Nature can be an amazing source of inspiration when it comes to home interior and decorations, helping you to think bigger than the four walls of your home. From the colours that you see, to the textures you can feel, everything from the ground to the sky can provide something to draw on when creating the perfect home environment to enjoy.
Bringing the outside inside
We’ve all had those moments when we feel at one with the natural world. A stroll along a beach, through ancient woodland, up dramatic hilly landscapes. Decoration inspiration doesn’t always have to come in the form of shades of green and brown, nor does it have to be all about the natural wood tones. Sandy beaches, sunny skies, spring flowers – these are all things we can use to fuel our creativity when decorating. To compliment the broad spectrum of naturally occurring colours, you can also be inspired by the shapes occurring in nature. From sharp edges, long features or soft corners, bespoke pieces can be included to add character.
Forest and garden vibes
Botanical patterns work well with greens and earth tones. Green, the colour of nature, is reassuring and balancing, so it can be used anywhere you want to feel rested and in tune with the world. Wood and hazelnut brown can be implemented with suedes, leather, stone, tiles and richly veined marble.
Stone tones
Charcoal and ash greys create a cooler feel, reddish undertones provide warmth and cocoa brown, cream, and khaki hues create a perfectly balanced mix of warm and cold temperatures. Depending on light and what other colours you choose, greige (a mix of grey or beige) makes a versatile hue that works with both stone and wood tones.
A splash of sunshine
Who doesn’t like being reminded of sunshine? Yellow is a very diverse colour with shades of straw, cream, egg yolk, banana, and butter all conjuring memories of sun-drenched summer days, making this a popular palette for brightening kitchens and workspaces. You can also use pops of these brighter colours to add personality and interest to more neutral colour palettes elsewhere in the home. Yellow is also great for kids' rooms, with a softer lemon shade providing the perfect gender-neutral tone for a nursery and bright yellows adding a vibrant pop of colour for an older child.
Try using different materials and textiles and scatter cushions to change the colour scheme around your house.
Colour palettes for every season
A room works best if you keep to colours within the same tonal family, and for inspiration you can let nature guide you in designing your own colour palette. There are lots of free tools online where you can input your favourite natural image and receive a colour palette based on that back, allowing you to have an instant reference to create your perfect natural feeling room. You might choose to take some inspiration from the four seasons to determine the colour palette of your next design, or switch up your colour palette in your favourite room to match your current season.
1. Spring
Enjoy the joyful spring vibe at home, filling a room with the feeling of potential and new life, just as you feel when the sun and flowers start to pop out. Pastel pale blue can effortlessly pull together seemingly disparate colours as pink, yellow and peach.
2. Summer
Add a splash of sunshine indoors when you create a bright feature wall in anything from fresh lemon yellow to other rich golds and ochres. You can also play around with furniture in bright colours, for example kitchen chairs lend themselves well to being painted in a rainbow of bright hues with little bright accents elsewhere on a neutral base palette.
3. Autumn
Autumn can often be overlooked as a source of colour inspiration as it’s often a bit wet, windy and dull. But if it stops raining long enough to look, you’ll see a huge spectrum of oranges, reds, yellows, rich browns and greens.
4. Winter
Winter creates its own special blend of magic that is less about colour than texture. Contrast chunky knits with snow smooth white cottons in the bedroom or recreate the magic of a landscape dusted in frost with muted greens and browns against sweeps of white. Bathrooms and kitchens really suit a more monochromatic palette you’d associate with winter
Colours can be carried in so many ways within your home depending on everything from room purpose, the size and even the amount of natural light it has.
Using natural light to illuminate the features of your home
When creating the tone of a room, interior designers will tell you that lighting is one of the main ways to dictate the ambience of any space. You need to think about what you’re going to do in the space as well as the effect you’re looking to create, do you need a bright worktop in your kitchen so you can see what you’re doing? Do you want more subtle light in the living room so you can relax? Do you want light that feels fairly constant during the day or would you like waterfalls and pools of light that shift with the sun?
Create a stretch of sky
If you want to bring nature inside, another way is to add a rooflight. The movement of the sun and the natural lightning creates stunning variations to your indoor environment. Adding an opening mechanism to your rooflight will let you get closer to nature still, bringing in fresh air, the scents and sounds of the world around you.
You can add to your nature inspired décor with a rooflight which will allow you to enjoy the different shades of blue, the movement of the clouds, the changing light from the sun and even the moon and stars at night.
Let your imagination go wild. Look up. Look down. Look all around the world outside your doors, walls, and windows. Bring nature inside.
