A dark flooring grounds a room and deflects focus on lighter or brighter colors and interesting textures. Go minimalist and contemporary with broad plank, stone or stone, stained or stained as dark as possible, to frame a lighter, solid carpet. Establish the antique Aubusson or even Oushak against a black flooring polished to your diamond-like shine. Throw down a gauntlet of crayon-bright red, orange and orange carpet squares at a kids’ room. And dust a good deal around those rugs — dark flooring certainly highlight light-colored dirt.
Show Some Skin Care
A dark or black floor functions as a fathomless gallery for whatever put upon it. Gleaming ebony wood is both canvas and frame to get a textured artwork — a faux or real hide rug. Faux zebra in white and black is richer when it contains the intricate shades of brown at a true zebra mask. The mottled colors of a black-and-white or red-and-white Holstein resemble ink blots or an abstract painting when cow hide rug meets midnight flooring. Faux tiger or giraffe are exotic and theatrical over dark wood or stone pavers. Keep the rest of the decor in the space easy — too much competition with such dramatic floors could just wind up looking cluttered.
Mid-Century or This Century
A dark floor is a foil to your bare shapes of Mid-Century Modern furniture along with the architectural, geometric and repetitive motifs of the artist-designed rugs that underscored those angles and curves. A grid of white-on-rust overlapping hexagons and diamonds which vaguely recalls a chain-link fence, or a multitoned abstraction of feather shapes on a white background seems as contemporary now as it did in the ’40s or ’50s. The exact same holds for rugs that do spring from the present moment. Abstract botanical pictures along with splotches, scribbles or squiggles of color in abstract designs also demonstrate to benefit from a black or dark floor. Pair a modern rug with real or reproduction period furniture or the luxury of a sleek white leather Italian sofa in an urbane living room.
Tribal Beat
Get accustomed to looking down once you unroll a tribal carpet over a mysterious dark floor. The black, ebony or espresso flooring provides the illusion of depth. A intricate ethnic rug design may include the iconography of an exotic culture and the one time shades of hand-dyed fibers, mixed in unexpected juxtapositions. The flooring is going to be endlessly dynamic using its dual vision of dark space and untranslatable artwork — vivid or muted colors floating against a midnight skies in patterns which please the eye and communicate to some thing both ephemeral and enduring, expressed by the talented hands working at a remote loom.
Casual Friday on the ground
Dress the room down using a monochrome sisal carpet against dark stone pavers or very dark wood or tile. The carpet contrasts cleanly using the blue of slate, the absolute black of ebonized wood, or some other dark flooring. A sisal carpet works at a family room, a playroom, a casual dining room or even an informal living room — as timeless and cozy as a pair of khaki pants. The carpet is durable, non-skid, friendly using fabrics like linens, denims, corduroy, cotton and canvas, and adapts to chintz, plaids or a mixed palette of primary colors. Utilize a large sisal carpet to pull with the diverse finds you’ve scored at flea markets and also salvaged from the curb. Layer smaller, dark patterned rugs over sisal on a dark floor to get more heat or to create clearly defined conversation groupings.