Diminishing green spaces in our cities make it important for all of us to seek alternate ways to reconnect with nature. How about bringing natural elements home? – Earth, fire, air, water, and metal
Look no further for the best ways to create an inviting and homey look with nature-inspired elements in your urban home interiors.
1. The View from Your Home
If your home happens to overlook a green patch, forested area, or the beach, frame the view with large doors and French windows. Let the biggest natural element be the superhero of your abode.
2. Wood
One of the easiest and warmest natural materials, wood gives you plenty of obvious options from floor to ceiling. Apart from the usual suspects like timber, mahogany and oakwood furniture, you could experiment with other textured forms such as driftwood, reclaimed wood, distressed wood, salvaged wood and pallet wood. Or bring home a weathered farm table or an aged cabinet from a garage sale.
Opt for wooden flooring, or install ceiling beams, or perhaps a wooden false ceiling. Other places you could use wood in our fences, room dividers. All for that cabin-in-the-woods look. If you have a pooja room or a prayer room, you would naturally end up using natural elements like wood and stone in the form of idols.
3. Metals
Apart from bathroom accessories and kitchen utensils, you can use metal in the form of furniture and décor products to bring in a sleek, industrial look. Get a stylish wrought iron bed or garden bench. Side tables, dinner wagons, and ornate picture frames with gold, chrome, or copper finishes will make very chic statement pieces. Use pretty silverware in some of your vignettes. Go for brass or copper lamps, and opt for balustrades in stainless steel.
4. Nature’s Bounty from Travels and Morning Walks
Display shells that you collected from your beach trips in pretty bowls. Fallen leaves and branches you collected during a morning walk can also be flaunted. Press the flowers that you gathered, and frame them up to make beautiful artwork. Or get crafty by preserving or casting them in resin, taking inspiration from designer Marcin Rusak’s flower-infused resin sculptures.
5. Water
A bubbling zen fountain or a small lotus pond will be a delightful addition to your home. If you have bird visitors, keep a birdbath in your garden.
Flowy furnishings in light colours can emulate the character of water. Use glass elements like chandeliers or tabletops to mimic the transparency of the element.
6. Daylighting and Natural Light
Maximize natural light through large windows, doors and skylights. It brings out the best colours in your décor and also makes colours pop. Use solar lamps to harness the power of the sun.
7. Plants and Planters
What better way to bring nature home than to bring in foliage indoors. Go big on plants and pots, literally. Use big cement, wood, terracotta, or wooden crate planters. Proudly display your freshly plucked backyard vegetables, in elegant bowls. Infuse fresh flowers into your vignettes. Create unique table centrepieces mixing a variety of leaves in vases, or a terrarium.
8. Materials like Jute, Coir, Straw, Cane, Wicker, Rattan, Bamboo
Pick garden furniture made of wicker or cane for the indoors as well. Get a charpoy instead of a usual daybed. Accessorize with rugs, baskets, woven table mats, and wall hangings lavishly. Try decor pieces made of coir, straw lamps, cane ottomans, rope swings or hammocks for that earthy look. You could even DIY a quirky rope creeper-frame like this one!
9. Bricks, Stone, and Ceramic
Exposed brick walls lend beautiful symmetry and texture to rooms. Leave it exposed in its natural state, or paint over it with a colour of your choice. Experiment with an indoor stone wall for a dramatic, organic look resembling a wine cellar or a mountain bungalow. You could also pick stone accessories for your bathroom.
Strew pebbles in your garden. And decorate your balcony with easy installations like the one below, or bigger, artsy sculptures that you can buy from artists or design stores.
10. Natural Fabrics
Make use of cotton and silk for your bed linen and curtains. Get organic furnishings made of jute and hemp to imitate outdoorsy textures.
11. Natural Scents
The comforting fragrance of old books is a subtle yet comforting one, so stack up a few vintage books and show off your library of old books.
Buy essential oils made of rosemary, thyme, lavender, cinnamon or vanilla off the shelf. Or mix a few yourself to create a bespoke fragrance unique to your home. Here’s a quick combination for you to mix right away in a mason jar: water, lemon, rosemary, and vanilla extract.
We hope these ideas get your mind churning for similar ideas that bring nature indoors. If you think you could use the help of professionals to get the precise look you have in your mind, get in touch with the experts at HomeLane.
