Medallion Rug Gallery

Medallion Rug Gallery - New Contemporary Sultanbad Rug, hand knotted area rug, total knot count 1.65Million

Buying area rugs can be one of the hardest investments to make for many of us. A decent rug - which should be hand knotted for the best quality - is not inexpensive.  However, a good quality rug can last decades even with a lot of wear and tear. My mother has a rug in her dining room that is  at least 75 years old (it was from my grandparent's house) and it shows little wear even though it gets daily use.  A beautiful carpet is a functional work of art and truly sets the stage for a finished room.

I was excited when Medallion Rug Gallery in Palo Alto, CA contacted me and offered me a rug to test out their services and see the quality of their products. Making a large purchase online can be daunting, particularly when color is so important to the look. After doing a little reconnaissance (I checked online reviews on Yelp, etc, to make sure they are a decent company to work with)  I accepted their offer. Since it's understood that I'd be writing a post about my experience, I didn't want to be in a position of being polite because they sent me a rug, or being negative (my policy is to rarely go negative here on the blog). Anyway, I was happy with the general tone of their reviews, so after searching through their literally thousands and thousands of rugs online, I settled on this pretty Sultanbad style rug with pinks and greens on a cream ground. Pretty much my favorite color combination. The rug arrived very quickly (they offer free shipping - in both directions) - all 67 pounds of it! It was very well wrapped. The rug was actually a bit darker than I expected (the colors are spot on, just darker)  - which is a good lesson to learn. Product photography is usually very well lit and many products look lighter than they may appear in real life. For my purposes, I was okay with it being a bit darker, but I asked the folks at Medallion about how they handle situations like this. For instance, I asked if they send additional photography upon request - which they will do. A digital photo from the showroom or warehouse (vs. professionally lit and shot image) would have probably shown it was darker. If the rug had not been acceptable, they will pay to have it shipped back and a new selection can be made.

My plan is to use the rug in my bedroom with my green painted four-poster, but for varying reasons, I can't get the room re-arranged at the moment to get the rug in. So, for now, I've put it in the living room until I can move it to the bedroom. You can see in the montage how pretty the rug is. I love the pattern and in a brighter room (this is north facing and always dark while my bedroom is always bright (even with mid-toned green walls). Hoping to get that move made soon and will repost when that happens!

Meanwhile, I decided to add some of Medallion Rug Gallery's products into my digital Dream House. I put my Sultanbad green and pink rug into my design studio/home office and think it works really well. I'm still working on the actual design of the home office, which is in the back of the house, but this is essentially the layout. There is a separate entrance leading right into this room from the side of the house. I would be able to meet with client's here, show them plans, etc. The walls would be used as pin boards. The sliding doors on the right would be pocket doors and have either etched glass or mirrored windows so the room could be a real working space without being visible to the formal library. My thinking is that the adjoining library/dining room will act as additional meeting space as needed and also house all my books and materials.  (BTW - a big thanks to Yvonne Blacker who shot the photo of a Kravet Fabric's pin board and posted it to her blog Design Vignettes. I was able to "lift" the image for the board on the left side of this image)

New Contemporary Persian Tabriz handknotted rug, 6.3Million knots

I've previously posted about the library/dining room. It's not much further along than before, other than I pushed the office walls in two -feet since the office needed more space.  And I added this gorgeous deep green Persian Tabriz rug. The home office is on the other side of the double doors (pay no attention to the missing window mullions - rendering glitch!) As I said above, the plan is that this room would house all my books and materials in a combination of open and covered storage and double as an intimate dining room. I decided that rather than have a wood burning traditional fireplace, which takes up a lot of room, I'd do a gas fireplace mounted at eye level on the wall. Cozy, but easy to deal with. It's all still a work in progress...

 Persian Tabriz area rug, handknotted, 1.65M knots

 I selected another Persian Tabriz rug for the front sitting room that is open to the library. I love how the two rugs go together!

Thank you to Medallion Rug Gallery for offering an area rug for review and for answering all my questions about your services.