Ikea's monochrome rug

"Can a rug be hot?" I asked a friend yesterday. He's the friend whose flat in Berlin I'm slowly helping him to pull together (it's a slow process when neither of us lives in the German city, among other things...). I asked because I had just – successfully – coerced him to return the black and white rug he'd bought from Ikea. I hated it. 

And I wanted to encourage him that he was doing the right thing. "I sent you the photo of the other one – this one's completely different!" I e-wailed when he had shown me a photo of his new monochrome rug in situ. "They didn't have the one you suggested in stock," he said defensively, and somewhat confused. "And this one is black and white too..."

One black and white rug is not the same as any black and white rug, I told him firmly. (See left – I'm right, right?) And packed him back to Ikea to get the black and white beauty above (seen here in a house-tour at the excellent Ikea Family Live).

"Yes, a rug can be hot," he conceded.

The Stockholm Rand rug (top image) is £99.99 (small) or £259 (large) from Ikea.