The Physics of Rugs

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have a rug mystery I’d like opinions on – WAGs welcome!

NOTE: Yes, I have tried a number of solutions for this problem – different types of carpet tape, different kinds of rug pads, even nailing the rugs to the subfloor. Nothing works for more than a few months. What I am looking for here are opinions on why this happens in the first place, as opposed to what to do about it. Because I just don’t understand why it’s happening in the first damn place. Maybe that will point to a solution?

About 6 months before the pandemic started, I decided to fix up my home office. I’d already worked from home for a couple days a week for a few years and was tired of making do – I wanted the office to look and feel like a place that I would want to spend that kind of time in.

It was already carpeted with a nondescript beige short pile carpet over plywood subfloor, and the budget didn’t include new flooring so I bought several small rugs to go with the new décor. There’s a 2x8’ runner that goes from the door past a chaise longue and then you make a right onto a smaller rectangular rug that leads to where the computer setup is. My computer chair is immediately to the right of that rug.

To the right of my chair is a 36” round rug. This rug is almost never walked upon - it sits between a bookcase and a low table. Sometimes I have a small folding table that sits on it when I need to use a second computer for work.

Here’s the thing: ALL these rugs want to migrate from the doorway to the back of the room and to the right. Obviously, I go out as many times as I go in to this room, but they ALWAYS want to move in that direction – my moving in the opposite direction doesn’t seem to do anything to negate this. I constantly have to pull the runner forward towards the door and to the left, otherwise it ends up smashed against the chaise longue on the right and would keep moving back until it got to the wall if I let it.

The rectangular rug wants to mash itself against the computer table to its right, even though I have a small footstool that sits upon it – the weight of that seems to make no difference. It also likes to skew toward the back of the room, but not as much as the runner.

The round rug, despite being only walked on once a month at best, also wants to migrate to the right and ends up smashed against the bookcase. It needs to be pulled back about that often into its proper place so it’s equidistant between the bookcase and the table. That last one particularly mystifies me.

What forces are working on these rugs to force them in those directions and apparently no other?

2

A rug will move when you are standing on it and start walking. It will move the opposite direction that you walk. A rug will also move when you walk on it and stop. It will move in the direction you were walking. So you must be walking into the room towards the back and turning right to get to your computer, and then leaving by reversing that path.

3

I have to do this all the time, pulling back my runners. Always the same direction.

It happens very fast, sometimes 6 inches in a few hours, but is hard to catch or see.

It does mean that the rugs spend more time where I don’t want them than where I do unless I become a rug babysitter. The last few inches are where my feet come down. Maybe not ironic but it sucks.

4

I pretty much never stop on the runner. It’s just on the path from the door to the computer. I stand on the rectangular rug before launching myself out of the room. I rarely stand or walk on the round rug at all, and yet, it moves, though more slowly than the other two.

5

Does the round rug contact the others? If not I suspect ghosts.

6

Nope. It’s all by itself, which is the mystery. Sunspots? The magnetic pull of the Earth? Tectonic plates?

7

And one other thing I should mention - I actually nailed the left side of the rectangular rug to the subfloor because I was so sick of moving it, and while that worked for about six months, I noticed it was skewed again, and one of the nails had pulled loose and was bent. It was bent to the right, so even though I stand on that rug to move leftward out of the room, the rightward pressure on it must be greater somehow. Momentum?

8

Ghosts are more likely. But I’ll ask about one other thing, do you have any pets?

9

I do not. Which makes it even weirder. When I had dogs I was used to this sort of thing.

10

During the long, cold winter nights, small patches of ice form under the rugs. Later, when the sun comes out, the ice melts and forms a lubricating layer that the rugs can easily slide over. Ambient wind and other forces displace the rugs before the water evaporates, leaving only a dusty trail on the cracked playa. Hmm, might be thinking of something else here.

11

What you are mistaking for a carpet is actually a creature. The tuffs are cilia. It’s very slowly moving the rugs towards its mouth in order to eat them.

To test my theory, pull up the carpet and reinstall it at 180 degrees to its current orientation. Your rugs will then begin moving left.

12

Discourse does not recognize NO KILL I as an acceptable post.

13

I suspect the carpet pile is tending to lie in the direction the rug moves. Although you walk on the rug in both directions, it will more easily move in the direction of the carpet pile underneath and will tend not to move “against the grain”. If not the pile, then perhaps there is something about the underside of the rug itself which makes it move more easily in one direction. Have you tried turning the rugs around?

14

I strongly suspect it’s this. I have a Persian rug on a thin carpet with essentially no pile at all and it doesn’t move anywhere. I take it you’ve got hand made rugs not machine made ones?

My Dad owns a business selling beautiful oriental rugs to the public and is something of an expert in them - I will ask him if he has any practical tips to help you.

15

My guess is that it’s the interaction of the rugs with the pile of the carpeting. That pile has a direction.

If I had to guess, I would guess that walking on the carpeting/rug combo is causing a sort of ripple, where the carpet pile compresses and the rug slides just a bit on top of the flattened pile.

ETA:. Oops, didn’t see the last two posts.

16

I just spent $25k upgrading my kitchen and dining room. Part of the upgrade is switching out carpet in the dining room for vinyl flooring. This means that the rubber-backed door mat I keep in front of the sliding doors for the dogs is no longer on top of carpet but on vinyl.

All that money and time and amazing upgrades and the most impressive thing for me is that the door mat no longer shifts. It has stayed put for 2 weeks now!!! AMAZING!!!

17

These are machine made - I am way too cheap to buy the real thing for an office space. And I don’t think it’s anything on the back of the rugs that’s causing it, because the backings aren’t identical. When I vacuum under them, I usually change the direction of the runner to make sure it wears evenly and I haven’t noticed any difference in the drift.

It could be the pile on the carpet underneath, though it’s so short you’d think it would take awhile for them to move if that’s the reason. And since the round one hardly ever gets walked on and still moves (albeit more slowly) … eh, I dunno.

18

One of the best things about this house is that the front and back doors both have a section of wooden flooring in front of them, so a rubber-backed rug stays put!

19

Maybe your rugs are migrating…

20

Put a coconut on it.