Custom Floorings from Pottery Barn

With Pottery Barn's new custom sisal rugs, it's easy to create a beautiful, affordable foundation for your interior design projects. "Designers and their customers like the option to create design elements that fit their specific room dimensions and color schemes," says Pottery Barn buyer Millie Abernathy. "We're very excited about these new custom rugs because they allow us to offer many more options than we could stock in our distribution centers."

Made from Brazilian sisal and available in three sisal colors and five border colors, these rugs can be ordered in one foot increments from two to fifteen feet with an overall size limitation of 13' x 15.' A helpful tool on the Pottery Barn website helps customers visualize the size and color combinations of sisal and border colors in relation to a background floor color.

Sisal can be used in virtually any room in the house, but it's particularly suited to living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms. Regarding the weave, Abernathy says that this particular flat weave was chosen over the more common nubby boucle weave because it was more comfortable under foot and "very beautiful."

The rugs come in three versatile sisal colors: honey, pyrite and silver topaz. "We chose this sisal from Brazil because of how it takes the color," says Abernathy. "There's a beautiful depth to the fiber that allows it to have a really nice sheen to it when it takes the color."

Abernathy likes the tonality of pairing each color with a related border color—for example, a tan border with the honey colored sisal or a glacier border with the silver topaz sisal. However, a red border with any of the grounds would add punch to a room’s design while a black border would enhance an especially sophisticated design. The darker brown pyrite sisal paired with a bark border would be friendly for high traffic areas or children's rooms.

Elegantly mitered corners combined with the comfortable weave and appealing colors create a quality rug at a desirable price point. Quick turnaround—less than four weeks—is another reason sales have greatly exceeded projections. Currently available through Pottery Barn's website and catalogs only, custom rug options are expected to debut in our retail stores this spring. Also look for new sisal colors and weaves as well as border fabrics to be introduced in 2012.

"Designing a custom rug is a great way to build your own look from the ground up," says Abernathy.