Interior Designer Eric Guenther co-founder of Whim Designs in San Juan Capistrano, CA. shares his 7 tips for decorating with Oushak rugs in an exclusive Asmara video (available below). Eric is a featured speaker at the Laguna Design Center and hosts monthly design lectures at his elegant southern California home.
Eric Guenther
1. Start with a subtly colored Oushak rug.
“I always begin the designing of a room with a couple of key pieces of furniture, and the best quality designer rugs, particularly if it is a large rug.
I look for the quality of the rug’s color composition and the pleasure of looking at it.
Often a client will say, ‘Where do we start? Where do we come up with our inspiration? Should I pick a fabric I like? Should I pull a picture out of a magazine and build backward from that?’
My advice is: look at all of those things, and many other things, even your experience having gone to a hotel, or a restaurant, or someone else’s home that you loved. These are all a good foundation for inspiration.
But, more than anything else, start with a designer rug or a work of art. It is extremely difficult to put together an entire room, and then, as an almost afterthought, think, “Wow, now we need to go find a designer rugs“, and try to find something that fits right into that perfect slot.”
2. Look for Oushak rugs reproduction in colors that will help you balance the colors of the fabrics and walls.
Thera Oushak Rug 3220B has the authentic texture of a Turkish Oushak rug. The complex background color is a mix of aqua, sea-blue and sea-green overlaid with cream accents. Rug Design © Asmara, Inc.
Thera Oushak Rug 3220B has a complex background color so it works with many shades of green, blue, aqua, yellow-green and neutrals such as cream, beige, taupe and gray. Rug Design © Asmara, Inc.
Look for a blue Oushak rug with colors that cannot be described by a single word. If you can’t be sure if the color is a greenish-blue or blueish-green then it is a complex mixture of many colors. This means the rug will work with many more fabrics than a rug with a simple color palette.
“There will be a wealth of information in the rug that provides you with a source of not only inspiration, but guidance as to the range of colors to be used – and work backward from that.
The very best rugs suggest a balance of color, how to use it, where to place it in the room, and where to go from there. This actually simplifies the process.
The rug is always the inspiration for what drives the entire space.”
3. Use a soft palette Oushak rug with interesting texture to enhance the mix.
“The beauty of these Oushak rugs is enhanced by their very unique texture, with areas that are looped and those that are pile. This textural mix adds interest to a room.
The color palette in these rugs is created by dyeing the hand spun yarn in a way that creates a great number of colors and many additional shades of each color. The special hand spun yarn takes the dye in slightly different variations. The combination of all the colors is subtle and harmonious.
It is wonderful to work with these Oushak rugs, because instead of feeling like you’re covering part of something you should not, you’re actually enhancing the mix.”
Click here for Eric Guenther’s Oushak Rug Decorating Tips 4 to 7.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on March 28, 2011 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.