I'll quickly walk through some tips for picking a rug to match with your brown couch (both fabric and leather). We'll start with two simple to follow rules before we get into specific recommendations.

Rule 1: Stick with battle tested color pairings

Generally, the color matching you follow when selecting clothes also applies to your rug and couch combinations.  As with all rules, they can be broken, but if you're going for easy pairings, something like black/brown is best left to the professional interior designer.  It takes quite a lot of coordination to get correct.

Rule 2: The proportional color rule

Also known as the 60-30-10 rule, you'll want to select a dominant color, a secondary color, and an accent color.  The dominant color should take up 60% of your room. If you have a brown couch and want the dominant color for the room to be brown, your rug should probably be an accent or secondary color so that it's not overwhelming.  Couches and rugs take up significant space in a room and thus represent most of the opportunities for bringing out specific colors.   This also means you probably shouldn't use more than 3 colors in a room.

Rug color to pair with a brown couch

Without further ado, let's get into the recommendations!

Top Recommendation: Ivory, Light Beige, and White

Elegant, simple, clean.  Using a white or light beige rug will add contrast to your brown couch and really make it pop.  It also keeps the room from feeling overwhelmed with darker colors.  These are no brainer colors and you can't really go wrong with them.

• Powder White rug by Article - https://www.article.com/product/12175/suto-powder-white-rug-8-x-10

• White rug by Industry West - https://www.industrywest.com/idun-rug-white.html

Runner up: Light Grays

If you're seen someone where a crisp grey/charcoal suit before, you'll often see them paired with brown shoes.  The same applies here.   If you have a brown couch, you can pair it nicely with a light grey or charcoal.  The darker the shade of gray the more difficult, so be mindful.

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• Grey rug with swirls by CB2 - https://www.cb2.com/livia-hand-tufted-rug-5x8/s115918

Options for the Risk Takers

‌Shades of Blue

Depending on the strength of the brown in your couch, there are some great blues to select from.  We recommend sticking to the lighter blues as they are easier to pair than trying to class a dark blue with a dark brown couch. However, if you have a lighter brown couch, it is possible to match it with a navy for instance.

• Blue pattern rug by Crate & Barrel - https://www.crateandbarrel.com/orlo-blue-artisan-rug-6x9/s281254

• Blue rug with Stripes by Article - https://www.article.com/product/12179/parallel-wave-blue-white-rug-8-x-10

Brown on Brown (or Dark Orange)

If you're trying to be bold and want your room to feel "warm", you can pair brown with chocolate brown.  This makes it much harder to achieve Rule 2 above (60-30-10), but it can be done.  Alternatively, you could use a dark orange to achieve a similar effect without having to fill our your secondary and accent color with the remaining furniture.

Multi-color rugs

If most of your room is the same color, you could use a multi color rug to spice it up.  You'll still want to stick to the colors mentioned above, but if combined, they can make for a great look.

• Mineral rug by Crate and Barrel - https://www.crateandbarrel.com/alvarez-mineral-blue-hand-tufted-rug/f64360

Wrap up

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