The right rug can pull your room together

When customising a rug, consider its impact on all elements within a room.

"A well chosen rug is incredibly important, as it has the power to fully resolve a room and pull together many of the other decorating elements - the palette, the furniture styles, mood, even the composition of space," says Nette King.

"This means considering the size, shape and colour of your rug at the beginning of the design process, not when you're shopping for accessories and décor items."

Integrating a rug into a space is instrumental in creating zones. "The ability to define a lounge area, or a dining space helps make visual sense of large spaces. The right size and shape rug will help anchor the furniture and ensure the composition of your room is both sensible and practical," she says.

"Circular rugs can be particularly stunning underneath round dining tables - they will really act to define and elevate that space. Rectangular rugs are obviously great for hallways, but they can also be used to create 'walkways' in larger spaces, to lead the eye and the foot traffic through a zoned room.

"In a lounge room, I love rugs to sit underneath the front legs of a chair or sofa. I'm not a fan of the 'flying carpet' look that a too-small rug will resemble in a living zone," she says.

"Similarly, a rug that is too large for a space will work against other design decisions, by covering too much of the chosen hard flooring underneath, or by bumping against window furnishings that should gracefully touch the floor."

According to Nette King, your rug must never be an afterthought.

"You should consider it to be as important as the rest of the pieces in the room - from the furniture to the hard flooring, to the window furnishing and paint colour," she says.