivory and pale tones, but the overall effect is still contrastive.

Nothing says “traditional” (or almost) as an oriental carpet. Traditional rooms are always visually busy and all too often clutter is the next stage. There is a constant combat, a look at me first, of the furniture and objects. This centrifugal effect needs to be reversed. Nothing unifies better than a room sized carpet. In a recent House Beautiful spread of a suburban Maryland dwelling, we find a living room perfectly integrated by a softly toned late 19^th century Tabriz in a huge semi-repeating medallion design in hues of rust, navy, pistachio and beige. The carpet fills the room and effectively ties everything together. The room has plenty of contrasting pattern and scale, on the walls, with the tabletop objects, in the eclectic furniture and on the rug. But there is no clash, no conflict, no feeling of overloaded busyness. The carpet has neutralized the jostling for attention. Our Mashad is a perfect substitute for the Tabriz with its expansive large allover pattern and semi-soft color’s. We can expect a similar unifying effect in a traditional space with our allover palmette patterned carpet. The 18^th century tapestry fragment on the wall picks up the color’s of the carpet.

All the rooms of this house have wood floors, and room sized oriental carpets in allover patterns in decorative tones emphasizing blues and creams. For every room, we have a carpet that would work equally well to organize and render the environments welcoming and inviting. The eye is kept occupied with plenty of interesting objects integrated by the carpet. Our carpets are integrative, not dispersive.