Can a Rug Make a Room Look Bigger? Is Wall-to-Wall Ever OK? Your Carpet Questions, Answered

1. Can a rug make my small room look bigger?

Yes. Get the largest rug possible so it defines the room as one big, inviting space. Optimally, the visible perimeter of floor is no wider than 8 or 9 inches. Size tip: Designers consider a 9-foot-by-12-foot rug—which will fill a small living room and can visually anchor a queen-size bed in most bedrooms—the most versatile size to repurpose if you someday move to a new home. In a living room make sure the carpet is at least big enough that the front two legs of the sofa and armchairs in the main seating area can sit on it. And always match its shape to the shape of the room. “Don’t put a square rug in a rectangular room, because it will make everything look off-balance,” said rug consultant Elisabeth Poole Parker, a former vice president at Christie’s New York and international head of the auction house’s carpet department.

2. Any advice on runners?

Patterns hide stains in high-traffic areas like entryways, staircases and the kitchen (where they add color to an aisle between prep island and sink). Give a runner breathing room without making it look like a skinny Band-Aid. Ideal margins in a hallway are 4 to 5 inches, says antique-rug seller Georgia Hoyler, of Passerine in Washington, D.C. “Tape it out on the floor before you buy to be sure it will feel proportional.” On stairs, 3 to 4 inches suffices, as in the space above designed by Liz Caan, of Newton, Mass. Multiple runners in a single room, or throughout a home, are easy to mix and match if you choose rugs with the same color palette and patterns similar in scale and shape, says Kate Marker, an interior designer in Barrington, Ill.

3. Did Aladdin have a flying carpet?

No. Disney invented it. In the Arabian Nights stories, Aladdin had a magic lamp. (The magic carpet belonged to Prince Hussain, a character in a different tale.) “But in the film, Disney juiced up the romantic angle of the story with an escape on a magic carpet,” said Jack Zipes, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

4. Can cheap rugs look expensive? How?

Here are three ways.

A.Buy an inexpensive, neutral room-size rug made of a natural fiber such as sisal (which costs as little as $1.50 a square foot), then center a pricier, but smaller, rug on top of it. “The space will be defined by the larger sisal rug, so the rug on top doesn’t need to be big enough to sit under the furniture to look amazing,” said Nadia Watts, an interior designer in Denver who frequently employs this strategy if clients bring along a favorite rug when they move to a new home.

B. Another technique: Find a vintage carpet with a beautiful patina going cheap due to rips or stains and cut it down to create a runner or a foot-of-the-bed rug. A rug installer can bind the rug’s perimeter with a selvage stitch to prevent threads from unraveling.

C. If your layout includes a long, narrow room, commonly found in brownstones and other row houses, search for a vintage or antique rug in what is known as a gallery size. Frequently woven during decades and centuries past, their quirky dimensions (5 feet by 10 feet or 8 feet by 17 feet, for example) make these rugs harder to sell and therefore inexpensive to buy relative to their size, says Jason Nazmiyal, an antique-rug dealer in Manhattan.

5. Etsy sells a bazillion rugs and a lot of them look great on my screen. How do I avoid getting ripped off when buying a carpet I haven’t seen IRL from someone I don’t know?

Start by sleuthing before you shop. Research rug types and styles to zero in on what you like, and then do enough window shopping online to train your eye to recognize the difference between a good and a bad example when you see it. Now you’re ready for Etsy, where you will continue to behave like Sherlock Holmes.

Research the seller. Comb through customer reviews for red flags.
Pose questions. For instance, if a rug is described as “vintage,” (which Etsy defines as at least 20 years old) ask the seller to pinpoint the decade or year the rug was made.
Ask for more pictures. You want photos taken in natural light, to give you a real sense of color; close-up photos of any damage, uneven wear or alterations; and even photos of the backside. “Ask a seller to flip it over and take a photo, so you can see the knots and whether the fringe is an actual part of the rug—which would confirm it’s hand knotted—or something applied afterward,” said Bailey Ward, an interior designer in Atlanta.

6. Materials matter. May I have a cheat sheet, please?

WOOL

Considered the gold standard for rugs, this natural fibre appears in tufted and flatweave rugs in virtually any colour or design. Soft underfoot and stain-resistant, wool can last a lifetime (or longer—some antique wool rugs are hundreds of years old).

SISAL

Woven from agave-plant fibres, sisal is a neutral tan colour that works well as a quiet backdrop for colourful, patterned furnishings. “It has a casual look that is a very nice contrast in a formal living room,” said interior designer Ward.

SILK

A delicate luxury fibre with a beautiful sheen, silk belongs in a low-traffic bedroom. “Like a silk blouse, a silk rug should be dry cleaned” to avoid damaged fibres, says Scott Johnston, owner of Carpet Care of the Carolinas in Raleigh, N.C.

POLYPROPYLENE

Made from recycled plastics, this durable material comes in any colour or pattern and is easy to clean, stain-resistant and a good choice for outdoor rugs. However, tufted polypropylene rugs “just don’t bounce back after cleaning,” said Johnston.

COTTON

A fluffy fibre, cotton has an airy look but requires frequent cleaning because it quickly exhibits any and all signs of dirt and wear. For that reason, the most practical cotton rugs are those small enough to fit into a laundry machine.

7. Rug pads are like the orthotics of rugs. What’s the best kind?

“Without a thick protective pad, you’ll grind grit into the rug and wear down its foundation,” warned carpet-care expert Johnston. The best are at least 1/4-inch thick with a layer of felt atop a nonskid rubber backing, he says. Feel free to use one of those cheap, 1/8-inch thick, waffle-weave rubber things they sell at hardware stores if you have a tight fit beneath a door. In such cases, “even a thin pad is better than no pad—think of it like a sock keeping your shoe from causing a blister,” said antique-rug seller Hoyler.

8. Are rugs in the kitchen totally ick?

Don’t assume a kitchen rug is unsanitary, said Manhattan interior designer Sasha Bikoff, who has an antique French Aubusson in her own kitchen (between the island and the sink where it provides a cushioned surface for anyone doing the dishes). Wool rugs are super durable and don’t absorb liquid quickly, so it’s easy to wipe spills. “So live a little bit,” she said, adding that a patterned rug “is a cozy way to add pattern and color” to a room where stainless steel and cold stone surfaces would otherwise dominate the décor.

9. Is wall-to-wall carpet ever not cheesy?

Yes, it can be quite chic in a bedroom, where it can turn a room into a sanctuary. “We use it because it feels cozy, and it brings a softness to a space,” said interior designer Watts. Perhaps for that reason, “for the most part, today wall-to-wall carpet has been primarily relegated to bedrooms,” said Jamie Welborn, a senior vice president at flooring manufacturer Mohawk Industries. Make that a lot of bedrooms: Wall-to-wall carpeting still covers 35% of the square footage in American homes, Welborn says.

10. Nearly every town has a rug store that’s been going out of business for 10 years. Why?

Because they have no intention of actually going out of business. They’re trying to lure customers who assume they are desperate merchants offering rock-bottom prices. “Rugs are a product category that people buy rarely, so these stores are not trying to build a loyal customer base,” said Katrijn Gielens, professor of marketing at the University of North Carolina. In reality? Prices may be marked up.

Ben Broca launched a company last December that offers AI tools to entrepreneurs. He’s already added 10,000 paying customers and is on track to bring in $10 million in revenue this year.

One thing he hasn’t added: any other employees.

The 40-year-old is part of a class of entrepreneurs who are launching, and then often running, new companies on their own. Artificial intelligence tools answer Broca’s emails, help write and debug code, field requests from customers, sign up new subscribers and grant refunds when issues arise.

Broca relishes his ability to make whatever decisions he wants on his own, often from his sun-drenched Sausalito, Calif., living room. “I think compromises make lukewarm results,” he said.

Once upon a time, running a business of a certain size required a team. AI is turning that assumption upside down, and more aspiring entrepreneurs are going it alone.

Ben Broca sitting in his home office. — Tech has seen an explosion of solo founders in the past year. Broca said he likes being able to work at his own speed, unencumbered by a team. Jonah Reenders for WSJ

An analysis by the payments company Stripe shows there are thousands of solo operators on the company’s platform that are generating over $1 million in revenue, with their ranks doubling between 2023 and 2025. The number of solo operators crossing the $10 million threshold nearly tripled in that same span.

In the past, people without business contacts or particular savvy might not have known how to get their ideas off the ground, said Ernie Tedeschi, Stripe’s chief economist. “Now, AI can be a built-in business partner,” he said.

AI’s ability to handle various administrative tasks makes it potentially useful for launching solo businesses in many fields. But the technology’s ability to also handle key tasks in tech, like coding, make that field a particular hot spot.

Analyzing Census Bureau data, Bank of America Institute economist Taylor Bowley found that among all industries, new business applications in the information sector have seen the biggest percentage increase—nearly 45%—over the past year. At the same time, the rate of information-sector applicants saying they plan to hire workers has experienced the sharpest decline of any measured industry.

This Census dataset doesn’t track solo-operated businesses. But the numbers broadly show—in tech and beyond—that applications are flat among businesses likely to hire workers, but generally rising elsewhere. Economists say that’s a strong sign that solo operators are on the upswing.

“The bar for getting started has never been lower,” said Julian Weisser, who runs a San Francisco-based accelerator for solo founders working in tech. The accelerator—which offers founders seed money and mentorship in exchange for an equity stake—attracted 4,500 applicants for 10 slots made available in its most recent cycle, nearly five times the number it drew when it launched last May.

Going it alone with AI can still be surprisingly expensive. Broca said he was losing money on many customers’ accounts while paying to access Anthropic’s Claude to run his clients’ requests—that AI company, as well as others, charges based on usage. He has since switched to free open-source AI models from China.

Broca said he has raised $30 million from investors and, at the same time, has saved millions in salary since he hasn’t needed a team of software engineers.

Another risk: If it’s easy for one entrepreneur to launch an AI-assisted business, copying them can be easy, too. This creates anxiety for founders like Troy Johnston, who runs an AI-assisted business alone in Orlando, Fla.

“Everybody has the sword and we all have the ability to unsheathe Excalibur now,” said Johnston, 40, who used AI to code an app that helps people get the most out of credit card benefits. The company makes around $3,000 a month in profit, with no employees, and is continuing to grow.

Troy Johnston said AI’s power and ease of use is an incredible boon for entrepreneurs like him—and also a double-edged sword. Luann Koerper

What one-person businesses will mean for the labor market remains to be seen. Polling has shown Americans are worried that AI will replace jobs, and top economists are wrestling with that possibility, too. But AI is also creating lots of new jobs, and the go-it-alone entrepreneurs show how the technology can both open doors and limit employment opportunities.

“If everyone’s hiring less, but you get four times more firms, what does that do to head count?” said Rembrand Koning, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who studies entrepreneurship. He co-authored a recent study that found that among 50,000 startups the researchers examined, those focused on AI tended to operate with 25% fewer employees.

Koning also believes a soft hiring environment that’s left some people mired in long job searches has encouraged more to try their hand at launching businesses.

Some founders cite different motives. “It’s a perfect storm of post-pandemic burnout and a re-evaluation of one’s priorities, and also booming AI and a sense of what’s possible,” said Samir Ahmad, 39, who lives in Breinigsville, Pa.

Two years ago, Ahmad decided to leave the corporate job he had worked at Verizon for almost two decades to start a solo coaching and consulting business. He had been seeing social-media posts touting the ease and virtues of AI, which he used to chart a business plan and help with marketing. “It was like my chief of staff, a second in command,” he said.

The business ultimately petered out within months, though, and Ahmad is now back to a full-time corporate role with a utility company.

For Claire Vo, 41, AI helped her turn a passing impulse into a business. She was working full-time as a tech executive when she tapped AI in late 2023 to help code an app that would help her manage documentation and design for new products, with customers ranging from financial services to healthcare firms.

“I was copying and pasting from ChatGPT,” said Vo, who lives in San Francisco.

Claire Vo smiling into the camera while recording a podcast. — Claire Vo used AI to code an app that’s on track to make seven figures in profit this year. Claire Vo

She put the app online for $1 a month, and within weeks people downloaded it thousands of times. Nearly three years later, Vo’s company—which she ran solo for nine months before hiring an engineer—now has 100,000 users and is on track to make seven figures in profit this year. AI handles the company’s marketing, sales and customer support.

While AI is a shortcut, Vo said her network and credibility in the industry were key. “I think people over-index on how easy AI is and under-index on how much I did to get to this point,” she said.