
02.04.19
Sight Unseen Projects
Anyone Can Design a Custom Rug With Kasthall’s New Online Tool — Here’s Proof
Today we’re excited to launch Sight Unseen’s first ever product for the home: A collection of two rugs we designed for the 120-year-old Swedish company Kasthall, using their online Rug Designer tool. The tool, a new edition of which launches today at Stockholm Design Week, allows any architect, interior designer, or enthusiastic aesthete — that’s us! — to create a one-off custom hand-woven or hand-tufted rug using an expansive palette of colors and patterns. Approached by Kasthall to test it out by creating a rug of our very own, we eagerly said yes. Then, almost as quickly, we began fretting over exactly how we, as newbies, were going to pull it off.
Turns out we needn’t have worried. The Rug Designer allows quite a bit of freedom, but also offers a set framework that makes it easy for the uninitiated to navigate. Designers can choose from tufted or woven, then mix and match preselected rug shapes, colors (deep teals, cozy chestnuts, pale roses), patterns (checkerboards, chevrons, stripes, and zigzags), and configurations. We allowed ourselves to experiment wildly, trying out several unconventional (aka ugly) color pairings before finally landing on two striped designs — one tufted and round, one woven and rectangular — in a Scandi-inspired pastel palette. The woven rug uses tonal variations of pink and mustard and was inspired by trompe l’oeil painted facades in Milan; the tufted rug was our way of rendering stripes in a less conservative way. Both were styled in the photos below by the amazing Norwegian duo Krakvik & D’Orazio, and both are available in Europe as of today and in America in March.
Obviously Kasthall is hoping that its professional clients will use the tool to complete their vision of the perfectly designed room, but if you want to play around with it just to see what you can come up with, we promise not to tell. Either way, be sure to post your results on Instagram and tag us!
PHOTOS BY LASSE FLOEDE; STYLING BY KRAKVIK & D’ORAZIO