Magic carpets: modern ethnic rugs are a big autumn trend, bringing instant colour and warmth to a room

Highly patterned rugs have been spotted everywhere from the super-stylish Alex Hotel in Perth, Australia, to Kourtney Kardashian’s guest bedroom.

Souad Larusi, who has been dealing in authentic tribal rugs at Larusi in Kentish Town since 2000, says many of us want to inject colour into our minimal interiors.

Her customers, from artist Peter Doig to Ace Hotel and Ilse Crawford, have been pairing classic, neutral Beni Ourain rugs with colourful boucherouite rag rugs, and also learning to appreciate authentic Turkish Anatolian kilims.

“It’s a way of introducing colour that isn’t gaudy or super-bright,” says Larusi. “Customers are becoming more experimental, and interested in exactly where their rug is from.”

Meanwhile, 2 Lovely Gays, aka designers Jordan Cluroe and Russell Whitehead, say ethnic-style rugs are a perfect foil for period features, including in their own Victorian house. They’ve just issued a rug range with east London’s Floor Story, including a lattice raised bamboo-silk-on-wool pattern called Embossed, that has traditional Persian overtones.

A Rum Fellow’s collection at Floor Story includes Wawa, influenced by traditional Mayan weaving. At Gur, Portuguese designer Celia Esteves uses local artisans to create traditional flatweaves in very modern colours and patterns.

From CC-Tapis, Traces d’Orient is distinctly contemporary in its distressed approach. Swoon’s designs are inspired by tribal Ikat fabrics, and the new Pixel rug from Deadgood pixelates a traditional Persian design and tweaks the palette to include deep rusty reds and pinks.