The progress (and process) of picking a palette

Who would have thought picking a rug would be so complicated! With so many options out there, I've explored various color palettes as my design idea has evolved. Since you all have been so fabulous about pitching in with suggestions and ideas, I thought you'd get a kick out of the circles I have managed to run around myself in my quest.

My first concept involved tying together the dining area palette with our living room, situated in the same room. With blue, green, and turquoise upholstered seat cushions, it seems natural to bring those hues into the living room through the rug palette.

So, at first I was hunting for the perfect modern, cool, fun blue rug. You readers came up with some really amazing options in your searches.

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So even though this appears to be the "hot" scheme of the moment, I began moving in another direction. Trends are great, but you have to select furnishings you can live with indefinitely, not just one season.

Incorporating some yellow from our walls or violet from the couches seemed like the next natural step.

So, I perused more purple carpet ideas. (with some great links from you guys, of course) Heading away from the blues, it seemed appropriate to work with the existing colors in the space- the walls and the couches. But nothing was really clicking for me. I loved our couches, but didn't want the room to scream "I'm a purple palette!"

While I was open to many styles, hubbie wasn't too fond of the more traditional designs, which was a bummer, because that second rug from the left would have been a home run.

At this point, I had moved completely away from the blue/green ideas. We had ordered plush, dark blue throw pillows for the couch, intending on the initial scheme. But with the inclusion of other colored throw pillows and a cherry red throw blanket, I wanted to explore some other approaches. What if I just relegated the blue/greens to the dining room, and was just concentrating on a palette to unify the living room space? Ah ha!

Now, things seemed to jell better. If I started with a red and found something with yellow and purple accents, now that could really be beautiful!

This lovely had a fun folk-art feeling without being frumpy; "inspired by an early 20th century Mexican embroidery from the textiles collection at the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe" I wanted to see how it would look in my space, so I quickly photoshopped it in. (same as third from left in red examples above) Hm, but how was the rug made? Ack, it's tufted.

Jane from AtticMag offered these words of advice,  

"Tufted rugs have a couple of very specific drawbacks.  One is the latex used to adhere the tufts into place.  It can be very smelly.  In fact, downright unbearable.  (Think burning rubber). The other is they can shed..and shed...and shed.  Worse than your dogs.  As with all rugs, there are varying qualities of tufted rugs, so not all will fall into the bad-rug-don't-buy-this category, but a definite buyer beware situation." 

She writes more about this very issue on her blog. Rug-aficionados, would that be a deal-breaker for you if you wanted a rug to last?

Through-out this process, I figured I would find the perfect rug, present it to my husband, and he would automatically love it as much I did. Ah, how quickly we forget the past. My darling husband has a great deal of opinions of his own, and balked at anything remotely "traditional" or too busy-looking.  But it hides dirt and stains, I protested. Nope, he felt most were too busy. So, the quest continues with my new design concept, slightly adapted to assuage hubbie's strong feelings and my new knowledge about rug construction.