6 Ways You Can Incorporate Natural Elements Into Your Interior Decor

You’re probably familiar with that end-of-the-holiday, back-to-reality feeling. The desire to bottle the wild outdoors and bring it back home to replace our stale decor often creeps up on us after coming back home from a vacation. 

While we don’t yet have the technology to teleport our dream locations into our houses, we can easily, and to great effect, incorporate natural elements into our homes. From a plant to a throw rug, bringing nature indoors reconnects us with the land on a deeper level, reminding us of our place in the natural world.

There are so many ways to meld nature with home decor. Here are 6 ideas to get you started.

1. Use stone as a home feature material

Incorporating materials into your interior design that stimulate your sensory memories is an excellent way to bring touches of the natural world into your home.

Stand-out elements, like a concrete bathroom basin or an exposed stone feature wall, bring a hint of the rocky outcrops of the wild into your home. A rough sandstone coffee table, wall or floor tiles, and vases are reminiscent of dry creek beds bathed in bright sunlight. Kitchen benchtops made from marble or other polished stone create a sense of the room having been carved out of a mountainside, all while adding a sense of luxury and timeless elegance to your indoor space. 

2. Accent your home with wooden features

Wooden furniture, floors and doors are commonly seen in houses, with pine, oak and teak being some of the most common wood types used indoors. Try using minimally treated wooden walls to truly capture the look of the forest. 

Bamboo, cane, and cork, when used for flooring, panelling, room dividers, furniture, and home accessories, all give a neutral feel to a space. They also have a calming effect within a room. High, wooden ceilings also make for a unique connection to the natural world and echo the vast halls of wood from centuries gone by. 

3. Incorporate natural textiles

Jute, wool, angora and linen floor rugs, throws, couch upholstery, curtains and other soft furnishings all contribute to a feeling of living naturally. 

Rough jute is ideal for floor rugs, woven baskets and ornamental features such as coasters and wallhangings. Cushions and fluffy rugs made from unwoven wool are as divinely soft and fluffy as the animals they come from and don’t moult or demand to be fed. 

The cream, beige and light brown colours of undyed linen make for curtains that allow light through while still providing a great deal of privacy. If you want something brighter, opt for dyed linen and woven wool, which come in a myriad of colours that can fit =any aesthetic while still maintaining many of their inherent natural qualities.

Finally, when it comes to your garden, take a leaf (pun intended) out of the eco-friendly, natural styles that are becoming so prevalent in modern garden design. For instance, water tank pools are perfect if you’re looking to go environmentally friendly and nature-inspired with your backyard decor. 

4. Be inspired by nature’s colour palette

Everyone has different tastes, but there are enough neutral colours out there to suit everyone. 

Neutral tones recall the dreamy feeling of lying amongst a field of tall, dry wheat in a late afternoon glow. Golden yellows and pale oranges evoke images of sunflowers and warm summer days.

In the clear sky, oceans, and forget-me-not flowers we see an abundance of blue hues, just as we see thousands of greens in forests, grasses and dark distant hills. Shades of grey, when paired with other stone and cement features, work to resemble foggy winters, pebble beaches, and granite mountain ranges.

Neutral tones are fantastic choices for a wide range of furniture. From bed sheets to framed prints and dining tables, sticking to the colours nature has provided us gives your home a clean, organic look. 

5. Bring plants indoors

Plants are a fairly obvious way of bringing natural elements into the home – whether you’re living in a studio apartment or a multi-storey mansion. The amount of plants, the species used, the areas in which they are placed and the vessels used to display them will all determine the effect they create.

In warm sunny areas, bamboo varieties and other tall, slender grasses create a wonderful woodland feeling. Plants with a jungle vibe, such as fiddle leaf figs and devil’s ivy, pair well with warm tones to create an inviting room that still retains a sense of mystery.

A creative idea is to repurpose old baths into a humid home fernery by densely packing pots with maidenhair and bird’s nest ferns. Stone and terracotta pots planted with cacti and succulents look stunning on kitchen benches, coffee tables and sunlit shelves. Snake plants and aloe vera are well-suited to indoor living, as are the low-maintenance feather and barrel cacti.

6. Use natural lighting in your space

The sort of neutral lighting used in a room can inform what elements of the natural world look best in that particular space.

If windows are small, sparse, or poorly situated, installing a skylight can make all the difference. Likewise, placing mirrors across from windows reflects the existing light and makes a room seem bigger and brighter.

Having sheer or airy curtains in linen or lightweight cotton maintains privacy while still allowing sunlight to flood the room. Other window covers that use natural colours, textures and materials include bamboo blinds, wooden plantation shutters, and flax Roman blinds.

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Close your eyes and imagine your favourite place in nature: perhaps you see hard sandpapery rock, sand that tickles your toes, or tall grass that dances against your legs. With these interior decor tips, you should have a better idea of how to recreate these images at home, minus all the potential discomforts of actually being in the wild.

Start introducing nature-inspired elements into your home today to create a living space that’s both more interesting and comfortable.

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