Is Carpet the Unsung Hero of the Design World?
It's hard to remember a world where wall-to-wall carpet was actually a beautiful thing. In recent years, homeowners have vastly preferred to rip up their carpets and install hardwood floors. But lately we've had a hankering for carpets, and some designers we've spoken with feel the same way.
Carpets can be cut into all sorts of shapes and sizes to fit any space, they provide plush landings for waddling toddlers and crawling babies, and they have great secondary noise-cancelling properties. There's even some evidence that carpets can help improve air quality by trapping dust and allergens in their pile, at which point you can vacuum them away without releasing them into the air for you to inhale.
With their sleek designs and versatility, there’s good reason to give the new wall-to-wall carpeting a chance. Stark's recently launched Halcyon collection features 100 percent silk hand-knotted broadloom carpets that look way better than your grandmother’s shag rug, and no one could argue against the timeless beauty of Tai Ping carpets.
Master and kid's bedrooms seem to be the best places to use them-because who wants to step out from under the covers and touch down on a cold, hard floor? New York designer Ryan Korban installed wall-to-wall carpet in a Manhattan master suite, trying to reimagine, in his words, "that chic hotel room vibe-really luxe fabrics and finishes and this amazing wall-to-wall carpet." Though he admits he's not typically a carpet kind of guy, in this case it worked. "They're like the unsung heroes of the design world," he says.
Clearly, designer Steven Gambrel agrees. He used wall-to-wall carpet in the moody Chicago townhouse master bedroom pictured in the story opener, and the result is stunning. What do you think?
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