Blue & Navy Rugs: How to Choose One and What to Put With It

We make 99 rugs where blue & navy carries the design. This is what that colour does in a room, and how to place it.

What blue & navy does to a room

Blue is the only strong colour most people will accept on a large floor area, which is why so much of the historic carpet world is built on indigo. It reads as a neutral at depth: a navy ground behaves more like a dark floor than like a colour.

What to put with it

Navy is superb with brass, tan leather, oak and off-white. Mid blues want white and pale grey. Blue and terracotta is the classic pairing of the whole Persian tradition and still the most reliable warm-cool combination there is.

Where it goes wrong

Very dark blue in a north-facing room with little light will read as black and flatten the space. Check it in the room at the time of day you actually use it.

Which rooms

Living rooms, dining rooms, halls and studies. Also the most forgiving colour under a dining table.

A note on how we classify colour

We file a rug under the colour it reads as from across a room, not the colour covering the most surface area. An ivory rug with a strong blue motif is listed under blue, because that is how anyone standing in the doorway would describe it. It means the blue & navy collection looks like blue & navy rather than like a list of rugs that happen to contain some blue & navy.

The practical part

Every one of these is chenille polyester on a woven cotton backing with a non-slip finish, in all ten sizes — eight rectangles from 60 × 100 cm to 200 × 300 cm, plus 160 cm and 200 cm rounds — £50–£185 with delivery to the UK and Europe included. They wash at 30°C in a domestic machine up to 120 × 180 cm.