When you think of souvenirs to buy in Turkey, rugs is definitely one of the top items! Turkey and rugs just go together like peanut butter and jelly or pilav and kebab. We went rug shopping today as our living room was decidedly bare. Previous posts we’ve been issued living room rugs, but not here–probably because everyone wants to buy their own! We needed a day where DH had off work but DS was in school. Rug shopping with a 4 year old not being as productive as without him!

Asking around my network, the name that always comes up for rugs is Hilmi. Hilmi’s Rug Shop is conveniently located in the Balgat area and is an easy drive. So we set out to buy a rug for our living room….and came home with 2 🙂 DD6 is thrilled to have one in her playroom too (as an aside, we recently put the kids in the same bedroom to use the other room as a playroom and it is working out great).

I am definitely not a rug expert, but Hilmi is trustworthy and so we went by his word on what was durable. With 2 kids, a love of drinking wine in the living room, and a future of  many moves we wanted something very durable that cleans well.

His store is full of rugs! Rolled rugs, stacked rugs, hanging rugs! We told him our size request, preference for wool (over silk) and a strong need for durability and kid-proofness. We were looking for something in the 6’x9′ size for the living room and ended up with one about 2x3m which is a bit bigger than we needed but the others would have been too small.

We enjoyed some tea while looking at rugs. DD6 loved the apple tea they provided.

Most of the rugs in that size were from Turkey, Iran, or Afghanistan. They were all gorgeous! Many different patterns and styles, lights and darks. We decided we wanted our living room one to be from Turkey since we bought it in Turkey. We prefer darker rugs and wanted something with some dark red as we have a lot of dark red accents in art.

They laid out a ton of options and then we went through them with No’s and Maybe’s. There were so many great options but we settled on the one below from Konya, Turkey with some beautiful reds, blues, creams, and pinks.

Then we decided we really needed another rug! Looked through some slightly smaller options and picked a gorgeous one from Ravar, Kerman, Iran with a pattern that reminds me of peacock feathers.

Practical Info

Who: Hilmi Demirci of Hilmi’s Rug Store

Where: Osmanli Caddesi No 33/D  Balgat-Ankara

Tel: 286 58 04

Mobile: 0532 414 93 84

Website: http://www.hilmisrugstore.com

E-mail: hilmi@hilmisrugstore.com

Hours: 8:30-7:30 daily except Sunday