Use Tropical Design to Freshen Your Space

Posted on: August 14th, 2018

Palms and banana leaves are everywhere this year, as tropical design and décor are trending in fashion and design. Adding tropical prints is a great interior design strategy for making your space feel fresh and alive. Tropical design can be brought into a room in many ways:

• Wallpaper
• Pillows and textiles
• Live plants
• Framed prints

Using tropical decor can change the feel of any room. Areas that don’t have much light can benefit from the tropical feel, as spaces such as hallways or rooms without windows or natural light will feel brighter and lighter. Tropical plants make a room feel more like a relaxing vacation. Live plants make everything feel fresh and new.

If you’ve decided to add some tropical features to your interior design, use the following principles to guide your décor inspiration:

Scale the Effect

Just how tropical do you want to go? For maximal effect, select bright and busy tropical print wallpaper and paper an entire room, choosing emerald or bright green furniture to complement. If you want your tropical décor to be more subdued, choose pretty tropical patterns in a neutral color and use smaller accent items such as throw pillows or a gallery wall of tropical postcards.

Stay True to Style

Not every tropical-inspired room needs to look like a Hawaiian vacation, you can maintain your preferred interior design style and still reap the benefits of fresh tropical prints. For a contemporary look, your leafy prints can be in dark and rich black and grey tones. If your look is minimal, keep everything white or neutral and choose a single crisp and cool color such as blue for muted florals on a few key pieces.

Use Versatility to Your Advantage

Virtually any space can be tropically-infused because of the versatility of tropical interior design. Tropical prints pair well with and can be in nearly any color. There is no need to change your entire color scheme (unless you want to) in order to freshen up with some tropicals.

Leafy accents can be used in any room, and in any season or climate. In areas that aren’t themselves tropical, use artificial plants for your tropical effect. Textures such as wicker or grass cloth can be used to bring in the warmer feel without straying too far from natural surroundings. Bathrooms are popular spaces to go full-tropical, as bright shower curtains and pineapple soap dishes are appealing, without a commitment to an entire large space of tropical theming. However, tropical prints in living rooms, leafy tiling in kitchens, and floral textiles in bedrooms are just as beautiful and effective in creating your own paradise.

Redecorating often starts with a desire for something “fresh” and new. What better way to bring in the fresh than to let your décor inspiration come from tropical prints.