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I get a lot of mileage from a well-made carpet. I like my tones warm, understated and cozy. I don’t get people who love rug designs taken from 1970s polyester sports coats. It’s over, people. My feet aren’t large enough to cover the carpet while I watch Sports Center or talk to a house guest. But, no matter how you try, some people just have to take it all the way to the edge.

Carpeting that absorbs spills

Photo by Colorado Guy

Steve, our Colorado Guy, was staying with chums in Delta when he dropped his open soda can on this rug. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find the wet spot in the midst of this mess.

Band on the runway

The House of Area Rugs is the repository of this animal print rug that completes a practice room “where you can let your funky side go wild”. Dazzling, boys. Pass the vomit bags.

Designs that cannot save Lauren’s heart (sigh)

Lauren’s feet, pictured here on the doctor’s waiting room carpet where she’s come for appointments for eight years, show the complete futility of office design consultants. She’s the author of Save Lauren’s Heart blog, and our hearts go out to her.

A sea of confusion

Photo by Zydecocruiser

The author of the Zydecocruiser blog took a fancy to this atrocity of a carpet installed on a Carnival Dream Ship. It’s enough to send the passengers out to the deck for a healthy yurp at the rail.

Don’t gamble on these designs

Photo by We Waste Time

I recently blogged about Chris Maluszynski’s Las Vegas Carpet revue, but it’s worth a second look if it will spare you a few hours at the slots. You’d think rugs like this would keep gamblers away. Don’t bet on it!

I think I threw up in my mouth.  Las Vegas casinos have the world’s ugliest carpets. Rounding up photos of them and researching why casinos choose them can become a compulsive habit. It has been for David G. Schwartz, who claims in his biography to be “the youngest Ph.D. in recent memory from UCLA’s history department” and who has published a book on the evolution of the casino industry on the Las Vegas Strip.

In fact, Schwartz has been called “gaming’s leading historian” by Global Gaming Business magazine. The casino carpet gallery at his Die Is Cast website  makes you reach for the barf bag.

Ugly rugs to die for

Photo by Die Is Cast

The Die is Cast image of the carpet at the Vegas Strip makes the blood rush to your feet and causes hundred-dollar bills to tumble from your pockets.

Flooring goes for broke

Photo by Die Is Cast

Schwartz, currently Director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of  Nevada Las Vegas,  claims that “casino carpet is known as an exercise in deliberate bad taste that  somehow encourages people to gamble.” Prime example: This carpet from the Bellagio. Read more about his research at U.S. Floors Direct (bottom of the page).

Ugly is the new ugly

Photo by Die is Cast on Hotel Chatter

The folks at Hotel Chatter have termed the casino trend as “Fugly Hotel Carpeting” and claims that hotels deliberately install “bewildering, dizzying, headache-inducing and downright scary carpeting in their public spaces (and sometimes in the rooms!) so as to distract guests from stains, spills and unsavory remnants of accidents, bodily or otherwise.

Get some help!

Yes, there’s even a Facebook support group page today for people who are smitten by ugly hotel rugs and carpets. Need to vent, or simply need to know you’re not alone, check out Facebook.