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What size rug do I need? Enter your room size and the sofa, dining table, or bed that has to sit on it — this rug size calculator returns the standard size that works, from 3 × 5 to 9 × 12, and shows the arithmetic. Rooms in feet, furniture in inches.
Rug sizes are nominal — a "5 × 8" is 60 × 96 inches and a "9 × 12" is 108 × 144. Measure the room wall to wall, and use the sofa's overall width including arms.
American rugs come in a handful of sizes and everything else is a special order. These are the ones worth planning around — the same stencils Poché lays on a floor plan at true scale.
| Rug | Inches | Where it earns its keep |
|---|---|---|
| 3 × 5 | 36 × 60 | entry, kitchen sink, beside a twin |
| 5 × 8 | 60 × 96 | small seating groups, under a loveseat |
| 6 × 9 | 72 × 108 | apartment living rooms, full/queen beds |
| 8 × 10 | 96 × 120 | the standard living room and queen-bed size |
| 9 × 12 | 108 × 144 | sectionals, king beds, dining rooms with 8+ seats |
| Round 6′ | 72 dia. | small round tables, reading corners |
| Runner 2½ × 8 | 30 × 96 | halls and kitchen work zones — 4–6″ of floor each side |
Those two constraints pull in opposite directions, which is the whole problem: the sofa pushes the rug bigger, the walls push it smaller. The calculator returns the largest standard size that satisfies both, and tells you when nothing does.
A dining rug has one job, and it is not decoration. It has to hold the chairs pulled out, or every dinner ends with somebody tipping backwards off the edge. The rule is the table footprint plus roughly 24″ on every side — that is the distance a chair travels to let an adult sit down.
A 72 × 36 table therefore needs 120 × 84 inches of rug: the 8 × 10, turned sideways. A 96 × 42 table for eight to ten needs 144 × 90 — the 9 × 12, and nothing smaller will do. Round tables are hungrier than they look, because every chair pulls back along a radius: a 60″ round wants 108″ across, which no standard round rug in the list above provides.
Under a bed, the rug is not there to be looked at — it is there to be stood on at 6am. Slide it so it starts under the lower two-thirds of the bed and runs past the foot; the headboard end sits on bare floor, because nobody stands there. What matters is the reveal: the band of rug showing on each side, which wants to be 18–24″.
A queen mattress is 60″ wide, so an 8 × 10 across it shows exactly 18″ each side. A king is 76″ wide and a 9 × 12 shows 16″ — a hair under the ideal, and the reason the 9 × 12 is the king's rug is that nothing standard is bigger. Remember the bed frame eats 1–2½″ of that reveal per side.
This is why the calculator returns the smallest rug that reaches an 18″ reveal rather than the largest one the room will take. The 6 × 9 listed above as a full-and-queen size is the compact option, and the arithmetic says what you are buying: under a queen it shows 6″ a side, which is a runner's worth of reveal, and under a full it shows 9″.
We are straight about the provenance of these rules, because most rug advice online is not. The Carpet and Rug Institute publishes no sizing guidance at all, and major retailers contradict themselves within a single page — one well-known dining page gives 33″, 18″ and 24″ of overhang in three different places. The all-legs-on / front-legs-on / all-off convention traces to a 2008 blog post whose own archive does not contain the leg rule.
So: the rug overhang rules on this page are a styling convention we state as one — useful, widely followed, and not a standard. The arithmetic the calculator does with them is exact; the inputs are advice. The dimensions of the rugs themselves, and the 24″ a dining chair needs to pull back, are the parts that hold up under measurement. Full write-up: Rug sizes.
Start from the sofa, not the room. The rug should run at least 6″ past each end of the sofa, so an 84″ sofa wants 96″ of rug — the 8 × 10, not the 5 × 8. Then check it against the room: leave 12–18″ of bare floor between the rug and the walls so the room keeps its border. In most real living rooms that lands on an 8 × 10; sectionals take the 9 × 12, because both legs of the L should sit on it.
The front legs of every seat should sit on the rug — that is what ties a seating group together. All-legs-on reads grander and needs a bigger rug, usually a 9 × 12. No-legs-on reads like a bath mat, and it is the commonest and most expensive rug mistake there is. Note that the leg conventions are a styling convention, not a published standard: the Carpet and Rug Institute publishes no sizing guidance, and retailers contradict each other. Treat them as advice, and check the overhang on your own plan.
The rug has to hold the chairs when they are pulled out, or every dinner ends with a chair leg off the edge. The rule is the table footprint plus roughly 24″ on every side. A 72 × 36 table therefore needs 120 × 84 inches of rug — that is an 8 × 10 turned sideways. Ten seats and up, it is the 9 × 12.
An 8 × 10, slid down so the rug starts under the lower two-thirds of the bed. A 96″-wide rug under a 60″ queen mattress leaves 18″ of reveal on each side — which is exactly what your feet land on when you get out of bed. The headboard end sits off the rug, because nobody stands there. A king takes the 9 × 12 the same way, which works out at 16″ per side.
Under a loveseat, in a small seating group, or beside a bed — yes. In front of a standard 84″ sofa, no. A 5 × 8 is 60 × 96 inches, so its long side barely matches the sofa itself and nothing overhangs. A 5 × 8 floating in front of an 84″ sofa is the most common furnishing mistake in America.
12–18″ of bare floor between the rug and the wall is the band we design to. Less than 12 and the rug reads as wall-to-wall carpet that did not quite make it; much more than 18 and the seating group starts to drift in the middle of the room. In a very large or open-plan room the border stops mattering and the seating group defines the edge instead.
Poché's rug stencils sit under the furniture layer at true scale. Upload the floor plan you already have, slide the 8 × 10 under your real bed or sofa, and see exactly what shows.
Try it on your plan →