Which Rug?

Hello! How was everyone's Labor Day weekend? Still no baby yet (our due date is this Thursday, the 9th!)...so let's take a break from the nursery and talk about area rugs:)

So, remember how we just had new hardwood floors put in (as well as some of old floors refinished)?! I realized I forget to show you guys some after shots, with the furniture moved back in. Part of the reason why is because I got wrapped up in baby stuff and I think the other reason why is because I don't think of any of these rooms as finished now that they have new floors. It's not like these can really be considered afters, because having the new floors now means I want to do other things to the rooms to make them look better. Of course its always a snowball effect...you know what I'm talking about.

The biggest thing is that now we need area rugs. Large ones. And three of them. One for the family room, one for the living room and one for the dining room. We need them for function, both to protect the floors and just to have something softer underfoot. And we need them for aesthetic purposes too.

First up is the living room. Because I think I've stumbled on a rug I like, that's fairly inexpensive and that will help pull the room together with what's already in it. But I want to see what you think. Just for kicks, here's a real before picture of the living room the day we moved in:



Here's a somewhat updated photo of the living room before we had the nasty cream carpet ripped up and the new maple, dark walnut floors installed and stained:



Now here's the "after" living room with the new floors:



Now, excuse the really dark photos. Apparently my house doesn't get much natural light (because of the direction its facing), something I should have paid more attention to when house hunting. Oh well, we still love it! Of course, the floors look way better (at least I think so) but now we have other problems. Like most of the furniture in here is dark espresso. And dark brown on top of dark brown is not all that great. I'm considering lightening up the coffee table and the end table with paint (they're just cheap buys from Target) but an area rug in here to break up all that dark brown and add some contrast will really help. (How many times can you say dark in one paragraph?) Plus this room just needs some color. Its way too neutral.

So, while flipping through one of the latest Pottery Barn catalogs, I spotted these rugs:

{Striped Cotton Mat - Green}

{Striped Cotton Mat - Blue}

Don't they remind you of something you'd find from Dash & Albert? Except these PB ones are cheaper, the 8 x10 is only $169 (plus a $25 delivery surcharge...arrrghhh). I like that they both have that sort of caramel, golden brown in them that would coordinate well with the sofa we already have in here (as well as the fabric roman shades, even though I don't really like these anymore...ha!). I also don't mind that they are hand-woven cotton, as this is not the room in which we will be rolling around on the carpet playing now that we are about to have a child (that'll be the family room). And considering that we are, in fact, about to have kids, I'm not sure how long this room will remain a more formal "living room", so I'm sort of looking for an inexpensive fix that will work for now and hopefully versatile enough to use later depending on what the heck we do in here.

I wasn't sure which color way I liked better (although perhaps the green is better because the family room which adjoins this one is painted a soft shade of green, which might help tie the two together more?), so I decided to do some quick Photoshop mock ups to help me visualize each of these rugs in the space.

{Green}

{Blue}

Here they are from the other side of the room:

{Green}


{Blue}

What do you think? Do you like one better than the other? Do you like the randomness of the green stripes or the symmetrical pattern of the blue? Is the green better because it has more colors in it, which means more options for coordinating accessories? Or maybe neither is right? Seen any other rugs that you think might work better here? Thanks!!!