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Sisal is tougher and more regular, a little cooler in tone. We keep it for corridors and rooms people walk through.

Layering two rugs without crowding the room

Layering is the most interesting idea of this season, and also the one that goes wrong most often. The principle is simple. A large natural fibre rug on the floor, a smaller and softer rug set on top, slightly offset. The first defines the zone, the second brings warmth and colour.

Three rules are enough. First, the lower rug has to be clearly bigger, at least forty centimetres more on every side, or the pair looks like a mistake. Second, only one of the two may carry a pattern. If both speak, the room becomes noisy. Third, the pile heights must be plainly different, or the eye fails to read two rugs and sees a bad join instead.

We use this above all in the big sitting rooms of old farmhouses, where a single rug of the right size would cost a fortune and still look flat. Two layered pieces give the same coverage with far more depth.

In a small room we leave it alone. One rug, correctly sized, will always be the better answer.

The right dimensions, room by room

Most of the rugs we see in clients' homes are too small. It is the most common error and the easiest to put right.

In a sitting room the rule we apply is simple. The front legs of the sofa and the armchairs must stand on the rug. The rug then ties the seating together instead of floating like a postage stamp in the middle of the floor. For an ordinary sitting room that means two hundred by three hundred centimetres, rarely less.

In a dining room, measure the table and add seventy centimetres on every side. That is the clearance a pulled out chair needs to stay on the rug. Without it, every meal turns into a small battle of chair legs catching the edge.

In a bedroom there are two options. One large rug that runs under the bed and extends sixty centimetres on the three reachable sides. Or two narrow bedside runners, cheaper, giving the same comfort on waking.

In a corridor, leave ten to fifteen centimetres of floor visible on each side. A rug laid wall to wall in a narrow corridor crushes it.

Colours and patterns for a Provencal autumn

Cool greys left our boards two or three years ago. The season leans towards terracotta, ochre, sand, clay and slightly dusty sage greens. These are exactly the colours of the hills around us in October, when the vines turn and the stone still holds the day's heat.

One practical piece of advice. Choose the colour of the rug according to what the light does in your house at five in the afternoon, not at midday. A terracotta wool that looks restrained in full sun turns frankly red late in the day. A sage green holds both moments well.

On patterns we stay quiet. An irregular weave, a discreet herringbone, a darker border, that is enough to give life. Big geometric motifs date quickly and fight with old tiles, which already have a drawing of their own.

If the existing floor is strong, hexagonal terracotta or patterned cement tile, the rug must keep quiet. Plain, textured, with nothing else to say.

Caring for a rug in a Pays de Grasse house

Our climate poses two precise problems. The first is the sun, which fades natural fibres far faster here than in Paris. A rug set in front of a south facing bay will lose its warm tones in three summers if nobody turns it. We suggest rotating it half a turn twice a year, at each clock change. That is enough.

The second problem is winter damp, above all in stone houses that stay barely heated between visits. Jute laid on a cool floor can take on a smell within weeks. A thin breathable felt underlay settles the question and protects the old tile as well.

Otherwise the upkeep is simple. A vacuum without a rotating brush on wool, a soft brush along the weave on jute, and a professional clean every three or four years. Stains are treated with cold water and patience, never hot water, which sets them.

And shake it. A rug shaken on the balcony twice a season lasts far longer than one that is only vacuumed.

How we look at Mouans-Sartoux houses

Mouans-Sartoux has a quality we like a great deal. The village mixes narrow, tall old houses with worn floors and little light on the ground floor, and newer villas that open wide to the south between the château and the Grasse road.

The two call for opposite answers. In a village house we work to warm and to lighten. Pale wool, simple weave, a generous format that runs from one room to the next to make the space read larger. In an open villa we work instead to anchor and to calm. Jute on the floor, terracotta wool above it, nothing shiny.

What holds everywhere is to begin with the floor and not with the curtains. We have seen plenty of sitting rooms entirely re-dressed that still rang hollow, simply because nobody had looked down.

The right rug changes a room in an afternoon. It is the quickest and most rewarding decorating move we know, and it is almost always where we start at Emicasa Interiors.