Sustainable Interior Design

Sustainability is, simply put, the goal of creating and maintaining an environment in which we can safely coexist with other humans, animals, and botanical life, both now and far into the future. This beautiful goal means we have to be honest with ourselves about how we live. Living sustainably can sometimes mean changing the way we do things, which can take a bit of effort. But sustainable living and design also provide many rewards that make us feel positive and encouraged along the way. These benefits make it easier to keep making sustainable design choices over the long term.

What Makes Design Sustainable?

Sustainable design (also known as green design) protects and conserves natural resources and supports life. As the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) puts it, “Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment.” Pursuing sustainability helps humans and nature to “exist in productive harmony to support present and future generations.”

Sustainable design practices

A house built according to green standards incorporates the following sustainable design practices, among others:

• Minimizes or eliminates materials that are toxic or dangerous to those who gather, build with, or live with them
• Supports human and environmental health
• Protects and conserves limited resources (e.g., old-growth wood, rare metals, water, and power)
• Is sourced nearby to minimize or eliminate resources used to ship it
• Has energy-efficient infrastructure, including heating, ventilation, insulation, lighting, plumbing, and appliances
• Incorporates recycled and recyclable materials
• Produces less waste than alternatives
• Incorporates renewable energy and energy conservation technologies
• Is built to withstand extreme weather conditions

Here are some of the most impactful ways to support sustainability:

• Conserve water use and avoid water contamination
• Limit greenhouse gas use and production by choosing energy sources other than fossil fuels
• Choose energy-efficient appliances
• Practice energy-saving behaviors
• Choose sustainably made home furnishings
• Renovate inefficient buildings
• Recycle home-building materials and home furnishings
• Support businesses with ethical and sustainable manufacturing and labor practices

Biophilic Design

Biophilic design principles take their cues from nature. They emphasize connecting to nature through what we see (views of nature, including plants in and outside our homes), what we touch (such as using natural materials for floors, counters, and furniture), and staying attuned to seasonal changes. Biophilic design finds ways to bring the outdoors in and help us feel connected to the earth, not siloed away in an unnatural habitat. Making nature a priority can help us to be mindful of the fragility of our ecosystem. It encourages us to find joy in living in a sustainable, eco-friendly way.

Living in harmony with the human, animal, and botanical life around can help us feel less isolated, more mindful, and more grateful. It’s a way to avoid what the Hopi people refer to as koyaanisqatsi—life out of balance.

Choosing Sustainable Design & Decor

So much to choose from

We’re surrounded with a dizzying array of furnishing options at all price points and styles. We have access to a greater number of decorating options and objects than ever and can order them instantly via phone or computer. Love vintage style? Great used pieces are much easier to find thanks to online auctions and retailers. Want fresh, new, contemporary furnishings? You can view any of hundreds of thousands of retailers on your tablet in an instant.

But with all that choice, we tend to go to the same few sources. We buy brand new, simply styled furnishings in the same small range of neutral colors. Most are built to last just a few years and destined to be tossed away. Changing our thinking to a more sustainable mindset means opening ourselves up to seeking out sustainable design in our home furnishings.

The problem with fast furniture

Fast furniture is made in bulk from inexpensive materials—wood, plastic and metal fasteners, synthetic fabrics, and adhesives. Components made from sawdust and wood off-cuts are pressed together under high heat with industrial glue. They’re covered in veneers (thin layers of wood), printed papers, or other products made to look like better quality hardwoods.

Furniture giants like IKEA create attractive, affordable pieces that mix well with other items. But though they tout efforts at sustainable design, their practices are hard on the earth. They rely heavily on manufactured wood products and veneers that split, splinter, and break easily. Have you had professional movers pack your stuff into a moving van? They hate fast furniture—plywood and medium-density fiberboard (MDF) tables and chairs often crumple like origami.

When Target, Amazon, or IKEA create furniture to be shipped in flat-pack boxes, they minimize wasted transit space. But shipping pallets of boxes around the world requires vast amounts of petroleum, electricity, and cardboard boxes.

Is it worth it?

Falling into the disposable-furnishings habit is understandable. We’re busy and seek convenience, consistent quality, low prices, and styles that won’t set us apart from current trends. But creating and shipping so much new, inexpensive furniture is incredibly wasteful. The amount of wood, wood pulp, water, electricity, petroleum products, and fuel we use to make and transport furniture and household goods meant to last for five to 10 years instead of a lifetime is astonishing. Is the convenience of choosing cheap stuff over sustainable design worth the enormous environmental cost?

What came before disposable furnishings?

Our ancestors acquired quality items from local furniture makers, and rarely bought on credit. They kept pieces for decades, polishing, refinishing, repairing, or repainting as necessary. They built furniture to last, and passed it on, with old and new styles mixing together freely. But we live differently now. As a result, the negative impact of our habits on the planet (and on indoor home air quality) is immense.

Before the mid-20th century, home interior design and decor were usually based on highly sustainable design principles. Goods were usually made of long-lasting wood, pottery, glass, ceramic, porcelain, metal, or stone. People cleaned with boiling water, vinegar, simple soaps, and a lot of scrubbing. It’s true that indoor air was dirty even then because of coal ash, kerosene, and wood smoke from their dirty sources of heat and light. However, manufactured chemical cleaners and synthetic gases were few.

Today, furniture and decor items made with synthetic materials, veneers, plastics, polyester, nylon, and glues fill our homes with gases and lung-irritating particles. Instead of airing our homes out, we make them airtight to avoid drafts or lost heated or cooled air. Lack of ventilation traps the bad air inside.

Does it matter if furnishings last?

Unlike our ancestors, we may not think much about whether things will last. We figure styles will change, so we’ll just get new things later. We’ll sell our old stuff via Craigslist or Facebook (if it lasts long enough), toss it on the curb, or take it to the dump. If we need new furniture, we don’t have to wait or make do—we buy it on credit, something past generations rarely did. And who wants to deal with outdated, banged-up furniture when we can just get new stuff shipped to us in giant boxes?

We don’t have to save for years to afford furnishings, or build them ourselves. The hand-applied, inlaid, or carved detail that made furniture of the past so special is out of fashion now. One boxy chest or table or chair from the online discount retailer is much like another. Replacing them is quick and easy.

But disposable furnishings cost more than just money. They clutter landfills and waste resources that could be enjoyed or renewed or used to sustain life. Relying on disposables encourages carelessness with our belongings and surroundings instead of fostering appreciation for what we have. It blinds us to what we’ll lose if we continue to burn through the planet’s resources and pollute its air and water.

Making Your Home Sustainable

“Sustainable furniture” sounds like “sensible footware”—boring and old fashioned. Not so! Unsustainable, fast furniture pieces actually tend to be much more bland and indistinguishable than sustainable pieces. Fast furniture is designed to be quick and easy to make, ship, and assemble. Special details, clever styling, and quality craftwork are the exception and not the rule for mass-produced furniture and decor items. Well-built, sustainable furniture is often more beautiful and more unusual than brand-new, mass-market pieces.

So what are some good sustainable alternatives? And can they work for you?

Hand-crafted furnishings

I know what you’re thinking—furniture and decor pieces made by hand are beautiful, but so expensive. That’s often true. Using quality materials, matching woods, avoiding veneers, creating smooth drawer tracks and balanced doors that close smoothly—these things take talent and time to design and create.

Customized furniture can be more expensive and time-consuming—it can take three to six months to receive after you’ve made your deposit. And other custom home furnishings like handcrafted glass, hand-thrown pottery, or hand-stitched or woven textiles and upholstery can cost a pretty penny.

But let’s think about the actual costs of quality. For example, let’s compare fast furniture with quality furniture.

Fast wood furniture:

• Uses cheap wood, often particle board or plywood covered in veneer glued to the top and sides
• Is often covered in a toxic sprayed-on varnish
• Has veneers that scratch or chip easily, and can’t be sanded down and refinished
• Needs to be replaced every few years; quality furniture can look good and work well for a lifetime
• Has legs that are haphazardly screwed on and wobbly, and they get damaged easily during household moves
• Often requires that workers spray and inhale lots of toxic varnish
• Off-gasses toxic elements like formaldehyde used in its manufacture for months after creation, making our indoor air quality poorer

Low-quality furniture doesn’t last long. Fast furniture (and the garbage created during its manufacture) tends to end up in landfills. And shipping furniture around the world means creating millions of cardboard boxes (often made from virgin wood) to keep the pieces together on their journey. This takes an enormous amount of fossil fuel.

Quality wood furniture:

• Can look good for the rest of your life with a bit of basic care
• Is sturdy, with beautifully made joints and careful detailing
• Looks fresh and beautiful with a quick coat of oil that revives the grain
• Can be refinished if you’re hard on your furniture, and look as good as new
• Supports the local economy if you buy it from someone in your region, which avoids the need to use lots of fuel to ship it around the world
• Is resellable if you tire of the style—well-made classic furniture has a good secondary market
• Can be very reasonably priced when sourced through estate sales, online marketplaces, and auctions, sometimes for less money than fast furniture

You’d be amazed at the beautifully made used furniture available at auctions, both in person and online. I often see well-crafted 100% wood tables complete with six matching chairs (sometimes quite recently made) at auctions sell for less than the price of a single fast-furniture dining table sold on its own. Sustainable design really can be quite affordable as well as stylish.

See the section about online furniture auctions below to learn more about local online auctions, an excellent source of affordable quality furnishings.

Customized furnishings

Sustainable furniture can be customizable, contemporary, and more affordable than you might think. For example, furniture maker Inside Weather designs and creates pieces to order in California. Their style would work well in contemporary, minimalist, midcentury modern, Scandi, Japandi, industrial, coastal, or modern farmhouse homes. Inside Weather uses materials like recycled plastic for upholstery, reuses all off-cut wood, and plants two trees for every order. The company offers customized colors, textures, shapes, sizes, and pillows. It lets you add contrasting elements like screen-printed table tops to make pieces your own. The company also has a 365-day return policy.

Modular furniture lets you buy just the elements you need to create furniture that exactly fits your space. Burrow‘s modular sofas can be assembled and configured in various ways. Their aesthetic is similar to Inside Weather’s, but a bit higher end, and more specifically midcentury modern. The sleek and curvy Vesper chair is lounge-ready, and at $795 (with free shipping and plastic-free packaging) for the fabric version, it feels reasonably priced.

Vintage or antique furnishings

One of the best ways to live stylishly and sustainably is to incorporate vintage or antique furnishings into your lifestyle. Using and enjoying products that already exist keeps them out of landfills. Also, unlike new furnishings, used furniture has already off-gassed the manufacturing chemicals used to make it. That means it’s likely to be less polluting than a new piece. By buying vintage pieces, you can also tell how well a piece has held up over time.

If you’re buying vintage furniture, you’re likely to buy it locally, which means shipping costs are negligible or free. If pieces need refinishing, you can use sustainably sourced and nontoxic wood refinishing products or paint, or organic or recycled upholstery fabric to make them look fresh.

Vintage furnishings also let you have truly unique rooms. There’s something exciting about owning an original piece from a time gone by—you can feel the history in it. And while some Victorian, Art Deco, midcentury modern, or seventies-style pieces are pricy, many are surprisingly affordable.

Of course, many older pieces aren’t obviously vintage genre pieces. They’re classics with style that doesn’t fit just one particular era. With new hardware, or a fresh coat of paint or a simple refinishing, upcycled pieces can look stylishly contemporary.

Good sources of used furniture

You can find classic furniture at specialty furniture shops or antique and vintage shops. Consignment shops are good sources for more contemporary furnishings at significantly lower cost. Look also for hotel or office furniture liquidation sales. During renovations, hotels often liquidate furniture very cheaply, and you can find good deals on sturdy and attractive pieces.

Online furniture auctions

If you want exceptional deals on pre-owned furnishings, auctions can be fantastic sources. In-person auctions are excellent if you’re looking for high-value pieces that have been authenticated, or if you want to see what you’re buying before you bid on it. However, local online auctions often have the best prices.

MaxSold runs thousands of online auctions in the U.S. and Canada each year. These are often estate sales, downsizing sales, or business closure sales where people are in a hurry to sell. The amount of money they make isn’t as important to them as just clearing stuff out quickly. You can find mixed lots of multiple items, some completely unrelated, as well as many individual pieces. Search for your geographical area and see what auctions are coming up in the next week or so.

To find out whether online auctions are right for you, and how to make the most of them, read my article Local Online Auctions: A Bargain Wonderland.

Sourcing upcycled furnishings

Furniture retailers like West Elm regularly look for ways to use Earth-friendly materials. They sometimes use renewable, recycled, or recyclable materials in their furnishings and decor items. In their stores, you might find recycled vinyl, glass, wood, or aluminum pieces, or textiles made with repurposed elements.

Of course, you can also upcycle your own furnishings. Use pieces you already have, things you find on the sidewalk or in your parents’ attic, or stuff you discover at flea markets or street fairs. Weekend flea and farmers’ markets often have great looking vintage chairs, tables, and desks available at excellent prices. A bit of cleaning, sanding, oiling, or painting can save you hundreds and provide you with lasting beauty.

Upcycle your own stuff

Are you renovating your home? Here are a few ways to upcycle old building materials or furnishings:

• Kitchen cabinets: Keep old kitchen cabinets and use them for storage elsewhere in your home, such as in your basement, pantry, utility room, or garage.
• Tables and chairs: Gather old wooden kitchen chairs of different shapes and colors around a patio table— keep them natural, or paint them all the same color.
• Barn wood/barn doors: Use as actual sliding doors to hide closets or close off office spaces, or hang them on the wall as dramatic rustic decor pieces in a modern farmhouse-style or southwestern home.
• Old windows: Vintage or antique wood-framed windows look beautiful hung on walls, or hang them on chains and use them as room dividers in an open-plan room. I’ve hung them outside on wooden fences. They look charming when used as mismatched windows in children’s playhouses or treehouses.
• Chests used as coffee tables: Do you have an old wooden shipping box or steamer trunk? These make terrific coffee tables, entryway seating, or storage benches. They look at home in a coastal or modern farmhouse home. If they’re rough, sand them down to remove splinters. Top with a rustic tray, a small plant or vase of branches, books, and pottery or candles.

Don’t forget to look around your own home for sources of furnishings and decor! Items that you no longer use elsewhere can often be repurposed in a different room in the house.

For lots of ideas on ways to repurpose what you already have, check out my article Shop Your Home for Fresh Decor.

Ethically Sourced Manufacturing, Materials & Labor

An important element of sustainable design for the home is the impact that an object’s design, creation, transportation, and implementation has on the people involved. That means considering more than just the impact on the people who own the end product. It’s worth asking questions like the following:

• Were the laborers who harvested, mined, crafted, or otherwise obtained or created this product kept safe during their work? Were they paid a living wage? Were they enslaved or otherwise forced to do their labor?
• Was the wood used to make this flooring, furniture, or wood framing sustainably grown and harvested? Was it treated with toxic chemicals?
• Was the area from which this material was taken left worse off, or was the material sustainably harvested, removed, or manufactured?
• How much water and electricity were used to create this object, home, or garden? How much will be needed to maintain them?
• How were the minerals used in its manufacture obtained?
• Did their mining or extraction create environmental hazards for the people who obtained them, or who lived or worked in those regions?

Labor is an essential resource—it should be sustainably sourced and maintained. Every person involved in a home’s creation and furnishing must be treated ethically if a household can truly be considered sustainably designed. Ethical product sourcing and labor practices include ensuring that laborers are not exploited—that means reasonable work hours, fair and timely payment, and, of course, no trafficking or enslavement. Knowing where your furnishings come from and whether those sources treat their employees fairly is a key element in sustainable living.

Sustainable Landscaping

We can make significant impacts on the environment by following sustainable practices in our landscaping as well as in our homes. Sustainable landscaping complements your sustainable indoor lifestyle, and creates a beautiful gateway to the world around you.

Here are a few basic tips that will help you create a healthier, more sustainable garden.

Work with your surroundings, not against them

This means considering and adjusting for your garden’s climate, soil type, and available natural light. Also, consider the layout of your garden: Where’s it hot and dry? Where’s it shady and damp? And how much natural light does each part of your garden get?

Minimize the need for irrigation

Planting thirsty plants that need a lot of water makes no sense in a climate that doesn’t get regular rain, especially in areas that periodically go through drought years. Xeriscaping (using plants that need less water and handle full sun) makes the most of your land, conserves water, and produces healthier plants.

Use native plants

Native plants provide food and shelter to native animals and to pollinating insects as well. They keep endangered species going, since pollinators can’t gather the foods they need from inhospitable plants. Those pollinators are necessary to support food crops.

Natives are also less susceptible to disease or failure, and are easier to find, so they’re often cheaper.

Invasive non-native plants choke out the natives that animals need in order to thrive. To find out what plants to avoid, ask a master gardener at your local nursery. Or do an online search for “invasive plants” plus the name of your region.

Try natural pest control

Natural pest control creates a safer, more sustainable garden. Herbicides like glyphosate (found in Round-Up and Rodeo) kill dandelions faster, but also poison insects and insect-eating animals like birds and amphibians that keep wetlands in balance. Pesticides can also get into human bloodstreams. Native plants need less intervention than non-natives, so you can skip herbicides and pesticides. Vinegar-based and other natural herbicides kill weeds effectively, and break down without leaving toxins behind.

Replace lawns with groundcovers or planting beds

Large patches of a single kind of planting (monocultures) such as grass lawns fight plants’ natural inclination to mix and spread. It takes a lot of work to keep them looking even and tidy, and it wastes a lot of water. It also keeps you from providing a nourishing environment for beneficial pollinators and local fauna.

Consider replacing at least part of your lawn with easy-care perennials, evergreen shrubs, or native groundcovers. These provide color, flowers for pollinators, berries for birds, and leaves throughout the year—all without mowing! If you want a lawn, leave the grass a little longer to shade the roots so water doesn’t evaporate as quickly.

Compost yard waste

Leaving grass clippings on the lawn nourishes the soil and holds in moisture. But if you don’t like the look of that, compost clippings along with other garden and food waste. Less waste in trash or yard waste bins means less fuel wasted by the garbage trucks that gather and carry it. Most importantly, it means less compostable material taking space in landfills.

For more details and ideas about how to make your garden more sustainable and Earth-friendly, see my article Sustainable Landscaping & Garden Design.

Do Sustainability Efforts Really Make a Difference?

Much of what we read and hear about sustainable design involves national infrastructure planning and industry-wide goals. However, each of us can build sustainable habits into our lives. When multiplied by millions of people, our individual daily choices really can have huge effects.

For example, during 2020, when the coronavirus epidemic took hold around the world, global energy demand dropped 6%. This was seven times the decline caused by the 2009 financial crisis, which was the biggest financial upset the world had seen since the 1929 stock market crash. During 2020, CO₂ emissions worldwide dropped dramatically. This led to unprecedented improvements in air quality in some regions. South East Asia saw a 40% reduction in harmful airborne particle levels caused by traffic and energy production in under one year. Emissions in China, Europe, and North America all dropped significantly, and their air quality improved measurably. Water quality and shoreline cleanliness also improved around the world. Garbage in oceans and on beaches declined, and fish and large marine animals came much closer to the shore. Satellites showed significant improvements in coastal environment quality globally.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we like global quarantines and shutdowns. But these quick and dramatic results showed how huge an impact changes in human behavior can have on our shared environment. We can make enormous beneficial changes to our world when enough people feel motivated to act sustainably, either through self-interest or regulation.

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Vintage and reproduction minimalist midcentury modern (MCM) furniture pieces look as fresh and current today as when they were designed in the 1950s and 1960s | Cup of Couple for Pexels (Detail)