Sustainable Interior Design Trends for a Greener Home

TL;DR: Sustainable interior design balances aesthetics with environmental responsibility, focusing on using renewable and reclaimed materials to create durable, eco-friendly home furnishings. This blog highlights key trends and materials that promote a greener home.

• Urban Hardwood: Salvaged wood from naturally fallen or cleared trees.
• Reclaimed Wood: Lumber rescued from demolition projects.
• Natural Finishes: Eco-friendly methods like charring wood for finishing.
• Environmentally Friendly Furnishings: Prioritize sustainable certifications, durability, and recyclable materials.

When trees are your bread and butter, sustainability matters.

Woodworkers have a responsibility both to produce gorgeous, long-lasting products and choose materials with the future in mind. It’s imperative the lumber we work with creates quality furnishings without compromising the health of our planet.

Sustainable interior design is design that holds people and the planet in equal esteem. It’s an act of radical empathy, and it’s at the forefront of all we do. By salvaging and repurposing otherwise forgotten timber, we limit deforestation and our carbon footprint.

In this blog, we’re sharing a few of the environmentally friendly interior design trends we’ve seen. These practices consistently inspire our work, and we hope they’ll inspire you, too. Let’s check them out.

The Sustainable Interior Design Materials Trend

Sustainable interior design starts when we ask, “What materials of furniture are renewable and sustainable?” Though many of our sustainable materials are stunning, we don’t choose them just to be trendy. First and foremost, our materials are handpicked based on their quality and source. This results in long-lasting, reliable pieces that may otherwise end up in landfills.

Here are three environmentally friendly interior design materials we feel pretty good about.

Urban Hardwood

Urban hardwood is locally milled wood that comes from trees that either fall naturally or must be cleared for safety reasons. Essentially, these are trees that have lived out their natural lifespans. While they are not grown specifically as material, their wood is perfectly usable and ready to be salvaged.

In most cases, urban lumber is labeled as waste and ends up in a landfill. Today, woodworkers are collaborating with urban mills to reclaim and salvage these gorgeous materials. It’s sturdy, attractive, and future-forward, and we think that’s pretty neat.

The urban hardwoods we work with include:

• California sycamore
• English elm
• Shamel Ash

Reclaimed Wood

Have you ever wondered what happens to the materials when an older building is demolished? In many cases, the lumber and other materials are sent to the dump. Sometimes, stunning, 100-year-old old-growth lumber finds its way into landfills.

Reclaimed wood is lumber that is rescued from such demolition projects for use in interior design. If you buy furniture from us, it’s very possible that your new table used to be a house. Nifty!

Natural Finishes

Many common wood stains can negatively impact the environment when thrown away. Rather than impacting local water sources, we choose to use natural finishes. This usually means using a blowtorch to intentionally char and color our furniture.

Sometimes, we even reveal a unique, unblemished color beneath the surface. In such cases, we let Mother Nature take the credit! It’s the closest we can get to time travel—and it looks awesome, too!

Choosing Environmentally Friendly Home Furnishings

True sustainability in interior design begins with thoughtful decisions. Luckily, thinking about where home furnishings come from is a rising trend, too. Here are a few things conscious consumers are thinking about when decorating their homes.

• Look for sustainable certifications. Now that sustainability is trendy, plenty of companies are trying to claim their products are environmentally friendly. Keep an eye out for green furniture certifications that prove your purchase really puts the planet first.
• Shop for Durability. Nobody has ever assembled a piece of particle-board furniture and thought, “This lopsided Swedish shelf will outlive me.”

Remember, sustainability means being mindful of the future. Choose pieces that are solidly built, long-lasting, and timeless. They’re more likely to have a life beyond your living room.

• Start With the End in Mind. We realize not every chair is an heirloom to be passed down to your great-grandkids. Look for furniture made from easily recycled or upcycled materials at the end of their natural life.

Interested in checking out sustainable interior design in action? One clear way to distinguish sustainable brands from copycats is transparency.

That’s why we invite all potential customers to come visit us at our LA Workshop. You can see our materials in person and check out our top-notch craftsmanship. You’ll literally know the name of the artisan making your piece, which is pretty cool.

Unsure where to start? No sweat. Check out our live edge tables for a taste of what we do.