There are plenty of places to buy a beautiful rug. Finding the right rug for a room is something entirely different.
As the founder and creative director of HEIR LOOMS, I approach rugs through the lens of both a dealer and an interior stylist. In addition to curating rugs every day, I work on select private interiors, styling rooms and helping clients bring together furniture, art, textiles, vintage pieces, and objects in a way that feels collected rather than decorated.
That work has reinforced something I have always believed: a rug should never be chosen in isolation.
I Look at the Entire Room
When I’m choosing a rug, I’m not simply asking whether the rug itself is beautiful. I’m looking at what it will do to everything around it.
I consider the architecture, furniture, art, fabrics, wood tones, proportions, and the amount of pattern already happening in the room. But beyond those tangible things, I’m thinking about how the room needs to feel.
Does it need warmth?
Does it need age?
Does it need contrast?
Is everything a little too perfect?
Does a room filled with beautiful new furniture need something worn and imperfect to give it soul?
Those are the same questions I ask when styling an interior, and they completely change the way I source rugs.
A Stylist Knows When Something Is Missing
Styling rooms has made me even more aware of how one element can change everything.
Sometimes I'll walk into a room where every individual piece is beautiful, but the room still doesn't feel finished. Often, the issue isn't that it needs more. It needs the right piece to connect what is already there.
Very often, that piece is the rug.
A faded antique rug can give a newly renovated house instant history. A restrained modern rug can calm a room filled with antiques. A graphic rug can give traditional furniture an unexpected edge.
The best choice isn't necessarily the rug you would pick if you saw it hanging alone.
It's the rug that makes the room better.
Curation Is About Editing
More isn't always better.
One of the most important parts of my work at HEIR LOOMS is the edit. Every rug that enters our collection has been chosen because I see something special in it—the color, scale, weave, patina, irregularity, or simply the possibilities I see for it in an interior.
I approach sourcing for clients the same way.
I would rather show you five rugs I genuinely believe could transform your room than send you fifty options and leave you to sort through them.
A curator's job isn't to show you everything.
It's to know what is worth showing you.
The Best Rooms Have Tension
The interiors I love most rarely belong entirely to one period or one point of view.
Old with new. Refined with relaxed. Something important next to something humble. A beautiful antique beside a clean contemporary piece.
There should be a little tension.
Rugs are one of my favorite ways to create it.
A worn Persian rug beneath contemporary furniture can make the entire room feel warmer and less serious. A quiet modern rug can make a collection of antiques feel suddenly current. An unexpected color can connect pieces that otherwise seem unrelated.
I don't want every element in a room to match.
I want them to belong together.
Sometimes the Rug Shouldn't Be the Star
Styling also teaches you when to exercise restraint.
Not every room needs a statement rug.
Sometimes the rug is the hero. Other times, its job is simply to sit quietly underneath everything and make the rest of the room look better.
Knowing the difference is important.
I don't believe in choosing the boldest, rarest, or most expensive rug simply because it's available. I want the rug that makes sense for that room.
Sometimes that's an extraordinary antique.
Sometimes it's something beautifully faded and almost neutral.
Sometimes it's a custom rug designed around the architecture, furniture, and palette.
The goal isn't simply to find a great rug.
It's to get the room right.
For Designers, I Want to Be Another Set of Eyes
I love working with interior designers because the process becomes a collaboration between two points of view.
A designer knows the project and the client intimately. I know rugs—and I understand how they function within a finished interior.
That means I can look at a room, a presentation, a fabric scheme, or even a handful of reference images and begin narrowing the possibilities.
Sometimes that means finding exactly what the designer already has in mind.
Other times, it's introducing the rug no one was looking for until they saw it.
That is where curation becomes valuable.
Rugs Are Where My Two Worlds Meet
HEIR LOOMS began with my love of rugs, but my interest has always been broader than rugs themselves. I'm interested in rooms—the mix, the proportion, the unexpected piece, and that elusive moment when a space suddenly feels complete.
Working as an interior stylist has only deepened the way I look at rugs.
I don't see them simply as products.
I see what they can do to a room.
And whether I'm sourcing for HEIR LOOMS, working alongside a designer, or styling an interior, that's ultimately what I'm looking for:
Not just a beautiful rug, but the rug that makes everything around it more beautiful.
