Whether you love them or hate them, carpets can be one of the most challenging aspects of home décor. They are a comparatively large investment and time-consuming to install. However, they serve a great purpose in our lives. They keep our houses warm and give rooms a nice, cozy feeling.

Carpets come in various textures, styles, qualities, and the trickiest of all: colors. Deciding on the right color for any home décor, whether its wall paint, furniture color, or anything else, can be a challenging affair. Usually, you can’t truly visualize how something will look in your home after seeing it in a store. How you perceive a color will depend on the lighting, surrounding furniture, and the rest of the room’s overall aesthetic. For instance, you might not want to have a blue carpet in a room with pink painted walls, but you might like a blue carpet in a room with white walls.

The following tips and advice should help you figure out what color is the best for your room.

Select the Rest of your Décor First

Ideally, you want every part of your home décor to match in some way or to follow a cohesive theme. Most people’s source of frustration with their carpet is color. More specifically, the fact that the carpet color doesn’t match their furniture. So, before you start working on what color you want your carpets to be, you should figure out what the rest of your décor will look like, especially large-ticket items like your furniture.

Since sofas and sectionals have the least diversity in terms of color availability and often have the most visual weight in the room, I recommend starting there if you’re carpeting a living room. Once you’ve selected your seating, it’s time to choose your carpeting.

It may seem like the next logical step is to choose wall paint color because the walls take up the most space in the room, but do not make this mistake. Paint has the most diversity of available colors, much more than carpet or furniture. It will be much easier to match your paint to your carpet color than vice versa.

If the room you are selecting carpet for is a bedroom, then carpet color should come first. This advice may seem to contrast the method of choosing furniture first, but bedding and wall colors can be most easily adjusted. The principle remains the same, to start with those elements that have the least variety and match them with the most adjustable ones.

Neutral vs. Bright Colors

Think back to every carpet that you’ve ever seen in any environment, ever. You’ll probably notice some similarities in terms of color. The overwhelming majority of carpets tend to be very neutral or muted colors, while bright colors are scarce. For example, you may find a brightly colored carpet in a kindergarten classroom, but you won’t often see it in someone’s home.

There’s a good reason for this; neutral-colored carpets sell the most because they’re most appealing due to neutrals’ versatile nature. Also, bright colors tend to put people on alert and unsettle us due to their overwhelming appearance. Think about celebrity red carpets, for example. When you look at them, they instantly cause feelings of intense excitement and energy. While those feelings are appropriate for an event, having a red carpet in your living room might be a little extreme for your everyday lifestyle.

As there are almost always exceptions to rules, certain rooms practically beg for bright, bold colors, even on the carpeting. Any room geared towards children, or the kindercore movement (see article), can have colorful yet appropriate carpets. Stylized rooms, such as a Baroque-era inspired bedroom with glamorous, rich red carpets, also break this rule beautifully. And, if you are genuinely passionate about turning your floors into the ultimate statement piece, there are always decorative workarounds, which, while they may be time consuming and expensive, are still possible. Just know ahead of time what you are signing up for if you choose bright carpet.

Assess the Activity Level in the Room

Your lifestyle has a substantial impact on the kind of color that’s most appropriate for any room. White carpets, while gorgeous upon installation, will get dirty. Consider white carpet for a formal space, mainly used to entertain the occasional guest, to provide a nice clean appearance. The alternative is to invest in a high-quality carpet that can withstand lots of extra cleaning and stain guard treatments if you want white carpet in some of the more often used rooms in your home.

For a busy living room with kids and plenty of intermixing and socializing people, white carpets may not be the best choice. Darker colors naturally hide stains much better than lighter ones, so it will be easier to maintain lighter colors in rooms where you don’t expect much activity and darker ones in high traffic areas. However, dark colors can make your space look smaller. If you already have a small room or want the feeling of a bigger space, many light carpets have intentional flecks of color to help hide dirt and stains between deep cleanings.

While these are the general guidelines for choosing a color for your carpeting, carpet is intended to make your space comfortable. My advice is to choose a color that brings you comfort and joy. If you like it, it is the right choice. Some choices require more maintenance, and some require a little more creative elbow grease to make them fit into your vision. Still, as long as you know the challenges, you will be prepared and pleased with the result.