Adding natural elements to your home and jumping on the biophilia trend can not only make it more sustainable but also increase your happiness and enjoyment in your house.
But far from just being an aesthetically pleasing home, natural elements can offer you many health benefits, too, as well as being better for the environment.
If you’re looking for inspiration on bringing nature indoors, read on for some tips.
Reclaimed Wood
Wooden elements in your home can add character, charm, and sustainability to your house. Wood in any iteration can be an exceptional design element, even if it’s just for flooring. But reclaimed wood can increase your sustainability kudos while also giving you a unique piece of furniture for your home. From reclaimed wooden wardrobes and chairs to a DIY Table for the dining room, or use it to make a deck outdoors or add recycled wooden panels to walls, how you incorporate wooden flooring is entirely up to you. Still, it can be an excellent design feature.
Plants
Plants have been scientifically determined to boost happiness, invoke feelings of calm and bring peace to owners. Some plants can also help to improve air quality too. Adding greenery to your home can instantly change how it looks and feels. It’s an easy way to bring nature indoors.
But I kill plants! You are not alone; many people aren’t exactly green-fingered and struggle to keep plants alive. Thankfully, studies have shown that plants don’t even need to be real to give you the mental boost; they simply need to look real. Problem solved.
Great ideas for creative uses of plants in your home include;
- Creating a living wall
- Style shelves
- Create a vertical garden
- Hang from the ceiling
- Use humidity-loving plants in bathrooms and kitchen
- Create an “indoor garden” using potted plants by doorways or around windows
- Create room dividers with hanging or trailing plants from racks or bars hanging from ceilings
Blur Boundaries
If you want to bring the outdoors indoors, you need to blur the boundary lines between your home and the garden. Now, this isn’t always a cheap option; for some, it could require significant home renovations. However, if you want to open up your home and give it an open and outdoorsy vibe, then investing in bifold or sliding doors can be a great option, as can adding floor-to-ceiling windows or just increasing the window or door space in a room.
But by removing walls blocking your view from your outdoor space, you can instantly change the feel of a room and benefit from your outdoor green space without bringing it all inside.
Art
Using artwork depicting natural scenes, outdoor scenarios, and landscapes can help you bring the outdoors into your home. Paired with hues of blues and greens that mimic the natural environment, you can make an impact with artwork that features nature or boats in colours you find outdoors.
Whether you have a feature wall with a statement piece in your home, you use a series of smaller images to create more significant, more prominent scenes, or you use pictures on shelving, you can still get the benefit of nature from artwork when incorporated in your home design and decor.
Use Natural Material
Natural materials such as jute, cotton, bamboo and hemp, for example, not only add extra definition and texture to a room, but they’re also more sustainable and give off an earthy, relaxed feel to any decor there.
An additional bonus is that natural chemicals and products are also made with fewer chemicals, meaning they are better for your home, your health, and the environment.
For example, you can use jute hampers or rugs, cotton linens and blankets, and bamboo furniture or clothes. But by incorporating natural materials and products in your home, you can invoke nature indoors even if you can’t log out.
Tactile Materials
If you want to go beyond soft furnishings in your home and add more natural materials, then adding texture by incorporating natural materials is the way to go. Quartz, for example, is a 100% natural product, but it’s classified as man made product due to how its created. But stone, marble and granite are excellent natural tactile materials you can incorporate. We’ve already discussed the benefits of wood, but you can use other materials for more permanent features. You can also use pure metals within your home decor design or as exposed features in your home; again, reclaimed boosts its eco credentials
No Sharp Corners
The natural shapes you will find in nature will tend to be more rounded or curved. So, if you aren’t looking for resources to use, you can change the style of your home. Sharp edges and corners are all synonymous with classic contemporary designs, but if you want to bring nature into your house easily, looking for rounded features, smooth-flowing lines, and more relaxed designs can help you embody the style and feel of being outdoors.
Remove sharp corners where possible, include arches, rounded rugs, and curved furniture styles, e.g., rounded chair backs and round tables. This softness from the shape can help you feel more relaxed and complement the aesthetics you are aiming for.
Natural Patterns
Bring patterns into your home that depict biophilia and add nature to your decor. From patterned cushions and throws featuring animals, woodlands or birds to feature wallpaper in rooms, bedding, ornaments and more, the more imagery you have in your home for the theme you are trying to create, the more of nature your house will contain. The beauty is you can use muted colours, bright colours or anything you wish when choosing your natural patterns and tying them into the rest of your decor to blend in or stand out can make an impact. So, when you’re looking to update your home, why not consider bold patterns featuring your favourite things from the great outdoors and see how they work in your house?
Bringing nature into is something many people do to let them enjoy their home a bit more and capture that feeling you get from spending time outside in the beauty of the country. And the surge of the growing biophilia trend is testament ot its popularity.
