Decorating Your Natural Home: A Guide to Sustainable Home Furnishings

Enlarge Image Image Gallery The walls in this Tokyo home are colored with nontoxic Old-Fashioned Milk Paint.

Shopping for sustainable home furnishings couldn’t be easier; just follow these basic principles.

Principe #1: Salvage, reuse, reclaim or repurpose it.

Attempt to give everything—a chair, a half-used can of paint, reclaimed wood flooring—a second life, especially if it’s made from natural materials. When you reuse items, there’s less demand for new goods—which means less mining, logging, milling or manufacturing in the long run. You can find many materials—from floor tile to bathroom fixtures—at construction exchanges or local salvage yards.

Principle #2: Choose natural and renewable.

The best natural choices for your home are made from rapidly renewable resources including wool, wheat, bamboo or cork. Wood is renewable, but it takes decades to replace a tree. Stone is not renewable, but it requires less embodied energy (the amount of mining, smelting, machine-working, firing, processing or shipping required to make something) than metal. Most natural materials will eventually biodegrade or disintegrate when disposed of.

Principle #3: Buy recycled.

Recycling diverts trash from landfills and gives it new life. Glass and metal may be melted down and refabricated. Wood recycling, however, could more accurately be called “downcycling,” meaning the resulting product is of lower quality than the product that went in. Recycled wood becomes wood pulp, which becomes paper, which becomes recycled paper.

Principle #4: Seek out the least harmful option.

Some products don’t fall into any of the sustainable categories but still might be worthwhile choices because they cause less harm to the environment than their conventional counterparts. Examples include paints that have lower emissions of toxic chemicals (called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs) or carpet squares that can be returned to the manufacturer for recycling.

Search out these materials

Natural interior decorating is more than a quest for beauty; it’s a dedication to materials that are healthy for your family and the earth. Look for items with these qualities:

Locally harvested or made. If it’s grown or created nearby, less transportation and shipping are needed and fewer fossil fuels are expended.

Organic, non-genetically modified. Fibers, grains and other products from farms that employ sustainable practices, such as forgoing pesticides, will support the ecosystem’s soil, water and agricultural balance.