Do I really want rugs on our timber floor?

I am not sure if I've mentioned this before, but we've been living in our new house since September, without any built ins. Each bedroom has a pile of stuff in the middle of it, to provide easy access to where the built ins are going once we decide to go ahead. Well, I decided to declutter one of the bedrooms over the weekend and was devastated to discover the damage sun had caused to our beautiful Blackbutt floor :( a there is now a giant patch with lighter colour wood in the middle of te room, as well as some smaller patches where I had shoe boxes scattered all over the floor :(

I have moved everything out of the way now and hope over time it will get evened out by the sun :(

I always knew that floor is lighter under furniture but never expected this to happen within 6 months :(

Ughhhh.

Have you experienced this before and did you have any luck in evening out the tones?

B