Seagrass Carpets For Your Porch

It even sounds romantic, exotic, inviting—to say the phrase: seagrass carpets.  Kind of invokes images of underwater cool greens and blues and blue-greens, calm waters, dark surroundings, doesn’t it?  Well it at least implies natural. Seagrass carpets are designed and made by keeping their natural colors—which range through the browns, grays, light silverfish colors, and tans.  These colors show little of the equally natural dirt tracked in, and make for good patio, porch, mudroom, or entryway rugs. 

The seagrass carpets are also good for these and other areas for reasons besides their camouflaging colors.  They are exceptionally durable and enduring, bearing up quite well under heavy amounts of foot traffic, sweeping, vacuuming, and beating (if you still beat the dust out of your rugs, that is).  Further, it is virtually stain-resistant, as the fibers are insoluble, or impermeable…which is why they are rarely dyed (the dye won’t take) and are left in their lovely natural tones and shades.

Also distinctive about seagrass carpets is their renowned sheen: they have a glimmering shine that recalls for many of us the childhood hours spent in the fields, the wind whipping the grass blades to reveal their shimmery undersides. Seagrass carpets are made from the natural fiber that is cultivated in great paddies on the wetlands and coasts of India, China, and elsewhere.  As one floor covering vendor tells it, during the growing season, the paddies are “flooded with sea water.”  (ezcarpets.uk)  The rugs are the least expensive to make and therefore are inexpensive to purchase. They are the more natural and some of the most versatile of floor coverings, and can have a range of visual appeal with patterns of weave including the “seashore” weave (which is rowed fibers with alternating fiber tie downs); the “sea basket” (with its fibers thatched in squares); and “sea bass,” “sea breeze,” and “seashell” designs (which are symmetrical versions of zigzag—or herringbone-style--meshes).

The more indoor, in the dining room or living room styles of seagrass carpets are border-stitched with a leather, tapestry, wool, or cotton lip or rim (binding), and have a reinforced backing, or padding, for traction and longer life.  The backing is commonly made of jute, which is adhered with natural, chemical-free adhesive, or a latex backing. Since most seagrass carpets are not chemically-treated with “stain-resistant” materials, the floor coverings not only look and feel natural, fitting in with any number of motifs, but they are, essentially, as close to the natural state area rugs can get.  As good as being there, in those growing grasses, under sea water green and blue, if you will.