An area rug has a few jobs: protecting your floor from scuffing, protecting your feet from the cold, and fitting in stylishly with the rest of your home décor. One job an area rug doesn’t have is tripping you because the corners keep curling up. Yet, somehow, it still happens! Rug corner curling can happen to anyone, at just about any time.

Luckily, however, it’s a fairly easy problem to fix. We’ll cover the easiest methods for flattening a curling rug corner as well as how to help keep it from happening in the first place below.

Steam

Edge curling happens the most with area rugs because, before they’re displayed, they’re commonly stored rolled up. This can cause issues when homeowners lay them out. The fastest way to fix a curling corner is with the help of steam. If you already own a steam cleaner, you can use it to gently moisten your rug corners. This will loosen the fibers, making it relax and lay flat. You can gently weigh it down as it dries over an hour or two and it’ll be flat afterward.

Ironing

If you don’t already own a steam cleaner and you don’t have the time to wait a few weeks to use weight to flatten your rug, your method of choice will be to use an iron. This process will be just like using an iron to take wrinkles out of a shirt.

First, gently dampen any area you’ll be pressing the iron to. Fold a towel around these dampened areas before placing the iron down. This way the iron won’t accidentally damage the bindings in the rug. Be especially careful to use a towel with synthetic rugs. Press down, keeping the towel in place, and repeat the process for any other corner still curling.

Weight

One of the easiest ways to flatten a rug corner is by weighing it down. You have two main options: permanently weighing down rug corners or weighing them down just long enough to fix the problem. If the plan is to keep it permanent, you can just resituate the furniture in the room with the problem rug to accommodate that curling.

Curl Stopper

The Curl Stop anti-curling rug system is another good option to weigh down the corners. The corners attach to the rug, not the floor and provide additional weight to keep the corners laying flat.

Otherwise, we recommend using small stacks of books (you’ll want at least 3-5 hardcover tomes) on each corner that’s curling and leaving them in place for two weeks. Once you move them: problem solved.

How can I prevent my rug corners from curling in the first place?

There are a few things that can cause rug corners to curl other than usual wear and tear. Typically, it’s from being in a curled position for a long period of time or it’s due to increased humidity within a home. If your home has problems with high humidity, that excess moisture in the air can cause the fibers in your rug to dampen and dry without management, causing problems. That can be fixed with dehumidifiers in problem rooms. Otherwise, the problem of curling corners is physical and can be avoided by using small circles of masking tape under the corners of your rug. This, of course, will only work on hardwood or tile flooring.

Now that you’ve become an expert on how to keep rug corners from curling up, you might not know what to do next. We recommend looking at some new rugs to add to your perfectly flat-cornered collection!