Living Green
with Decorating Focus

Living green with a focus on decorating in large part is to reuse and recycle.

Recycling old furniture and finding a place to introduce vintage furnishings into your home is an excellent way to remain earth-friendly when decorating.

The thrill of buying quality vintage furniture and finding the perfect pre owned piece in the second hand store can be the greenest purchase of all.

You will really appreciate the workmanship of antique and vintage furniture when you use them in new and unconventional ways and feel creative when you can reinvent uses for the items you already own.

Find a piece to fall in love with and create an unexpected treasure by breathing new life into it with fresh paint, water-based stain or some fabric.

Everybody’s taste change. Recycle, recover or make over furniture that you may not like as well. A side board can be shortened by cutting off the legs and turning it into a modern coffee table height, easily recover the seats on dining chairs with the use of a staple gun and a headboard can be upholstered pretty easily too.

As an added bonus, living green by incorporating furniture like this into your home that has been recycled and given a new life is more eco-friendly than buying new and will cut back on the resources used to produce new pieces, creating a "one of a kind" environment friendly interior that is uniquely your own.

Also they are generally purchased closer to home saving on transportation, because they are often found in second hand and antique shops, yard sales, flea markets or on web sites like Craigslist or Ebay.

When wood has been taken care of it lasts for a long time and reclaiming wood puts to good use what is already out there and available. Reclaim wood from old furniture, buildings and scraps from a factory floor produces furniture that is both beautifully distressed and durable.

While the process of manufacturing releases emissions into the air and reduces natural resources, there still may be a need to purchase new furniture. If you are in the market for newly made furniture there are some earth friendly options.

Buying furniture from a craftsman close to home is living green. It supports the local economy and gives back to the community while eliminating additional and wasteful packaging and decreases the cost of shipping.

Choose wood that is untreated or treated in natural substances and that has been harvested using sustainable methods. Upholstered pieces can be covered with natural and untreated and solution dyed fabrics.

Furniture can be made from one of the greenest materials, bamboo.

Bamboo is a grass that is incredibly fast growing with little or no pesticides. Very versatile in design, designers and builders alike use bamboo for living green floors, furniture, window blinds and fabric.

Look for companies that produce furniture with low emissions and have the green guard certification ensuring low toxicity.

Take precautions when you paint. Most paints emit volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) the same chemicals found in gasoline and nail polish. Look for water-based paint products that perform well and off gas very little VOC's.

Living green while making an improvement to the air quality of your home is to invest in an air purifier. Air purifiers reduce the air pollution particles in the air such as pet dander, pollen, and dust, because poor indoor air quality can be a risk to your health.

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