As the countdown to Design Show Australia 2026 begins, we’re spotlighting exhibitor Gibbon Rugs. Born from a commitment to sustainability and craftsmanship, Brisbane-based Gibbon Rugs creates fully custom, hand-finished rugs for residential and commercial spaces using the premium, exclusive carpets imported by the Gibbon Group since the 1990s. Read on to discover their current design trends, and what you can expect to find at their stand.
Can you give us a brief introduction to your brand?
Gibbon Rugs is a family-run, Brisbane-based team that has grown from something pretty simple – we had beautiful leftover carpet and didn’t want to waste it.
Gibbon Group has been importing and distributing premium carpet that we exclusively represent in Australia since the 1990’s, and shortly after finding tretford carpet, we started hand-cutting and finishing the short ends into rugs for clients who wanted something more than off-the-shelf.
That small act of creativity quietly became its own thing. Today, Gibbon Rugs is a dedicated brand within the Gibbon Group, and we make fully custom, hand-finished rugs for residential, commercial, and hospitality spaces.
We now transform all of carpet brands into custom rugs with custom edging options to suit all applications.
What differentiates your brand from other competitors in the market?
Honestly, it comes down to the starting point. We’re not a rug brand that sources product from overseas and puts a label on it – we start with premium European carpet that we already know inside out, and we hand-craft rugs from it locally.
With tretford especially, the level of customisation is something you won’t find many places. Sixty colours, hand-cut and joined into whatever design, shape, or size the project calls for. It suits designers who want a rug that’s truly resolved with the rest of the space, not just ‘close enough’.
We also sit within a business that has a century of flooring knowledge behind it. So when someone comes to us with a tricky brief, a tight timeline, or a project that needs a bit of problem-solving, they get that depth of experience as part of the deal.
Are there any exciting trends that you are seeing in the world of design this year?
The shift toward hard flooring has been building for a while, and it’s not slowing down. Timber, stone, concrete, large-format tile – they look incredible, and they’re practical. But there’s a growing awareness that hard floors need something to balance them out, and that’s where rugs have come back into focus in a big way.
What’s interesting is that the rug is no longer just an afterthought. Designers are using them to zone spaces, add warmth and enhance acoustics, and introduce texture and colour in a way that can actually evolve over time. If the trend shifts in five years, you can swap the rug – you can’t swap the floor.
That flexibility is something we’re really leaning into. A custom tretford rug can carry a lot of design intent – it’s not decorative filler – it’s a considered piece of the room. We’re seeing more architects and interior designers treat the rug as part of the specification from the start of a project, rather than the final line item.
What can our visitors expect to see and experience on your stand at Design Show Australia?
We want people to come and touch things. Rugs are a tactile product and you can’t really understand what makes tretford special until you’ve run your hands over it – the goat hair gives it this soft, almost felted quality that reads very differently from standard carpet.
Across the stand we’ll have all three of our product families on show – tretford, SynSisal®, and the new Gibbon Outdoor Rugs, which is a proper launch for us. We’ve developed a range designed specifically for outdoor living spaces: durable, weather-resistant, and available in a variety of weave patterns and natural-inspired textures. It’s a category that’s been underserved with quality product in Australia, so we’re excited to put something genuinely good into the market.
Beyond the new range, we’ll have samples, swatches, and the team on hand to talk through how the design-to-delivery process works – from first brief to finished rug.
What are you looking forward to the most at Design Show Australia?
The conversations, genuinely. There’s something about a show like this where you get to talk to designers who are deep in a project and looking for a solution, or someone who’s never considered a custom rug before and suddenly sees the possibility.
Gibbon Rugs is still an emerging brand in the wider market, even though we’ve been quietly doing this for decades. So a show like Design Show Australia is a great chance to introduce ourselves properly – and reconnect with the architects and designers we’ve already worked with who we don’t always get to see face to face.
We’re also just curious to see what everyone else is doing. The design industry moves and we like to stay close to where it’s going.
You can meet Gibbon Rugs (Stand #1940) at Design Show Australia 2026 from 11-13 June 2026, at ICC Sydney, register to attend today!
