Eco-Chic Home: Living in Harmony with the Environment
For a house to become a home, it needs to reflect our unique personality and style, and it must be perfectly safe for our family. So, we do our best to eliminate all possible hazards and pick such interior decorations that will transform plain rooms into a warm and comfortable home.
What has also become an important aspect of home design is living in harmony with the environment. Most people think that sustainable, eco-friendly homes automatically imply second-hand materials, rugged appearance, and rustic style, but it’s not necessarily the case. With modern technology and contemporary green décor, today’s environmentally-friendly home design successfully rivals any mainstream style.
By choosing the eco-friendly design, you are promoting healthy living, improving indoor air quality, saving money and energy, and reducing your carbon footprint. If you’re still wondering where to start, here are several tips to inspire you.
Sustainable and locally sourced building materials
Conventional building practices that involve shipping of building materials from distant factories are one of the major causes of environmental pollution. Use of locally sourced, sustainable materials can help largely in reducing the impact of construction and transport practices on our surroundings. In order to preserve the environment as much as possible, you should turn to not only locally sourced materials, but also renewable, salvaged and durable materials, such as recycled car tires, repurposed wood, aluminum cans, and glass bottles.
These materials have a negative carbon footprint, are highly efficient insulators and help greatly in temperature regulation, which means there will be less need for constant use of a heating/cooling system. Long term, this entails higher energy efficiency and much lower cost of living.
LED lighting
Both natural and artificial lighting are key ingredients in creating a warm atmosphere and the feeling of a cozy home. With the right position of light fixtures, chandeliers, sconces and various kinds of table lamps and floor lamps, your home can be completely transformed. For instance, by placing designer lamps in strategical places, you can add a touch of elegance and luxury to any room. However, with all that illumination, your power bill will also rise.
The solution lies in switching to LED technology which is way more efficient and minimizes your carbon footprint. Unlike the traditional, incandescent light bulbs that waste most of their energy on producing heat and only 5% on light, the contemporary LED bulbs to have it the other way round. They use up to 95% of energy on light production, and also last much longer, emit almost no carbon dioxide and incur less cost and environmental damage.
Solar panels
By installing solar rooftop panels, you can benefit greatly from the unlimited energy of the sun. This system offers a passive use of solar energy and allows you to store power for later, which practically eliminates any energy waste.
Solar systems are highly efficient in all southern states, especially Australia, where you can benefit greatly from lots of hours of direct sunlight each day. For instance, 10Kw solar systems can give you large amounts of energy every day that you can even sell back to the grid if the local government provides a feed-in tariff. By setting it up, you’ll have a steady supply of free and clean energy, lower power bills long term, increase in your home value and you’ll be giving a significant contribution to the preservation of the environment.
Eco-friendly choices
When you choose materials and products for walls, furniture, and flooring, make sure they are FSC certified. For fabrics, choose natural fibers such as linen and cotton, preferably colored by natural pigment from plants. This process is non-toxic, eco-friendly and gives a great artsy look to the fabric. Another choice is hemp, a very low-water intensive fabric both in its processing and production, in appearance very similar to linen and cotton and very easily attained.
When you pick your flooring, the choice is wide and ranges from bamboo and cork, which are both incredibly sustainable resources and add wonderful texture and color to your floor, to glass and linoleum tiles.
Decorative details
Moving on to a more aesthetic domain, when choosing your decorative details, pick vintage, antique or upcycled furniture pieces and repurposed fabrics. This will greatly help the environment by keeping those reused items and materials from a landfill, where they commonly end up. Moreover, these one-of-a-kind pieces can be used in versatile ways, as practical pieces or simply as ornaments, and turn your home into a charming space brimming with character.
Green roofs and walls
Green roofs and walls are an excellent way to integrate nature into your home design, both on the outside and inside. Green roofs are constructed so that you can easily grow lush plant life on the roof of your home without any kind of damage or leakage. It’s a chic and luxurious element that offers a unique kind of visual beauty while, at the same time, provides efficient, natural insulation and cooling.
Green walls can also be successfully incorporated to both exterior and interior and play a significant role in natural insulation, reduction of overall energy consumption, air quality, maintenance of humidity levels and give your home original green aesthetics.
A few small steps in the right direction can make a big difference and produce great results. By following the tips outlined here, each homeowner can create a comfortable, stylish and cozy home that is also sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Let us help you find your best style!
Fine Home Lighting and Fine Home Lamps are committed to providing customers with fine quality home accessories at the best possible prices along with providing knowledgeable and responsive customer service.
About Fine Home Lighting and Fine Home Lamps
FineHomeLamps.com has been in operation since early 2009. We carry over 10,000 hand-selected home accessories such as table lamps, floor lamps, chandeliers, including wall mirrors, wall clocks. and wall art. We continually expand our inventory in order to provide additional choices for our customers.