IN HIS New York apartment, interior designer David Kaihoi had the living-room floors painstakingly painted with an intricate tumbling-block pattern. Unwilling to entirely mask the motif with the “stuffy” rectangle of a traditional area rug, he cut a Moroccan wool remnant into an 8-foot-wide Y shape, and positioned one end under the sofa with the others forking into the room. The effect, he said, “has the gravitas of an area rug but is just a little bit lighter.”
He has since teamed with venerable floorcovering brand Patterson...