I’m shopping for a rug. Rugs are really hard to shop for online. Very few online retailers have figured out how to communicate the experience of a rug. The thickness, the softness, the scale of the strands, the thickness of the weave are something you very much need to see and touch in person to get a good feel or what you’re seeing.

Specifically I want a true red shag rug with thick strands and tight weave. Of course the first problem I’ve encountered is color. Red means anything from warm brown to pink. I’ve even seen a few labeled true red that were anything but.

But the primary problem I’m encountering is scale. The product is usually accompanied by a photo that is taken from birds eye and shows the whole thing.

That’s generally fine for color. The next thing I need to see is a detail shot that shows me the thickness of the strands and how tight the strands are woven together.

The same thing, but bigger. Sometimes I get the monster detail:

(click to make it bigger. If I show this full size it will blow out my page layout)

Again - the same damn thing. It just gets bigger and bigger. What I am missing is any clue about scale.

Then I ran across http://www.modernrugs.com/

(That is a real rug. Chunky felted cut shapes woven into a rug. I WANT THAT REALLY HARD.)

The last few photos are from http://www.modernrugs.com/ - the rugs are interesting and fabulous, and they get how to take pictures of a product that is inherently difficult to communicate in flat photo form alone.

They’ve done an excellent job with the photos. Putting whole people, or just hands, or heads or bits and pieces in the photos make this site stand out.

Go buy rugs from them and tell them you saw my blog post and maybe they’ll give me a discount on that freaking red leafy gorgeous rug. Kthx!