Black & Anthracite Rugs: How to Choose One and What to Put With It

We make 17 rugs where black & anthracite carries the design. This is what that colour does in a room, and how to place it.

What black & anthracite does to a room

A dark rug anchors. It does for a seating group what a dark floor does for a whole room — it holds everything down and makes the furniture above it read as lighter.

What to put with it

Charcoal is excellent with white, oak, brass and any strong accent colour, because it makes everything above it more saturated by contrast.

Where it goes wrong

Dark rugs show lint and pet hair worse than anything else, and a light-coloured dog will be visible from across the room. A patterned charcoal hides far more than a plain one.

Which rooms

Living rooms, studies and halls. Avoid in a small dark room.

A note on how we classify colour

We file a rug under the colour it reads as from across a room, not the colour covering the most surface area. An ivory rug with a strong blue motif is listed under blue, because that is how anyone standing in the doorway would describe it. It means the black & anthracite collection looks like black & anthracite rather than like a list of rugs that happen to contain some black & anthracite.

The practical part

Every one of these is chenille polyester on a woven cotton backing with a non-slip finish, in all ten sizes — eight rectangles from 60 × 100 cm to 200 × 300 cm, plus 160 cm and 200 cm rounds — £50–£185 with delivery to the UK and Europe included. They wash at 30°C in a domestic machine up to 120 × 180 cm.