Home Decor Goes Green

The movement toward greener living is creating a market for homes built with sustainable, non-toxic (read: formaldehyde free) materials, painted with voc-free paints, outfitted with energy-saving appliances and equipped with solar panels. If this sounds like your current interior design/decorating project, then be sure to have a look at the following earth-friendly, recycled, upcycled, sustainable home decor from some of the Interior Design Team's eco-conscious creators/designers.

This round flower night light from Mariposa Avenue is a perfect example. It is made from a recycled tuna can, cut with a flower design, powder coated and finished with a glossy top coat. See more of Mariposa Avenue's lamps, sconces and night lights...

This beautiful, distressed-look frame is made by Second Line Frames from wood salvaged from Hurricane Katrina...not only a great use for this recycled wood siding, but a portion of sales also go to help in the rebuilding effort!


Collaging is one of my favorite ways to use what would otherwise be thrown away. Art Studio makes these beautiful fine art collage pieces from recycled newsprint and other collage elements. This stunning piece, titled "Round and Round" is mounted on heavy paper and ready to frame. Aside from geometric shapes and patterns, Art Studio offers a variety of lovely abstract pieces as well.

This woven rag table runner by Ron's Rag Rugs is woven from recycled fabrics on heirloom looms. Rag Rugs offers a great variety of colors and patterns, from table runners to throw rugs!

This lovely candle holder by Oak Studios of Design is made from stained glass pieces set into a recycled glass base. Oak Studio of Design also creates mosaic lighted bottles and many other home accents and gifts from recycled materials.

Decoupaged bowls by Bombus, using recycled world maps! Another wonderful accent piece and so earthy! Bombus also makes a colorful postage stamp bowl that I love!


After nearly a decade of making clocks from a variety of materials (including recycled vinyl records), last year my husband (and partner) and I discovered SDF - sustainable design fiberboard - as an alternative to the mdf (medium density fiberboard) we'd been using for our clocks for many years. SDF is a wonderful material that is made from 100% recycled wood pulp and is formaldehyde free (one of the big drawbacks of using mdf is the formaldehyde off-gassing). We also switched from using acrylic paints to milk paints, a non-toxic, sustainable (as long as there are cows) and biodegradable alternative.
I don't want anyone to depart with any tightly held secret sources, but I'd love to hear comments about any sustainable, earth-friendly resources being utilized by our talented team - great info for artists who want to go green!!!
To see more beautiful, recycled, sustainable home decor, go to etsy.com and search "interiordesignteam" and "recycled". Also, there are so many more IDT artists utilizing earth-friendly materials that I may do a Part 2 next month!
Cheers!