Easy to Clean Rugs for Dining Room

Last Updated on July 17, 2016 by

Do you have a dining room with hardwood floors? If so, do you use an area rug in your dining room?

Way back when I first started working on my dining room, I was looking at black and white striped rugs, but I couldn't find one that worked. (That was before I settled on black and white striped draperies.) I finally decided to go with a simple jute rug, which is probably my favorite kind of rug. I bought this one from Overstock. It's actually not that dark in person. In fact, you can see a glimpse of it here.

It's very neutral, and serves the purpose that I like for area rugs to serve by defining the area.

But after spending a week making one wingback dining chair, and now starting on the second one, I'm starting to think through the practicality (or impracticality) of having an area rug in the dining room in the first place.

The wingback chairs, while not super heavy, are definitely bigger and heavier than a regular dining chair, like a side chair. And I'm concerned that sliding those chairs in and out from the table on a rug will just get really old after a while, and will probably end up ruining the rug and possibly even weakening the legs on the chairs (all of the chairs, actually) just from the added extra force required to push a chair back over carpet.

So when I was standing there in Home Depot, looking at the adhesive and nail-on feet glide options, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. I went with the nail-on felt pads made for hardwood floors (I got these) instead of the slick plastic glides made for use on carpet.

I brought those home, attached them to the feet of the one finished wingback chair, and tested it out. It slid across the floor so easily! I mean, with pretty much no effort at all. Just for the sake of practicality and ease of use, I think I have to do away with the area rug. But of course, from a decorating point of view, that kind of disappoints me. In my mind, a finished dining room that has hardwood floors needs an area rug.

So I headed to Houzz to see if I could find examples of dining rooms with hardwood floors and no area rugs. I expected them to be in the minority, but as it turns out, that wasn't the case at all! I searched "dining room with hardwood floor" and at least half of the rooms that came up on that search didn't use rugs! I guess others have found that area rugs with dining chairs are impractical as well.

Those are just a few of the examples I found, and I don't think those rooms look like they're lacking because they don't have an are rug. Do you?

Anyway, I readily admit that more times than not, I'm a form over function kind of person, and I make no apologies for it. But in this case — this rare case — I'm going to opt for practicality. When my house is nearer to completion, I really do want this dining room to be used…often. I want it filled with people, good conversation, and loads of laughter. And the last thing I want is to be concerned whether or not my guests are able to easily and comfortably get up from the dining table.

So I'm curious. For those of you who have hardwood floors in your dining room, do you use an area rug? Have you found it to cause difficulty with pushing the chairs in and out from the table? And what, if anything, have you done or used to make it easier?

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.

I hope you'll join me on my DIY and decorating journey! If you want to follow my projects and progress, you can subscribe below and have each new post delivered to your email inbox. That way you'll never miss a thing!

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