You may already part of the growing green flooring trend – or perhaps you’d like to be. Many people are looking to add more environmentally friendly options to their home decor, including cork and bamboo flooring, reclaimed wood, recycled carpet, and wool rugs and carpet. They love a more natural look and low impact or organic products. Another trend in flooring and home decorating are sisal rugs. If you don’t know what sisal rugs are and why they are so popular, read on.
What Is Sisal?
Sisal is the material that sisal rugs consist of. It is a plant fiber that comes from a plant called Agave Sisalana. This plant is a succulent and grows in very dry, desert climates. Because sisal is now very popular among consumers as a sustainable, biodegradable fiber, there are now sisal farms in places like Brazil and Africa. They use very few herbicides or pesticides (in the desert there are far fewer weeds or pests), so sisal is an environmentally friendly fiber in many ways.
Sisal is used to make ropes for use at sea. It’s also used on farms and in factors. For decorative use, it’s woven into rugs. By itself sisal can be a bit coarse – think “walking on rope” – but it’s also frequently combined with other fibers like wool to make a softer, more comfortable rug.
Why Choose Sisal Rugs?
Sisal is very durable and strong as a fiber. It also stretches. It can take a beating from lots of feet and wears well over time. It softens with foot traffic and vacuuming.
Sisal’s composition pulls humidity from the atmosphere, and so it’s anti-static. This is a great flooring choice for rooms that will have many electronic devices working all of the time.
Because sisal rugs are a light, natural color, they combine well with a wide variety of color and furniture – even other rugs. If you like the layered rug look, you’ll love sisal rugs. If you prefer natural materials like wood and stone, sisal will pair wonderfully with them for an outside-inside look.
If you’re thinking of using sisal carpets in your living room or bedroom, keep in mind that it can watermark if you spill lots of liquid on it. To avoid this possibility, have your sisal rug treated with a stain resistant sealer. Adding a fire retardant is also a good idea. These rugs are easy to maintain by vacuuming and using a dry cleaning process on any stains that occur.
Bond Products sells a wide cotton binding that we call wide cotton sisal binding because it’s perfect for sisal. The wide cotton is necessary to both have a natural fiber to keep the rugs “green” and also get a better “bite” in off the edges when sewing as the narrow bindings would pull off easily due from the cut edges of the sisal weave. Sometimes we still latex the cut edges to seal them before binding. The wide binding quickly became a designer look. We do a lot of blind stitch work with our PBL-TX tapestry binder on sisals as well.
At Bond Products we love rugs – all kinds of rugs from antique to modern, and from painstakingly restored to recycled. If you love rugs too and are looking for a new type of rug to try in your home or workspace, why not try sisal rugs?
