Your home should be a space that gives you peace and tranquility. After a long day at work or a busy day of running errands, you want to come home to an area that’s warm and inviting. Research has shown that connecting to nature decreases stress and improves mental clarity. So, interior designers are finding ways to bring nature indoors.
You don’t have to have a treehouse in your living room or glass flooring to capitalize on this organic design phenomenon. It’s all about bringing natural, raw elements inside the home. It’s about appreciating the delicacy of handmade decorations and embracing raw and exposed natural materials.
Here are four ways you can incorporate organic elements into your home design.
1. Infuse Plants
The easiest way to add natural details to your home design is by incorporating some house plants. If you aren’t a fan of large houseplants like trees, then go with succulents and cacti. They’ve both made massive waves in the design world, and it’s easy to take care of them.
If you want a more creative way to incorporate plants, consider creating terrariums throughout your home. Just be aware of care instructions for any plant you add to your home. You don’t want to take on too much with plant care.
2. Add Wood
Wood is one of the simplest ways to add an organic feeling to your home design, probably because there are hundreds of ways to incorporate it. Some people go all out by having hardwood floors or wood panel walls.
Other people incorporate wood via wooden furniture. They’ll have a wood table top, or a wooden desk, or a wooden coffee table. Handcrafted, sturdy wooden chairs are also a familiar staple of interior designs with organic elements in mind.
Sometimes the wood is more of an accent than a focus. Homeowners will add pops of wood with wood signs, or little wooden boxes, or wooden frames, or other subtle wood decorative elements. These are just a few of the ways to incorporate wood. Find a way to integrate wood into your home design to create a more organic environment. Remember you don’t have to have wood everywhere either.
3. Add in Other Natural Materials
While wood gets a lot of attention, there are several other raw and natural materials that go great in homes. Any natural stone is an instant homage to nature. You don’t have to have marble, granite, or travertine countertops, either. Natural stone fireplaces, or even stacked stones, create visually appealing decorative elements.
There are other natural materials, too. Pebble tiles make a great organic addition to a shower. Cozy textiles like cotton, linen, and wool add warmth to your natural design. Handwoven baskets, tastefully placed straw, exposed brick, bamboo (wallpaper and flooring), and elements from the ocean (like seashells, coral, etc.) are all popular organic materials that you can place throughout your home.
The key here is not using everything all at once. Pick the motifs that speak to you and use them in different places. Maybe go with wood and wool in the living room and plants and stone in the kitchen. Just find a balance that makes sense and brings you towards a peaceful home.
4. Fake It
It’s entirely acceptable to fake some elements of natural design. For instance, nature photography adds elements of nature into your home, without actually having anything organic there. Plus, there are some fantastic nature photographers and artists out there, whose pieces inspire calm. So, “faking it” is also an opportunity to support working artists.
If you don’t trust yourself to keep houseplants alive, there are some pretty convincing fake plants out there. While they won’t have the air purification benefits of real plants, they’ll look earthy, and sometimes that’s enough. You can also hack it with fake textiles and faux building materials to replace wood and stone.
To take it the extra mile, you can add the element of sound to your home design with nature soundtracks. Studies have shown that nature sounds decrease stress, so add in the fake nature sounds to bring organic elements in and push the stress out.
Creating a Relaxing Space Through Organic Design Elements
Incorporating nature into your home’s design isn’t challenging to do. It merely requires some thinking outside the box. You can easily integrate organic materials in your home by embracing nature. You can do this by adding houseplants to your home design, incorporating wood wherever possible, adding in other natural materials and textiles, and when all else fails, you can fake it.
Connecting your home design to nature ultimately helps to create a calming environment, so don’t add anything that distracts from that goal. Think about the calming aspects of nature and figure out ways to bring that inside. Your home should be a space that brings you mental clarity and peace. These four ideas will help you incorporate nature into your home’s design.
