Africa is a lovely exotic location with a wealth of cultural heritage and distinctive interior design. Some designers are influenced by African culture for several reasons. For some, a photographic safari landscape is a dream, while others want to get cozy in their twin foam mattress and intends to enjoy theirs from the cultural perspective. Whatever it may be, there are plenty of ways to integrate some timeless African decors into your room.
Whether you have a taste for modern, eclectic, or minimalist design, you could see that the African style is thrilling and compatible with everything. Since African textiles, sculptures, and works of art have a lot of colors and textures, it can be easy to incorporate them into contemporary design.
African Culture and Design
Lately, the home decor trends are influenced by eclectic and inspirational patterns and accents with a different personality African decor.
A style that is both calming and at once fascinating, African decoration involves handmade fabrics, artifacts, and accessories that have been culturally significant to indigenous and artisans across the globe. It may include animal prints, ornamental baskets, tribal masks, pottery, and other unique artworks. Africa’s decoration is primarily influenced by nature, vibrant fabrics, wild animals, and different traditional wood sculptures.
There are a lot of reasons why individuals seem to be influenced by African-style designs. Some may be enjoying the idea of taking pictures on a safari, while others merely appreciate the’ region’s different cultural and historical views.
Styles of African décors
If you’re interested in putting some touch vivid African vibe into your room, here are some of the styles that you might want to check out:
Traditional
There are two ways to decorate your home through traditional or ancient African decoration and furnishings:
1. Colonial: Decorating using old furniture from trading countries
2. Tribal: Decorating using old furniture from the indigenous people of Africa
In modern times, designers often mix up these decors in an eclectic style. It’s combining aspects of both traditional and contemporary furniture and giving a fantastic dynamic and vibrant spaces.
Nature-inspired
In the temporal landscapes of Africa, there is much to stimulate one’s creativity:
- The Equatorial’ Jungle’s deep and lush green forests;
- Eastern’ Africa’s blue seas;
- Central Savannah plains stretch in unfathomable distances;
- Ancient rolling forms of desert dunes;
- The rocky highland mountains;
- Bright desert flowers of Namaqualand
The list leaves infinite and unique impressions that can take your breath away. It is where natural materials such as wood, vines, pebbles, stones, and clay flourish.
Textures can come to the play as they can be discovered in all the natural fibers and the products produced. It can include textiles, floor coverings, bed linen, and other creative creations such as wood carvings.
Spaces with gently subtle earth tones can provide a relaxing atmosphere and calm environment. To catch one’s eye, consider adding some touches of natural greens, burnt wood and splash of water as accents. Use black, indigo, or chocolate for a more drastic look for visual effect.
Lush jungle greens
Natural greenery becomes an inspiration for an African narrative decor tale that talks volumes about the lush forest setting in Africa.
African palette
An African color palette consists of warm earthy tones of rust, the numbers, mud, and graphite. If used cautiously, a similar friendly atmosphere can be added to’ one’s home.
Moreover, your home can have a contrast and dramatic impact with bright red. Natural fiber rugs can settle your space on the ground. Also, luxurious leather and dark burnt woods can provide offset patterns that can be found in artifacts and fabrics.
Tips on Designing an African-inspired Space
African style is about using elements like earthy tones and natural materials in your room. With this, here are some of the interior design tips that can help you bring African vibe right into your bedroom:
Less is always more
When it comes to decorating a space with modern African decor, don’t fill your room with ornamental masks, traditional chairs, tables, or anything like that. Instead, consider installing tiles on your floor made from either terracotta or sandstone.
Moreover, you can also opt for a plain concrete floor that has been stained, as this style is also prevalent in most areas of Southern Africa. This is mostly because these floors stay cool in warm environments. Also, consider putting sisal mats on top of them if you choose to go with this sort of flooring. In terms of walls, they’ll complement best when painted in neutral colors like beige, cream, or brown.
Otherwise, if you prefer, paint the other one or two opposite walls that look like rich clay or terracotta colors. Another common African design element is using textured paints. It is a paint that has a rough sandy texture, once applied it to a surface.Opt for African-style warm colors.
Since the African design style comes from Africa, its’ style’s primary colors have a warmer palette. You will mostly see the following colors such as red, yellow, orange, brown, burgundy, and the likes.
African designs have no cool colors at all. Using warmer colors will tend to make any room feel like’ it’s filled with daylight, even on colder days, and particularly in settings where’ there’s hardly much sunlight.
Brighter color for walls
With a brightly colored wall, you can make the details pop up in an African-type room. Of course, it is essential to remember that African-inspired interior design isn’t just about vivid and vibrant. However, this can be altered by highlighting specific parts of a wall by painting it either in mango or cherry color.
At the same time, take note of how a traditional or modern African space looks. You’ll see that there are tiny cottages covered in clay and other inexpensive materials. It implies that in your own homes we could find articles that are somewhat similar –without using clay literally.
You can consider using an ordinary or Venetian-style plaster, more structural wallpaper, and embossed mixtures intended to mimic various surfaces.
Use natural materials for decors
African home decorations are produced entirely from natural materials such as straw, wood, clay, and leaves. When searching for African decoration in your own home, you should consider choosing items that are also made from natural materials like a latex mattress, keep up with the vibe. For instance, choose woven drapes for your windows or wooden frames to hang for your walls.
Regardless of its shape and size, wood is highly essential for the general African design idea. If’ you’re searching for a fuller traditional look, both ceramic and antiques are excellent ways to convey the African theme to your home best.
Besides, many African tribes are very enthusiastic about various types of arts and crafts, which is something you should also consider. For example, think of an African tale that you like that is strongly connected with culture and show it either with wallpaper or a wet plaster fresco.
Put some subtle African flavor
Throwing down a rug with zebra stripes on it doesn’t imply that you’ve taken African style into your interior design. However, it can still be beneficial by merging tiny parts of this style with another form of design.
For instance, adopting a more tropical-type theme can help you accomplish an excellent African-type look. It’s a theme that will also allow you to mix some aspects of Africa – you can throw in a few Asian and South American vibes. Consider ethnic textiles.
Many individuals are already acquainted with various kinds of African-style motifs, such as “Ornament ikat” and “Zebra Pattern,” primarily from stuff they’ve seen on the Internet.
These two themes are usually considered to be the most popular. However, many others contain distinct kinds of tribal figures that are universal in the general décor. It can be seen on items such as bed linen, contemporary area rugs, draperies, and mattress online.
Women in various African tribes have been the ones for many centuries to weave plain fabrics and carpets, many of which have these different motifs on them. These are considered to be very special because they formed the images knitted on them which are practically on point.
On the other side, textile companies usually create various pieces concentrating on African patterns, which means finding the right types of textiles is not that simple.