A Large Jute Rug Meant for The Bedroom

We are doing a little bit of glad dance boogieing on our new rug, hence this post’s title. Yes, it is like High School Musical over here, plenty of dancing and occasionally there is even some ballad-y singing about our feelings. Feel free to click play and get in on it.

Now that we have gotten through that little dance interlude, here is the new rug:

Oh glad day, we enjoy it.

Here is a recent shot of the space without it for comparison.

Is not it remarkable what a rug – even a neutral and “safe” jute one – can do to tie things together and add balance to a 15 x 16′ bedroom (15 x 21′ if you count the sink nook’s depth). Well, there is more going on when it comes to bedroom cha-cha-cha-changes, but we will get to those in a bit. As for the rug, we are loving the horizontal placement in the space (which still frees up 3 feet of hardwood flooring on each side and 6 feet of it between the foot of the rug and the wall – in fact it is 11′ between the foot of the rug and the sink nook), which makes for some strong “flow.” Here is a more rug-oriented shot so you can see some of the hardwood floor around it:

Placing it vertically in our room (since it is a vertical space) was our first instinct, but before ordering it we taped it off on the floor in either orientation and realized that we liked having more rug on each side of the bed to step down on and balance things out. So wide-ways it went. Here is a wide shot of the whole room for ya:

We left our ubiquitous faux sheepskin rugs on either side of the bed, simply because there is nothing better than stepping out of bed onto them in the morning. And visually we like that pop of white on each side to sort of triangulate with the feathery white light fixture to create even more balance. Yes, Dad The Math Teacher, I worked “triangulate” into a post. How many Best Daughter Ever points is that? Oh and see that fluffy middle cushion on the bed? Target. $12.

We have consistently been large fans of jute and this rug is softer than any other that we have owned. And simply as we suspected, we enjoy the subtle nubby diamond pattern going on. Not too obvious and compete-y with the patterned duvet, but not too flat and blah like some of the other woven jute rugs that we looked at. And we are so glad with the color too. Not too orange or tan (which might make it disappear right into our floor, which kinda of defeats the purpose of a big rug to balance the room out and tie things together in the first place).

Now back to those other tweaks going on in that we mentioned. At first we were averse to the idea of removing Ed the Bed‘s top slats, but after living with things for a bit and the arrival of our new rug we chose to play around and give it a go. What is the worst that could happen? And what do you know, we enjoy his little haircut of sorts. Sometimes it is simply pleasant to take a little off the top. Removing those slats does nothing to compromise the sturdiness of the bed (they can best be described as 100% decorative) and we like how it opened things up and allowed us to move our new light up a smidge since we no longer had to worry about the petals bumping into Ed’s top rail.

We are loving these little switcheroos for now, but who knows what else will change (or un-change) as we add other stuff into the room. It is certainly still in progress (to do: add some wall art, bring in an antique dresser, eventually upgrade our nightstands, possibly change the lamp shades, etc). Oh and we might add little finials to the top of each bed post, simply for a more wrapped up look. We will see. The best thing ever is that even after raising the light a bit it is still visible in the mirror when our heads hit the pillow in bed (see that magic, along with my hubby’s socks here). It is a New Years Eve Miracle I tell ya.

Oh and about the absence of the bench at the foot of the bed in all the pics above. Such a short dark bench under the light was making the room look a bit top-heavy and unbalanced, but the one we’d like to someday upgrade to would ideally be as long (or nearly as long) as the bed. We simply thought removing it for some pics might assist you folks “see” past that awkwardly small brown rectangle in the room. But for now it is still in here since it serves a pleasant little Burger-related function (he hops on and off of it to get into the much-taller-than-our-last-one bed). So here is how the bedroom in fact looks these days, bench and all:

To go back to our post title (ah full circle, it is like an episode of Family Ties) we, uh huh, uh huh, truly like the new rug. And as for Clara and Burger, they enjoy it too. Oddly sufficient for semi similar reasons: traction for Burger and texture for Clara. She likes to pet it and “pinch” the nubs, and he loves to run circles around it (which he can never do on slippery wood floors). Ah sweet rug victory. There is nothing like it.

And now, simply for lively, we will leave you with a shot of the room as it looked a little over two months ago. It truly feels a lot more like “our room” than it did back then.

Gotta enjoy that Christmas tree in the background.