The Secret to Making Wall-to-Wall Carpeting Feel Modern

There is so much beige carpet in the world that it’s easy to forget any other kind exists. But it does! Wall-to-wall carpeting comes in a rainbow of fun colors like baby-blue, lavender, seafoam-green, and even terra-cotta. Of course, choosing a non-neutral carpet is a design risk, which is probably why we don’t see these colors in the wild very often. But know this: It’s what will make the difference between having a cookie-cutter space and one with a story to tell.

When you make carpet the star design element, you end up with a one-of-a-kind space, like this penthouse apartment by Barcelona architecture firm P-M-A-A. Everything in the living area is white—the walls, the sectional sofa, the window treatments—except for the floor covering, which is a vibrant teal. This choice alone imbues the city spot with major vacation-home vibes, and who doesn’t want that?

This is essentially color-blocking on the largest scale. MASA, a new gallery in Mexico City, just opened its first art exhibition, “Collective/Collectible,” in an old mansion with carpeting in an ultra-dramatic scarlet hue—with matching walls. Incredibly, the place came this way. “We kept the house as we found it. We didn’t paint it red nor change the carpet, but embraced the color and curated around it,” says MASA cofounder Agé Salajõe. “The house was abandoned since the ’70s, but there were occasional parties organized there. The red is the result of one of the events many years ago.”

And here’s pink and blue carpeting, previously relegated to nurseries, looking modern as can be in more saturated shades. On the right, an Acne Studios store in Tokyo dedicated to its denim line; on the left, furniture brand Élément de base’s Montreal pop-up shop.

Note that the common denominator between all of these examples is the lack of pattern on the carpeting. To avoid veering into tacky territory, sticking with solid colors is a must. Other than that, the color wheel is the limit.