A carpet or area rug can serve as the bold centerpiece of a space or provide a quiet grounding for the furnishings. Whichever role the floor covering plays, finding just the right look can be a challenge, which is why many designers and homeowners choose custom carpets and rugs.
The made-to-order capabilities in floor coverings are virtually unlimited. Options range from tweaking the color or altering the size of a rug to sketching an original design and creating a one-of-a-kind piece of art for the floor.
The Art of Rug-making
For one Arlington, VA, living room, Interior Designer Andrea Houck, principal of A. Houck Designs, opted for art. The living room’s conversation area has four chairs clustered around a fireplace. The rug had to be a nonstandard 8-foot by 8-foot square, and it had to work with the furniture and fabrics already in place. “I wanted something organic with an Asian feel,” Houck says. “Since we already had a strong all-over pattern on the chairs, the rug needed to be quiet.”
Houck explored in-stock options, but could not find a rug that met the space’s needs – or her vision. So Houck sketched a design for the ideal rug. Her inspiration: the Washington cherry blossoms. Houck collaborated with TDM Design, Inc., a custom rug company, to turn her idea into reality. Michelle Taylor-Spearman, co-principal of TDM, finalized the design, creating a computer-generated rendering and then making a sample, or strike-off, of the rug. The result is a hand-knotted, Tibetan wool rug with silk accents.
Pulling It Together
Orange and gray? This unlikely color combination blends effortlessly with the help of a custom rug in a Bethesda, MD, living room designed by Susan A. Vallon, principal of Susan A. Vallon Ltd. Designer. Vallon found a striped rug pattern in TDM’s catalog to get her started but narrowed the stripes for a subtle, textural look and created interest by alternating gray wool loop-pile stripes with orange silk cut-pile stripes.
“The mix of the fibers provides a great sheen that glows at night,” Vallon says. “This rug grounds the room with texture that is meaningful but doesn’t take away from the fabrics. By pulling the two colors together, the rug gives them a reason.”
Matching the color of the room’s orange velvet-covered chairs and pillows was a challenge. Vallon selected gray and orange shades from TDM’s color collection, but when the sample came back, the orange shade was off. TDM sent a cutting of the orange velvet to Nepal and had the color dyed to match the fabric.
Vallon stresses the importance of getting a sample made before giving the final go-ahead. “Follow the process,” Vallon says. “Wait for the sample so you can correct something that is wrong. The woven product can be very different from the drawing.”
A custom hand-knotted rug can take four to 12 months to complete, depending on the number of changes made during the approval process. The rug size and knot density, or the number of knots per square inch, will affect the price. The knot count typically ranges between 45 and 150 – the higher the count, the tighter the knots, the higher the price.
Tufting Options
Hand-tufted (or gun-tufted) rugs allow almost endless custom combinations of designs, colors, sizes, weights, and piles. Instead of tying knots, an artisan pushes yarn through a backing imprinted with the overall design, following the lines of the design, rather than a linear grid as is done in hand knotting.
These rugs are generally denser than hand-knotted rugs. “The look really is completely different,” says Doug Meyer, who, along with his brother Gene, designs custom rugs and is co-creative director for NIBA Rug Collections. “If you are looking for precision in a geometric or graphic design, then you go with hand-tufting.” Computer Yarn Placement – or CYP – technology mimics the look of hand-tufting, says Wendell Davis, co-owner of Davis & Davis Rugs, but significantly reduces delivery time and cost. With either method, any idea in any style can be translated into a rug. Davis & Davis created one bedroom rug displaying a couple’s wedding vows in Italian.
Dean Buchanan, showroom manager of J. Asher, walks designers and their clients through the many construction methods available today. “You choose the construction method based on budget, leadtime, and the look you want,” Buchanan says. “The number of colors to be used sometimes affects the price, so one method is not always less expensive than another.”
Carpet Choices
Technology advances, with the advent of a full-width tufting machine, have expanded the possibilities for madeto-order, broadloom-carpet designs, too. “Broadloom carpet technology has improved,” says Davis, “to where we can easily create custom designs in wall-to-wall carpet. We see primitive Tibetan-influenced designs floating over to fabrics, wallpaper, and now with our technology, broadloom carpets.”
Outside the Box
Neutral broadloom carpet and wool sisals also can be made fresh with custom bindings. Leather, suede, cork, and tapestry are some of the many available options. Designer Dana Tydings, president and owner of Tydings Design Inc., loves the look. To underscore the point, Tydings used an alligator-embossed leather binding on her own family-room rug. She often turns to bindings to jazz up clients’ carpets, too.
“I put a wide, three-inch cork binding, with shades of coral and aqua, on a neutral stair runner for one client,” Tydings says. “The result is stunning. With bindings, you can get a custom look at a much lower cost.”
In today’s anything-is-possible rug and carpet market, designers and homeowners are in control. “We think of rug designs as serving suggestions,” says Buchanan at J. Asher. “They offer a conceptual beginning, but you can manipulate and fine-tune them to come up with your own design.”
