By using rustic, primitive home décor you can transform your kitchen from a place of utilitarian tasks to a cozy nook where your family really wants to spend their time.

From Fast and Furious to Laid Back

The modern kitchen of the fast food generation, with its stainless steel appliances and round, black center island surrounded by barstools, leaves something to be desired. You can bring a sense of family and togetherness back to your house with a little primitive home décor.

What you Need to get the Effect

The piece de resistance, the ultimate addition in the way of primitive home décor, is the dry sink. It doesn’t have to serve any function other than as a conversation piece, but this item definitely brings you back to the “old country home”. Dry sinks are not all that easy to come by, so rest assured that if you can’t find one of these pieces there are other ways to achieve the rustic look.

An old fashioned, free-standing cupboard with a hanging wooden towel rack to match are easier to find and relatively inexpensive. You can even make your own sturdy wooden bench to use along one side of your table. Spending a lot of money on actual antiques for your primitive home décor isn’t necessary, since you can create a faux antique look for any piece of wooden furniture by using paints and glazes from your local home center.

Special Little Additions

Folk art accents add a hand-crafted touch to your primitive home décor. You can create folk art items yourself or purchase them at flea markets. Wooden cutouts of cows, sheep and fruit can be painted and hung on your walls, or placed on counters and shelves. You can fill wicker baskets with wooden fruit, and display handmade candles with country candleholders. A red-checkered tablecloth with matching napkins and towels, accompanied by hand painted salt and pepper shakers and a matching sugar bowl are also inexpensive additions.

Use quaint primitive home decor signs with welcoming phrases like, “Home is where the heart is.” Or you can use a child’s chalkboard to write, “Today’s menu,” to add a friendly touch to your country kitchen. Imagine holidays, weekend breakfasts and Sunday family dinners celebrated in the true sense of family and home when you spend those special times in the comfort of your quaint country kitchen.

There is a tremendous abundance of home decor styles today, oriental being one of the newest to gain a popular following. Oriental decor has not been popular in the mainstream for very long, but it is arguably gaining popularity faster than any other home decor style has in a long, long time. Just what exactly is oriental home decor? It is important to first define clearly what oriental style is – and what it is not.

Authentic or Cliché?

The most important distinction in determining whether something is an authentic oriental item, or whether it came from a tourist shop in Chinatown, is how “Zen” it is. Real oriental home decor is understated as a rule. Home decor from a tourist shop in Chinatown may decorate your home as well. But is it oriental? The short answer is no. Items from tourist shops are generally everything but understated, and are marketed to appeal to shoppers looking for keepsake items and souvenirs. It does not appeal to a consumer who is leafing through an interior designer’s portfolio, searching for pages that focus on oriental home décor.

Defining Authentic

Decoration that is authentically oriental is usually quite understated. On the one hand, it can involve only color, pattern and the occasional symbol that makes it oriental, such as very detailed flowers or nature scenes. However, oriental home decor does not have to be plain to be authentic. It does have to be absolutely beautiful, and it must be ‘Zen’. It cannot be frantic, and it cannot loudly proclaim its oriental qualities. The most beautiful and authentic oriental home decor would not even be identified as oriental by most people.

The simplest examples of oriental home decor, although they are not always identified as oriental, are vases with birds or flowers on them. Apart from what is depicted on such a vase, you will also notice that, most oriental vases are much smaller in size than their western counterparts are. In addition to vases, there is a multitude of fine china available from Japan that many people use as home decor instead of as dinnerware. Noritake is perhaps the most well-known example; Noritake plates with birds or even with a simple gold rim adorn the walls of many homes that could be showcased for their oriental home decor.

The key to effective oriental home décor is simple; think understated, think balanced and think beautiful. With these three elements in mind you can transform any room into one that is enhanced by oriental home décor.

Decorating with bright sea colors is popular in any geography. Clear blues and bright whites trimmed with a little red for a lighthouse is a décor that is cheerful and clean-looking. And nautical home décor is perhaps the easiest style to create on a budget.

Use your Vacation Days

Nautical home décor is simply a matter of bringing outdoor things inside. Free items like seashells, sand, or driftwood evoke the sea very effectively. Your vacation is the best time to gather up some items for your home. Sea treasures look good displayed in an oversized clear vase, stacked on bookshelves or hung on the wall. All you need is a little basic hardware to turn your found items into a decoration or adornment.

Shop Junque Shops

Life for sailors is brutal; working on a windswept boat, getting knocked around by storms, and being beaten by waves. Boats and seagoing equipment do not look too pristine after they have worked the ocean for years. And luckily for the decorator, this distressed, sea-worn look is inexpensive to use in nautical home decor.

For example, in a Louis XIV room the glassware would have to be fine, French antique vases. By contrast, the glass décor in a nautical home is more likely to be an old, worn lantern, or a retired glass float. It is clear which style is more affordable, and which style you are more likely to find in a quaint collectibles shop or Main Street antique mall.

Likewise, an oar or fishing pole from an antique store does not have to be finely refinished to be a good decorative accessory. Let the oar be splintered or worn; that is how it would actually look at work in the water.

Classic is Everywhere

Ships, boats, sails, and seashells are decorating trends that are always fresh. Sometimes it may necessary to update your fabric choices. But the general themes and colors of nautical home décor never go out of style. This is advantageous for the home decorator.

First, unless you get tired of nautical home décor, there will never be any need to completely overhaul your interior design. Since it is always in style, you can shop for last year’s (or even the last decade’s) nautical accessories. This translates to savings on reproduction nautical home décor at discount stores.

The best fabrics for nautical home décor are cotton canvas, usually in shades of ecru or blue. Coincidentally, this is also very inexpensive and sturdy cloth for furniture and even curtains.