Rules of Thumb for Rugs Under Round Dining Tables (+ Inspiration!)

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I recently put up a poll in Instagram Stories asking for your burning design questions, and one of them was how to pick a rug for a round dining table. I thought that was a great one - after all, it can be tricky to know what works well. Does a round dining table mean you have to have a round rug underneath? Or should you always use a rectangular one? Or vice versa - always use a round one?

Well, I’m here to say that you can do either round or rectangular - it’s more about making sure it’s the right size for the table!

When it comes to dining tables and rugs, the biggest mistake is choosing one that’s too small. There’s nothing worse than having your chair catch on the edge of a rug every time you pull it in or out. So my greatest pieces of advice is…

Make sure your rug extends at least 24” out from the edge of the table on all sides.

That gives you enough room to pull your chair out comfortably and not get caught on the rug.

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Now, this is pretty easy to accomplish when you have a rectangular dining table and a rectangular rug since they’re the same shape, but round tables can be a little bit trickier. Depending on the diameter of your round table, it can be harder to find a rectangular rug that is large enough to have that magical 24” on all sides.

Here are a couple of standard sizes of round dining tables and their corresponding minimum rug sizes:

• 48” dining table = at least 8’x10’ rug
• 60” dining table = at least 9’x12’ rug

If a 9’x12’ seems like a hefty rug for your average dining room, you’re probably right, which is why some people opt for a round rug instead of rectangular. I think it can be a really lovely look and change things up. If you like the look of a round rug under a dining table, be sure (again!) to choose one that’s large enough. With round rugs in particular, people end up with rugs that are just a tiny bit larger than their table and it looks disproportional and a little awkward 😉.

Let’s revisit our standard sized round dining tables and see what size rug to use:

• 48” dining table = at least 8’ round rug
• 60” dining table = at least 9’ round rug

Below you’ll see two great examples of what having the right sized round rug looks like. While the first one looks like it exceeds my rules of thumb above, they both give you a good idea of what works well: