diff --git a/rustfmt.toml b/rustfmt.toml
index 67219b15d20..850d01ea7cb 100644
--- a/rustfmt.toml
+++ b/rustfmt.toml
@@ -13,6 +13,12 @@ ignore = [
 
     # tests for now are not formatted, as they are sometimes pretty-printing constrained
     # (and generally rustfmt can move around comments in UI-testing incompatible ways)
+    "/tests/*",
+
+    # but we still want to format rmake.rs files in tests/run-make/ so we need to do this
+    # dance to avoid the parent directory from being excluded
+    "!/tests/run-make/",
+    "/tests/run-make/*/*.rs",
     "!/tests/run-make/*/rmake.rs",
 
     # do not format submodules