How to hold down a rug?

[Nitro®]

Double sided tape is useless, maybe fix a thin carpet gripper at either end and stretch the rug?

[Timothy Murphy]

We have a large (12ft x 8ft) rug in our living room, on top of a carpet. The rug keeps getting rumpled up, mainly along an old fold in the rug.

Is there any simple way of holding the rug down on the carpet? The only thing I can think of is a nail through both onto the wooden floor underneath.

[Andy Dingley]

A very effective way is to use rug-gripper press studs, although mine were manufactured in the '50s or earlier (parents' drawer of "come in handies"). These are a large socket sewn to the back of the rug, fitting over a shaped screw head driven into the floor. it does require screwing into the floor, but they weren't the worst holes in that floor. Once installed they were secure, yet easily lifted for cleaning.

I imagine something similar could be found from car trim specialists, like Woolies (a real company and still going, but not great for pick- and-mix).

[S Viemeister]

Heavy-duty velcro hook tape, sewn (or stuck) to the underside of the rug.

[Andy Burns]

Something along the lines of this?

[S Viemeister]

When velcro strips land on my carpet, they tend to stick pretty well. Try a bit in a hidden area (press in place, pull off, repeat a few times), to see if it damages the carpet.

[Timothy Murphy]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I thought of using Velcro, but decided it might damage the carpet underneath the rug? And I don't know how well it would stick to the carpet?

[Spamlet]

There are expensive backing sheets you can buy, but with no guarantee even they would work, I found a simple solution. Get some wool about the same colour as the border of your rug and tack stitch the 'trailing' edge to the carpet with a bodkin. You only need about one 3/4 inch stitch every 3 or 4 inches or so. After years of constantly turning the rug and carpet to try and find a combination that didn't creep, the rug has remained in place for a couple of years now and nobody notices the tack stitches. Obviously, if yours is a fitted carpet you may find the stitching more difficult than I did with a non fitted one, but it would be relatively easy to make a curved bodkin and hook it through with pliers. Simple, effective, and costs next to nothing.

S

[Andy Champ]

ISTR adverts for something called "cats claws" for fixing rugs. I can't see an obvious description in Google, so I'll let you do the work :)

Andy

[Lawrence]

I bought some backing fabric from John Lewis. It is slightly sticky and works a treat. The only drawback is that it is quite expensive. Mine has been down for 8 years now. It has been lifted and turned a couple of times with no problems. It has never moved!

Lawrence

[Adrian C]

If you can get under the carpet and embed them in the floor, try a few of those very strong head actuator magnets removable from old scrapped hard disk drives. Then at the corners of the rug, stick/stitch some bits of ferrous metal at the same positions.