Ideas & Advice > Mid Century Modern Rug Ideas

 

Mid Century Modern Rug Ideas 

Mid century modern style is one of those designs that keeps growing in popularity, since it harkens back to designs in the middle of the 21st century without feeling dated or out of style. While much of the style is defined by wood tones, curved furniture, and other unique shapes, you can also bring the style into your home with mid century modern rugs.

Defined Color Blocking - MCM Rug Ideas

Defined Color Blocking

Mid century modern loves to use lines and curves in their design, and with a rug like this one, you can fit into that mold and contribute to the room's overarching color palette. Part of the reason this rug works so well as a mid century modern rug is because it highlights those curves, uses colors from that age, and does it in a non-linear way. When you use a rug like this in your space, allow it to shine as a main focal point and be sure your other decor doesn't compete with the rug for attention.

Beautiful Balance

Many of today's homes feature open concept floor plans and layouts where rooms share a common space. In these situations, a bold mid century modern area rug can establish each space as being its own designated area. In the case of this living room, it's wise to use a boldly colored/patterned rug here to make a tightly designed space that balances the simple kitchen.

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Feeding Into Asymmetry - MCM Rug Ideas

Feeding Into Asymmetry

Asymmetry means that you nearly have a mirror image from one side of the room to the other, but something breaks it up from being perfectly symmetrical. In this case, you see it in four areas: the different wall art, the plant, the blanket, and the rug. By using decor and a rug that don't feature perfect symmetry in your home, you can create a balanced look that still has flair and style.

Shop more Rectangular Mid Century Modern Rugs!

Blending Styles

Many people like mid century modern style because of how well it blends with different interior design styles. In this case, the other style is more contemporary southwestern with sharp, clean lines in the furniture and earth tones in the pillows and other decor. However, adding in a rug like this one can help blend your different styles into one cohesive look and tie into the other decor, like how the grey rug ties back to the pillows, jackets, and accessories.

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Blending Styles - MCM Rug Ideas

Diverse Design

Even if your mid century modern room has a very limited color scheme, the room doesn't have to feel boring. By using the same shades in various patterns, textures, and materials, you can create a visually diverse room and ensure that the space feels lively and interesting. Once again, this is an area where area rugs can really help the room stand out and be visually appealing.

Bright and Bold

Many modern styles use limited, neutral color palettes. Even if the room does add color, it tends to do so sparingly and in muted tones. Well, if you really want to lean into quintessential mid century style, take a walk on the bold side with a brightly colored, busy rug. Then, complement the rug with other mid century pieces like sofas and wall art to round out the room's design.

Minimal Addition - MCM Rug Ideas

Minimal Addition

If you prefer to have your furniture, lamps, decor, and even walls do the talking, then you can go for just a simple rug. The light grey mid century rug in this room adds softness against the sharp lines of the golden furniture legs, defines the main seating area, and allows the rest of the decor to be the stars of the show.

Thematic Connections

In this room, you can see the thematic power of using similar lines throughout the room. This room has many straight lines in the ceiling beams, the fireplace bricks, the linear furniture, and obviously the rug. The simplicity of the connection and focus allows this midcentury room to feel whole despite the room using fewer decorations. You can apply these same principles to your home to tie your room's architecture and decor back to the rug.

Thematic Connections - MCM Rug Ideas

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Mid Century Boho - MCM Rug Ideas

Mid Century Boho

When you want to combine two different styles like mid century and boho, it's important to balance the two looks. In this room, the leafy greens and white tones fit into modern boho, but the structure of the furniture and the rug itself fit into mid century modern. You can use a simple rug like this one if you want your furniture to be a focal point, or you can look for a patterned rug that blends the two styles together.

Shop White Mid Century Modern Rugs!

Stellar Shapes

Shapes, lines, and soft edges all have key roles in mid century modern design. When you focus on these elements, you'll find numerous ways to include them, such as a mid century modern bedroom carpet with shapes, curtains, pillows, wall art, and other decor.

Establishing Visual Interest - MCM Rug Ideas

Establishing Visual Interest

Mid century style often keeps furniture as simple as possible, although this room uses unique shapes and accents to bring it back into a traditional style. However, the basic color palette of creams and browns in the furniture gives you a chance to add in a different color and a different style in your rug. Remember that when you add a rug to your space: it can stand out as a focal point or fade into the background depending on what other decor/colors you have in the room.

Traditional Mid Century Modern

Based on name alone, you may think these two styles are incompatible, but that's far from the truth! One similar element between the two styles is their love of shape, so you can use that to blend the two styles. This rug showcases round shapes to fit into a traditional style but the fact that is uses shapes and is placed next to a mid century chair allows it to tie back into that style too. As you decorate your room, look for similar opportunities in a rug to tie your styles together.

Traditional Mid Century Modern - MCM Rug Ideas

Retro Colors - MCM Rug Ideas

Retro Colors

A lot of contemporary styles like modern farmhouse tend to use neutral tones like black, white, and grey, so you may be intimidated by the idea of incorporating a bold color like pink. However, incorporating pinks into your design is a great way to harken back to mid century style and break modern trends by using a unique color choice. Plus, it can even bring out different colors throughout the room like the wood tones of this floor or the beige of the sofa.

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Subdued Mid Century

Perhaps you enjoy mid century modern style, but you don't want the room to be defined by that aesthetic. In these cases, feel free to use mid century modern furniture, but do so in limited quantities and modern colors. Even choosing a more modern area rug for your living room can dramatically change the tone in one way or the other.

Get inspired by more Living Room Mid Century Modern Rugs!

Creating Balance - MCM Rug Ideas

Creating Balance

Aside from finding the right rug, it's important to carefully consider where you'll put it. In this case, you can see that it is centered with the sofa on one side and then centered with the fireplace on the other. Being intentional with the rug's placement, how it overlaps with the furniture, and how it scales to the rest of the room are three factors that will determine how balanced your room feels.

Narrow Spaces

A narrow runner rug can help accent your room in many different ways. For one thing, if you have a thin piece of furniture like a side table, then a runner can really run parallel to that furniture and make the space feel longer. Keep in mind that it's best to have the rug layer with at least one peice of furniture in that area so it doesn't feel like it's floating in the middle of nowhere.

Slim down with Mid Century Modern Runner Rugs!

Narrow Spaces - MCM Rug Ideas
Off Kilter - MCM Rug Ideas

Multiple Rugs

In homes with open concept floor plans, you can use multiple rugs to define separate areas and cement your style. In situations like these where the rugs are so close to one another, it's wise to use rugs that are the same pattern and shape so that they create a cohesive space and don't compete against one another. Plus, the straight edges of the rug and the simplistic pattern allow you to use two rugs without overwhelming the room.

Off Kilter

Normally, rugs are centered with something in the room like a main sofa, a chandelier, a piece of art, etc. However, to make your mid century modern room feel more eclectic, you can mess with that formula and have your rug slightly off center. You still want to maintain straight lines so it feels orderly, but offsetting it slightly can add a unique vibe to your room.

Multiple Rugs - MCM Rug Ideas

Industrial Mid Century - MCM Rug Ideas

Industrial Mid Century

Industrial style often features concrete-like surfaces and black accents, which actually pairs well with mid century style. In fact, you can add in a boldly colored mid century modern rug into the space and allow that to be a vibrant pop of color to keep the industrial style from feeling dark and oppressive. Add in some other pops of that color around the room and you'll create a cohesive, masterfully designed space.

Gorgeous Geometrics

Many styles use geometric shapes in key artwork, furniture, and rugs to complement the room's overarching style. Since this pattern is so versatile, you can use it in your room's area rug to lean as far or as subtly into that mid century modern style as you choose.

Pattern Mixing - MCM Rug Ideas

The Key Accent

You can use a rug as the main accent of the room if you prefer to have more neutral walls, furniture, and decor. In this case, the rug helps create a more contemporary style to bounce off of the mid century modern furniture. Plus, doing this in your home gives you a way to draw color into the room and use some of those popular mid century modern colors like orange and yellow naturally.

Pattern Mixing

Oftentimes, detailed rugs are placed on hardwood floors. An alternative idea is to dare to use an intricately designed rug on top of a detailed tile floor. When you do that, look for similar shapes/designs between the two so that there's cohesive theming. That principle will work whether you're working in a mid century modern style, a traditional home, or whatever your style is.

The Key Accent - MCM Rug Ideas
Grounding the Space - MCM Rug Ideas

Thematic Consistency

You often see rugs used on tile just in the kitchen or bathroom, but this living room shows off how well a larger rug can pair with a tiled living room. No matter what room you're working in, when you pair a rug with tile, look for similar imagery and motifs with the rug and tiles so that the room feels thematically whole.

Grounding the Space

Having some overlap with the furniture is a great way to tie your rug to the seats. In this room, you can see the power of having the furniture perfectly paralleled to the rug (the sofa) and having the furniture at an angle (the side chair). In either case, there's some connection because of the physical overlap, but there's also connection through the color palette so the room is unified in its vision and layout.

Thematic Consistency - Farmhouse Rug Ideas

Highlighting Texture - MCM Rug Ideas

Highlighting Texture

There are several styles like modern boho that highlight texture as a key design element, but there's no reason why you can't bring that texture into a mid century modern style too. Velvet furniture/accents is a very common way to highlight texture in mid century modern design, but you can go a step further by including a mid century shag rug in the middle of the space. Not only will that collaborate with your other soft textures, but it will also add dimension to your floor.

Finding Inspiration

If you are struggling to design your mid century modern room, find an element of inspiration and begin from there. In this case, the central fireplace serves as the inspiration for the entire room's design, color scheme, and tone. This also impacts the area rug, which positively complements the fireplace and the rest of the room's scheme.

Complementary Design

When you choose a mid century modern rug, you cannot choose it simply because you enjoy the rug. The rug should work with the rest of the rooms decorations to create the proper tone, balance, and aesthetic. This dining room is a fine example of how the rug can complement and ground the entire room's aesthetic with elegant geometric shapes and a connective color palette.

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Setting Expectations

When you envision what mid century modern rugs look like, you may have a particular vision in mind of retro colors and bold geometric patterns. While this does capture the vintage essence of the style, there are plenty of different mid century rug styles you can use in any room of the home. Whether you're creating a romantic mid century modern bedroom or an elevated entryway, you'll find these rugs are diverse enough to accommodate any area of the home.

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Natural Materials - MCM Rug Ideas

Variety is the Spice of Life

It's clear that straight lines are a key part of mid century modern design, but using it over and over again in the same ways may make a room feel stale. That's why it's important to look at how you use the same principle in a variety of ways. This room uses straight lines on the walls, floor, and furniture horizontally while the rug and other parts of the wall show off vertical lines. Plus, there are some pillows that use lines in other unique ways. Be sure to look for opportunities to take your base principle and put different spins on it to create a unique room.

Natural Materials

Natural materials are another popular design element in mid century modern homes, and you can see how it produces a stunning room. The wood panelling, the leather sofa, and the rattan chair all highlight natural materials, and they're allowed to shine because of a very basic rug. However, that rug has a lot of intention behind it, starting with tying into the other colors in the room and using straight lines to connect back to the furniture and panelling. Remember, your rug shouldn't be an afterthought; it should intentionally tie into your overarching design and architecture to highlight your style.

Variety is the Spice of Life - MCM Rug Ideas

Perfect Plastic

Believe it or not, plastic is a big part of original mid century style. Because a lot of mid century furniture was made with plastic, it was affordable to the masses and easy to incorporate into homes. Not only does including a clear plastic piece of furniture help you harken back to the past, but it also allows you to show off the rug underneath it.


Mid century modern design will continue to pop up in different interior design styles because of how accessible it is and how it can add unique flair through its furniture, wall art, and rugs. Whether you're looking to create a room that falls fully into the style or you're looking to blend it with another style, you can find mid century modern area rugs that are perfect for you and your unique style.

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