How to Choose Carpet Color that Suits Your Home

Not sure if gray or beige works better in your living room? You're not alone. Many homeowners in Southeast Indianapolis and beyond have struggled with the choice of finding the perfect carpets.

Since updating your floors is a big investment and you’ll live with the carpet for a decade or more, choosing the right color can sometimes feel like an impossible task.

With a few simple guidelines, you can confidently choose carpet color that suits your style, space, and lifestyle. We also offer ways you can test the samples to see which color works best in your home.

Ready to start exploring options? Let our Floor Coverings International® team bring the samples to you for an easy in-home floor selection.

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Choosing a Color that Works for Your Home

When you’re starting to consider different carpet colors, you can narrow down the options by thinking about what colors work well with how you use your home.

Do you have kids, pets, or a busy household? You might choose darker or patterned colors to better hide messes. A lighter or more delicate tone can make a more formal room feel elegant. And if you’re concerned about air quality, neutral colors can be easier to maintain with frequent cleaning.

Colors that Work with Your Space

Once you’ve determined the range of colors that complement your lifestyle, you can look at the size and lighting of the room you’re planning to update. Here's how carpet color impacts the perception of:

• Size. If the room is on the smaller side or if you want to visually expand how the room feels, choose lighter carpet colors. You can make the room feel even wider by selecting a color that's tone-on-tone with the walls, which visually extends the floors up the walls to make the room feel more spacious.
• Contrast. With darker carpet colors, you can create beautiful contrasts that many Southeast Indianapolis homeowners love, but you may shrink the look of the space.
• Lighting. Your natural lighting can influence how your carpet color looks. If you have plenty of natural light, you can choose medium to darker carpet colors and create beautiful depth. And for spaces with little to no natural light, lighter colors can make the room feel larger and more open.

Coordinate with Your Style

The next thing you want to look at is which colors you’re already using in the room. How can you complement or contrast colors that are already part of your style? Also think about future changes. What if your style changes completely in three years? Would your floors still fit?

These are a few tips on choosing a carpet color that stays relevant:

• Match or complement existing colors. For instance, if your walls are gray, consider what color carpet goes with gray walls. This could be a warm neutral, like beige, a cool neutral, like another tone of gray, for a monochromatic effect, or even richer earth tones, like brown, that complement a rug or some throw pillows. The key is to look at colors you’ve already incorporated and see how you can work with them.
• Think long-term. What would happen if you repainted? Would the carpet still work? Or would it feel completely out of place? Often this means choosing a versatile neutral color that works with many, many other colors. Or instead, you could choose a speckled blend with several color tones. This can offer a palette to work with if you want to change up the color scheme of the room in the future.
• Feature patterned or textured carpets as design statements. When you choose something as a statement piece, it helps to have three or four colors incorporated in the flooring, so you’re not stuck with one color choice but can shift the decor to feature a different color if you want.

Practical Carpet Colors

We talked about how the color makes the room feel, how the colors work with your style. Now here are a few practical tips for choosing colors when it comes to:

• Stain resistance. Medium tones and speckled blends are best at hiding dirt and stains.
• Maintenance. By avoiding dark colors, you’ll see less lint and dust. And if you skip very light colors, you’ll usually worry less about visible stains.
• Longevity. Bold colors commonly change with trends, so it can be safer to opt for more neutral shades.

What Color Carpet Should I Get?

We've given a few pointers on how to narrow down your options to find a carpet color that suits your beautiful Southeast Indianapolis home, but ultimately, choosing the perfect color will be up to you.

Keep in mind, the sample swatches normally look one to two shades lighter than when the carpet is installed.

Here's how you can test carpet samples in your space before you decide:

• Take samples home. Bright, showroom lighting can make the colors look different. It's always best to view the options in your home, where you can see more accurately what the floors would look like. That's why, when you work with our team, we’ll bring a full collection of carpet samples to you with our Mobile Flooring Showroom® service.
• Check swatches at different times of day. The carpets will look different as the light shifts throughout the day, so comparing how you like the options at different times throughout the day will help you make a choice you won’t regret.
• Place the sample near walls and furniture to see the full effect. You'll quickly see how placing a sample in the middle of a room can look worlds different than seeing it next to the couch or the wall. Since the carpet covers the entire floor, you’ll want to know how well it fits with each piece of furniture, so you won’t be startled by any clashing patterns.

Ready to Find the Color that Brings Your Home to Life?

With all kinds of beautiful carpet options to choose from, it can be difficult to pick. But to narrow down your color options, you can evaluate which colors work with your lifestyle, how they can expand the room or give it depth, which colors complement your style, and how to test which hues fit best in your home.

When it comes down to it, you’ll enjoy your carpets for years, so to make a confident choice on a color you’ll love, take your time, view the samples at home, and trust your own taste.

If you’re ready to browse beautiful carpet samples with an in-home floor selection and refresh your home with brand-new carpet in Indianapolis, Floor Coverings International® of Southeast Indianapolis, IN, is ready to help!

Reach out for a free consultation, and we’ll bring our Mobile Flooring Showroom® directly to you!