Coffee tables are brilliant features in lounge spaces. They often become the very central image in the room because people sit around them, put their feet up on them, store coffee table books and other things in them and generally use them as the fulcrum of their interior design.

But there’s a hidden dark side to coffee tables: the damage they are capable of doing to the surface of the floor that lies directly underneath them. Now, one tactic is to use clever pads to prevent furniture from scratching or marking laminate flooring, but this might represent something of an opportunity missed.

The opportunity referred to here is the chance to pair up a brilliant coffee table with a stunning rug. Rugs and coffee tables have a really great relationship – modern coffee tables are given greater accent by modern rugs; vintage coffee tables and given extra accent by traditional rugs; quirky and colourful coffee tables are given that like bit more by fun and cosy shaggy rugs and so on.

The fact that rugs are also thick enough to provide a proper cushion for the legs of coffee tables gives them an added practical element.