Building a custom home is often a once in a lifetime opportunity.  It often requires months to years of planning and saving.  Decisions are plentiful and can be stressful and overwhelming.  A majority of these decisions will be about decorating.  From drawer pulls to roofing materials, every item of the home has to be decided on.  The best way to manage these decisions is to select the right custom home builder.  Working with the best Monmouth County custom home builder can help alleviate a lot of stress and confusion during the entire process.  When you’ve put all the time, effort, and money required into deciding on building a custom home, partnering with a builder that is familiar with your area, has a ton of experience, and an excellent eye for design is the only option.

A common phrase in design is “bring the outdoors in.”  What does this mean?  Is it always appropriate?   How is this design idea best used? The elements used when following this design strategy are more about evoking a feeling of peace, calm, and happiness than architecture. It is about how a room or space makes you feel. 

A Great Monmouth County Custom Home Builder Keeps Your Environment in Mind

Whether you are designing a home in the woods or a beach house, you need to keep your surrounding environment in mind.  Rarely if ever is a log cabin built on the beach.  It is also very uncommon to walk into a cabin in the woods that is decorated with seashells and the colors of the beach.  It is important when bringing the outdoors in to keep it local appropriate or it may have the opposite effect.  A great Monmouth County custom home builder will do this with ease.  This is also why it’s important to hire a builder from your area.  

Bring it to Life

One obvious way to bring the outdoors in is to add living things to your décor.  Whether it is plants, flowers, fruit or trees, adding living elements to your home helps in a variety of ways.  It is well known that plants can improve indoor air quality.  In addition, being surrounded by nature has been known to decrease anger, stress, and fear and replace those feelings with calm.  Even the addition of one houseplant can improve your mood and elevate your space.  Keeping fresh flowers on display is also an easy way to add nature to your home.  Fresh flowers have been proven to improve your mood by decreasing depression.

Use Items from Nature

Aside from the living components, using natural elements for your building materials is also a great way to feel more connected to the outdoors.  Flooring materials like wood, bamboo, and cork help give your room a more welcoming feel than things like tile or man-made flooring.  Using stone in unconventional ways and places helps in creating a more natural look as well.  Some other natural materials commonly used in this design scheme are jute, teak, wicker, and rattan. You can even be very literal when using natural items.  Think hanging plant curtains, green, living accent walls, or tree branch curtain rods. 

Light is a Designers Best Friend

Don’t forget the powerful effect that natural light can have in a room.  Whether it be a wall of windows or a skylight over your bed, one strategy to bring the outdoors in is to easily view it from anywhere in your home.  A secondary side-effect of having a lot of doors and windows is also the ability to open them and enjoy the fresh air, the sights, and sounds of your environment.

Don’t Forget About Your Other Senses

Consider all your senses when decorating with the outdoors in mind.  Scents and sounds can add a lot to a space.  Other than opening windows and doors to enjoy actual nature, indoor water features are a popular addition to many homes.  They can be used just about anywhere.  If you consider what the inside of a spa looks and feels like, you can incorporate the same design ideas and produce the same effect in your home.  In addition, using nature for your color inspiration helps to bring everything together.

The Best Monmouth County Custom Home Designer Makes It Look Easy

The most calming positive mood-enhancing spaces look effortless.  They are normally clean, uncluttered, light and airy, and welcoming.  The best designs that bring the outdoors in do it without you noticing.  This is part of what makes these rooms so inviting.  There is not much difference between being outdoors or indoors when you do it right.  From matching paint colors to the horizon out your French doors to using native plants and flowers to decorate, when you work with the right builder, they’ll have all the answers.  Partnering with an experienced, knowledgeable Monmouth County custom home builder can help reduce your stress before, during, and well after your custom home is complete!