It's one thing to have a whole house decorated from only a couple of those familiar catalogs. It's quite another experience when you enter your friend's house and find out that he also has the same rug in the same size and in the same shade of grey. There is nothing wrong with it, really. It is just not unique to you. Custom rugs bridge that gap, and the rationale behind their popularity goes way beyond what people usually think of.

The so-called IKEA effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon in which people tend to overvalue things they have created. The thing is, people do this even when there is absolutely no difference between their creation and the one that is made by others. In this case, the custom rug serves the same purpose. You choose the exact pattern, size, and color of the rug and make it your own decision.

The Psychology of Owning Something Unique

People prefer uniqueness in places that should convey personal identity. There is hardly any room that conveys personal identity better than one's house. This is not vanity; this is a need to feel the sense that something is unique to those who live here and is not made according to some showroom's design. Although ready-made carpets may look good, there is no way they can fully satisfy this need. Customized rugs can do it, as their design is chosen by someone who will use them.

The other aspect of the advantage of customization is the feeling of control. Buying ready-to-wear things means making compromises. One may choose a carpet of the wrong size or not exactly the right color. Getting rid of this element of compromise gets rid of a subtle dissatisfaction.

Where Customization Actually Makes a Difference

Not every room will be served well by a custom rug. It is useful to understand where custom rugs pay off best.

The argument for using a custom rugs in a living room is stronger than in any other room for one reason. Living rooms are the rooms people design first when decorating their houses. Rugs designed to fit perfectly into a particular layout of a particular sofa-and-chairs combination and the colors of cushions or pictures that are already there accomplish something that a standard catalog rectangle cannot: They make it look like it was part of the design, not an afterthought.

A bedroom rug will have another sort of payoff. Bedrooms are usually the most personal spaces in a house, and a customized rug there – soft and colored in a way that matches the feeling people want in their room – accentuates the fact that this is a space designed to relax in rather than just a standard bedroom.

Dining room rugs have a practical reason for being customized. Tables are more varied in shape and size than sofas and chairs are in living rooms, and a rug custom-made to fit a particular table will eliminate the problem of having chairs scrape against bare floor when they are pulled away from a standard-size rug.

Custom Doesn't Have to Mean Impractical

There is a prevailing belief that custom items sacrifice functionality in exchange for style. This isn't entirely true anymore.

Machine-washable rugs certainly qualify as custom orders – picking out machine-washable rugs doesn't preclude the possibility of selecting one's own color, design, and even size of a product. It only means that the custom item needs to be functional from the beginning, rather than being mutually exclusive with the low-maintenance item.

Kitchen rugs, no matter how they were made, are meant to withstand oil, water, and foot traffic. Kitchen rugs that are made of washable material and fit one particular spot perfectly will help to address both issues mentioned.

Shape Is a Customization Decision Too

Most ready-made carpets are limited to a few standard rectangles, which silently puts restrictions on room layout possibilities. With customization, new possibilities arise, ones that regular shopping is unable to provide.

Custom made round carpets, for example, are much easier to obtain in the correct diameter for the required circular table or tight angle than to look for ready-made ones in the desired size. A round carpet that is either too big or too small under the table creates an odd look that is difficult to explain, but easy to recognize – customization eliminates any guesswork in this matter.

Pattern and Color as a Form of Self-Expression

Here is where custom rugs distinguish themselves from the typical store-bought variety.

Colorful area rugs are fairly typical custom orders, and no wonder – color tends to be one of the quickest means of expressing oneself through décor, faster even than the design of one’s furniture or the artwork on their walls. One has the chance to experiment with a more daring use of color through the medium of a custom rug rather than having to search through hundreds of store-bought rugs to find one that comes close to what he or she envisioned.

An oriental rug also provides its own means of customization, through the intricacy of its designs, which allow a modified version of it to have the timeless elegance of the original but with specifications to suit the needs of a contemporary interior design scheme.

What the Process Actually Looks Like

Being a custom job usually requires a decision about three things: dimensions (measured to the room or furniture), materials (considering both the texture and practical aspects), and the orientation of the color or pattern, normally inspired by some element that is already present in the room, such as a cushion, curtains, or artwork. The rest is usually done in the process of manufacturing the rug by the designer. Being a custom rug, it is natural that it takes more time to make it than to order from the warehouse, and this should be planned for.

Caring for a Custom Piece

The custom-made rug will not affect the underlying principles of care. However, one thing will become more important — a custom-made product is an irreplaceable item. In case the product breaks down, there will be no other item available from the warehouse. Vacuuming, rotating, and professional washing of wool and delicate custom-made rugs once a year will become much more important for a custom-made rug than for others.

Final Thought

The ready-made rug gets the job done. The made-to-order rug does something slightly more complex: it shows that the individual in question really did make a conscious decision about their space, from the dimensions to the colors and even the form. There you have it all in one line – it’s not that there is anything about the made-to-order rug that looks better to the eye or some other standard, but rather that it stops being something taken out of a catalog.