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This iPhone Game Helped Me Buy My Rug

Photo credit: Loloi
Photo credit: Loloi

From House Beautiful

I'll admit: For better or for worse, I spend a lot of time playing games on my phone. Between sullen subway rides pre-pandemic and hours spent bored on the couch at the height of my state's stay-at-home orders, I've had quite a bit of time to waste on pointless phone games. From the days of the Blackberry version of Tetris to the infamous Flappy Bird, I've been a phone game loyalist for as long as I can remember. But my favorite types of games are fantasy-based, which is what brought me to Design Home, a challenge-based game that lets its players become interior designers.

The game offers users the chance to use real, high-end brands to furnish rooms in various design styles, ranging from modern and luxe to rustic and eclectic. Users are given a series of daily challenges, where they can earn money to buy furniture and decor items to furnish rooms in subsequent design challenges. While there are already a ton of pieces to choose from, new brand items are updated daily, so keeping your repertoire of decor fresh is easy.

While I may waste a lot (re: too much) of my time clicking around the categorized, multi-page folder of games on my phone, Design Home feels less like a mindless time-suck than it does a creative outlet. Though my wallet may disagree (yes, I've spent money on the game...sigh), my penchant for phone games—specifically Design Home—hasn't been a total disservice to me: Though I still haven't figured out how to get a five-star rating in the game, I have been introduced to brands and designers I might not have otherwise known, which is how I found the Loloi rug I currently have in my apartment.

One of my favorite parts of decorating a room—IRL and in the game—is picking out a carpet. A rug sets the foundation for a space, and with simple furniture items, a rug can can add a touch of warmth and texture. Because the nicest furniture in Design Home tends to cost of lot "money," I often use rugs to set the tone for the space I'm designing. I tend to opt for neutral furniture, since it's more flexible, so rugs become an anchor to the style I'm being asked to design around. Of the brands the game offers—and there are plenty—my favorite is Loloi.

So when I moved in to my first "adult" apartment earlier this year, I knew I had to look at Loloi, a major step-up from the decrepit Amazon rugs that filled all my previous spaces. While designing rooms in-game, I found myself continuously coming back to a rug from the brand's Century Collection. It was a muted, patterned rug that had a faded, worn-in look, like a vintage carpet might have. I had tested the rug out in enough virtual "rooms" to know that it was versatile, so reusing it in future homes would be easy regardless of whether my style changed. So I set off on a wild Google hunt to track down what I had deemed the perfect carpet.

Photo credit: Design Home
Photo credit: Design Home

Spoiler: I couldn't find the exact carpet I had fallen in love with in the game, but I did find a super similar, slightly brighter version from the brand's Loren collection that I'm just as happy with. When it came to the color palette of my apartment, I looked towards the 70s, pulling in dusty oranges and opaque creams as accents, so the terra-cotta tones in this rug really helped pull the space together.

Photo credit: Loloi Rugs
Photo credit: Loloi Rugs

Overall, Design Home has been a fun way for me to expel some creative energy. And it's an added bonus that playing the game made my decorating process that much easier. I guess I don't have to feel as bad about all the times I've dropped real dollars in the game now...

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