The Vintage-Inspired Touches Amber Lewis Often Uses When Styling a Room
Naturally, her latest Loloi collab is filled with them.
Published Oct 23, 2023 1:10 PM
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It’s no secret that Los Angeles–based designer Amber Lewis is obsessed with rugs. In nearly every space—even the bathrooms!—featured in her latest book, Call It Home, you can spy an antiquated flat-weave or two. So we can’t say we were surprised to see that her third collaboration with Loloi, a brand beloved for its high-quality home textiles, includes an expansion of her best-selling Georgie collection with four new vintage-passing patterns. What we weren’t expecting, however, was an entire line of wall art and pillows, to boot, plus her first outdoor-friendly pieces for porches and patios.
Available to shop starting today at her storefront (with supply being added to Amazon, Wayfair, Rugs Direct, and more e-tailers), the refreshed assortment means deciding on a rug will be that much harder (there are now 22 to sift through, after all!). So we asked Lewis how she selects the right one for a client.
“I first decide on the size, ensuring that furniture fits well on the rug,” she stresses. This is a point she clearly takes into account for her own stock. There are 12 different sizes to choose from in the launch, from an extra-long hallway runner to a small, squarish bath mat. “While I’m all for testing a boundary, I generally think that ‘bigger is better’ with rugs,” she adds. “I try to select [something] that most furniture can fit on, or at the very least, the front of the legs of a sofa or chair.”
But in the dining room, for instance, that means your piece should be large enough so that when a chair is pulled out from the table, there’s still plenty of rug on which to sit comfortably. After you’ve nailed down the right size, it’s time for the fun stuff, like picking out patterns and colors. For Lewis, that’s often a vintage-inspired touch to bring “a unique, lived-in yet elevated feel to a project.” In this collection specifically, the designer offers up an earthy palette and classic designs with the illusion of a time-worn fade (the Georgie); a few neutral foundations (Lou); modern Moroccan-inspired geometrics (Libby and Rocky); and outdoor-ready stripes or subtle texture variations with tasseled edges (Malibu). Materials vary, from hard-wearing polyester (ideal for high-traffic areas and low-maintenance households) to chunky, hand-knotted wool (for an extra-soft-underfoot feel).
A rug can really be a staple piece of any room, Lewis tells us, by adding that missing bit of dimension and depth. Her piped and fringed pillows layer in seamlessly—and the same can be said for her new framed art prints. The trick, she offers, is creating “a complementary palette; it doesn’t need to be an exact match!”
With all this in mind, here’s what she’d personally pair with what.
