Australia Has No Rugs

I've been searching for a rug for my office for what feels like an incredibly long time.

In fact, I 'pinned' this particular image on pinterest 29 weeks ago (I think it's the IKEA Stockholm Rand rug) as a possibility.

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And many others followed as potential inspiration...

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This particular rug was actually the one I featured in the mood board that I made for my orange-focused office colour scheme.

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I was intrigued by this option. This lady actually painted the pink pattern on this rug, which started out in life as a cheap IKEA flat woven rug.

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I didn't want to commit to a rug until I had my curtains up in the office, so I could properly gauge what colour my rug should be. I was expecting the vibrant colour of my curtains to be pretty dominant, and thought I might need to tone it down a bit with a soft grey-coloured rug.

The problem was, I could not find any rugs that I liked that were available in Australia! I didn't travel the country exhaustively of course, but I searched every website I could possibly find that sold rugs, trying to find a pattern that I could like. And I came up with virtually nothing. Why doesn't Australia get decent rugs?

All it took was a quick search for "grey rug" on Overstock.com to find half a dozen rugs that I would have happily purchased.

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The problem? Every single one of them says this.

So I began to think I would have to be more realistic, and settle for something a little less fancy, that I knew I could get in Australia.

I considered this option...

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 And even this option!

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And I found this option on Ebay...

But I just wasn't in love.

Then, I received an email form Urban Outfitters, a US store that does in fact ship to Australia, with a one-day offer of $5 Economy Delivery to Australia. Hallelujah!

I found this soft grey chevron patterned rug, and loved it.

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 I popped it straight into my 'shopping bag', and got this far with checkout. But then no further!

In case you can't read that horrible red error message, it says "There are item(s) in your cart that cannot be shipped to Australia. Please return to your shopping cart and remove them before proceedig through checkout".

I was so disappointed.

So my search continued, without turning up much. When we made a little trip to IKEA, we decided to pick up a Nastved rug for $30. It fit in the room nicely...

And it looked nice with the curtains...

But I wasn't in love. It made me realise that I really would love some more orange on the floor of the room, to tie in with the curtains.

Then one day, I just happened to read this post on the blog Making it Lovely, referring to a bedroom makeover she had done. It had been featured in Australian online magazine Adore Home, and a few of the products she used were from West Elm.

I had always thought that West Elm was a U.S.-only shop, so that pricked my interest. West Elm in Australia? I had no idea that they could ship overseas!

So I headed straight over, and guess what I found?!

It was love at first sight. It's the Iznik Dhurrie rug in colour "Sorrel". I was a bit worried by the fact that the colour "Sorrel" implies that it might be more of a rusty-orange sort of colour rather than a vibrant orange like my curtains. So I did a bit of googling for other pictures of it.

And I came across this one!

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After all my rug disappointment so far, I was determined that this wouldn't be a mistake. So I decided to contact the owner of that living room, to see what her thoughts on the actual colour of the rug were. Courtney (of A Little Glass Box) was lovely. She responded in record time, and calmed my fears. The rug is a vibrant orange.

I didn't need to be told twice.

I slapped down my credit card for the $138.70 (including discounted shipping), and waited with baited breath for it to arrive.

Which it did, a couple of weeks later!

And I couldn't wait to roll it out in its new home.

At first I was a bit worried that it wasn't close enough to the same shade of orange as the curtains, but because it's not directly next to them, the difference is not actually that obvious. And I love the extra shot of vibrant colour it adds to the room.

Allie loves it too.

What do you think? Orange enough?