“Green Interior Design” – Is It A Trend?

By Heather Arthurs

With the term green being thrown around so often, many wonder, “Is green the new black?” It is hard to find the substance amongst the hype. The truth is, although the term green is gracing everything from coffee mugs to carpets, it’s not a trend it’s evolution. We are finally realizing that the earth cannot just keep giving to us like a mystical bag of tricks. So, we are stepping up. 

How does this affect me? Well for most of us until now, if we wanted to “go green” we could not go further than changing our light bulbs, and collecting our rainwater. If we dared to care about how these items looked we were shunned. But truthfully there has to be something for those of us who care but would rather not wear Birkenstocks, right? When the first design items came on the market, they were over-priced, and often only available through mail. Some of the furniture pieces were so new that you could only order from drawings, as there were no photos yet. This is not very practical in a design setting, after all who would feel comfortable spending a few thousand dollars on a couch without even sitting on it? Even a year ago, when a client asked us for green interior finishes in the city of Calgary we could find a mattress, a throw cushion, and one style of sofa.  It seems however, that as every day passes more and more options are arriving in Calgary. I would argue that this is because customers are demanding it.  With so many of us wanting to make a difference they could not help but respond.  Now we can find carpets, renewable(ish) flooring, furniture, lighting, and accessories. The sky is the limit!

There has been another change as well; we do no longer have to compromise style for conscience. It is always great to find an older object to re-finish, but this can’t meet all the need of the style savvy. Industrial designers are finding that green design works as a muse for them, and are creating cutting edge pieces. These pieces are not labeled “green” as a selling tool, the fact that they are, is just a natural choice to the designer, almost as ingrained as the color or style they choose to work within. 

There are always stages in which any type of revolutionary creations are integrated into our society. First they are new and big, usually high priced and hard to come by, like the computer. I remember the old apples being put into our schools in grade 5; we had 3 computers that had huge bit-map pictures. We were learning how to program them to display our names. This process was long and arduous, but we felt that it was the way of the future. Fast forward a couple of decades (yikes), the computers are such a way of life for us that they are in our phones, our coffee makers, and our children are often more adept at using them then we are. It is so ingrained in our society that we cannot even imagine life without them.  As a long-standing tree hugger, I believe this is the same path that Green design is taking.

While watching this progression, this point is not always easy to remember. For example, yesterday when I was reading a design magazine and saw an ad for a countertop scrap composter titled “composting is stylish” I could not help but brindle. However, it’s just a sign that this designer is getting what she asked for: style and environmental consciousness working together. Green is not a trend – it’s the future.

Visit http://www.interiordesignercalgary.ca for more information.

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Topics: Home and Garden, Home Improvement, Interior Decorating | Comments Off

Tags: home, Home Improvement, interior design, renovations, staging

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