When I think of a Japanese house, I think of peace, tranquillity and calmness. What better atmosphere to have in your own home than that? In this article, I’m going to throw around some ideas that you can put to use to create your own Japanese inspired home. So first of all, let’s start with the colour scheme.

The Japanese are famous for their peaceful interiors and they achieve this ‘soothing’ feeling with natural, earthy colours such as blacks, browns, beiges and greens. They harmonise all of these colours together to create a relaxing atmosphere; often accentuated with deep reds. The walls are often painted a neutral colour like beige and rectangular tatami mats (supple straw mats with cloth edges) are used as floor coverings. A lot of silk is also used in the Japanese culture, take the Kimono for example, which can also be used to decorate walls.

Japanese design focuses heavily on simplicity and minimalism so make sure you get rid of any unnecessary clutter and keep everything else to a minimum or hide it in clever storage. The furniture used in a Japanese house also follows simple design with clean lines and often lies low down to the floor. For example, a Japanese dining table would be about the same height as a Western coffee table because the Japanese gear all of their furniture towards the floor. They sit on cushions at a dining table to eat their food, lie on simple futon mattresses to go to sleep and decorate their homes with simple pieces such as pretty floral arrangements or bonsai trees.

Another big design feature in Japanese houses is the use of shoji screens for doors, windows and room dividers (translucent washi (rice, hemp or wheat) paper over a wooden frame that holds together a lattice of wood) . This allows for plenty of natural light to flow through the room without having to use artificial lighting throughout the day.