10 Ways to Add a Coastal Touch to Your Home
We have always been in love with coastal, tropical decor in homes and offices. If you couldn’t tell how in love we are with coastal living, take a peek at our name. We’re so obsessed, we’ve created an entire business out of it. Because of our love for coastal living, we’ve managed to do a bit of research here and there to learn about what beachy decor entails...by ‘a bit’, we mean an absurd amount of research over the years. Here, we’ve narrowed down 10 of our favorite, incredibly simple ways to incorporate coastal design into your own spaces. Feel free to incorporate a tiny piece into your home, or use all of our inspirations and turn your entire house into a beach house— we’re here for both of those options!
P.S: we’d love to see how you use these ideas as inspiration— tag us on instagram! #CoastalCo
Beach Prints + Photos
We may be biased, but this is our go-to when furnishing our homes with more coastal pieces. We are, after all, called Coastal Co. for a reason (*wink*). Adding a fun beachy print to any room will immediately add more of a coastal vibe to the space. If you want a certain beach or holiday remembered, we’re here! We have prints from so many beaches around the world— Bondi Beach, beaches in the Mediterranean, the Maldives, and we’re constantly looking for more beaches to photograph! This is definitely the easiest way to add a coastal touch to your home, office, or even as a gift for a friend’s space!
Our prints also come with a framing option, and we’ll go deeper into the use of wood adding coastal flair to your space but here’s a teaser: our prints can be framed with a white wooden frame, or a natural timber frame, and both options look absolutely stunning among coastal decor (or even as a statement piece in a room needing a pop of coastal!)
Artwork
Similar to our aerial beach prints, adding other kinds of beach-inspired art pieces, or even abstract pieces with pops of color, add so much to the coastal, beachy theme of a room! You don’t even need to spend a whole lot of money on these pieces- coastal living is about tapping into your inner creative, breezy, simple self! We actually like to DIY a lot of the art pieces in our home! You don’t need any artistic ability, we promise! We’ll simply paint a few shapes and lines on canvas, or find an image on Pinterest that inspires us, and go from there!
Fruit
The most practical way to add a coastal, tropical flair to your home is literally by using fruit. Fruit that most people consider tropical like pineapples, guava, passionfruit, or mangos add the perfect tropical touch to your home! Gather them in a decorative bowl and let them be a (yummy) focal point for guests! These fruits are obviously seasonal, but you can use that to your advantage and take it as an opportunity to feature and try different new fruit as the season goes on!
Tropical House Plants
My second personal favorite way to incorporate a beach vibe to any space in my house is through houseplants. I’m a sucker for a nice tropical houseplant, but at this point, any plant will do. My favorites for adding a tropical touch to my home are monstera deliciosas (such a popular one!), banana plants, pothos, and snake plants! All of these are incredibly easy to care for and also help increase the air quality in the rooms that they’re placed in!
Bonus tip: the planters that you choose to place your plants in can make such a difference in accentuating the design of a space. I like to place my plants in planters that either show off a quirky, abstract design, or I’ll put it in a jute basket to elevate the coastal vibe of the room! See which designs and shapes stand out to you next time you’re plant shopping.
Light, Breezy Textiles + Curtains
This is another incredibly easy and low-maintenance way to add a sense of coastal living to your home. Using light, breezy materials around your home make such a difference in the feel of the space. We love using our linen curtains so that sunlight can get through! This is different for everyone’s taste (I’m talking about you, blackout curtain folks) but if you’re okay with the sunlight streaming in in the mornings, lighter fabric is perfect! If you need complete darkness in order to sleep, consider a breathable sheet set or chic throw blanket!
Getting rid of thick, bulky fabrics like wool and replacing it with fabrics that don’t necessarily have to be thinner, just ones that seem lighter, will transform the space in the easiest way! If you live in a colder climate but love the coastal vibe, we suggest flannels or 100% cotton.
Texture
Playing into texture can add so much to your home’s decor, regardless of the overall theme you’re going for! For a coastal vibe, we love adding rope or macrame to add texture to decor pieces. Macrame wall hangings are so trendy this season, and they add the perfect touch of coastal! They’re also incredibly easy to DIY and style to match any room! We’ve also been loving woven baskets lately. These are so functional and so cute!
Don’t be shy to play around with the textures in your home! Think of the coziness of a beach house or cottage— picture the accent pillows and throw blankets and how the linen pillows contrast against the thick-woven basket they’re stored in. Think of the smooth leaves of a houseplant and how they contrast against the cool porcelain of a trendy planter! There are so many options to play around with when it comes to texture, and we’re obsessed.
Light Colors
When you think of a coastal holiday, you immediately think of the sunshine, right? Incorporate that into your home! I am a sucker for a monochromatic (usually all-black) outfit, but when it comes to my personal spaces, I am all for light shades of neutral colors and pastels. If I wouldn’t wear the color on holiday, I wouldn’t make it the focal color of my home decor! Lighter colors open up your space, making it appear larger than it is. Having all black and grey furniture, while stylish in its own way, isn’t exactly something we’d consider coastal. You can, however, accent them with lighter textiles and surrounding pieces and decor! Super easy!
Pops of Color
On the idea of lighter colors, pops of color add coastal flair to your space as well! Our “color pop choices” vary with the seasons, but right now, we’re loving pops of green, yellow, and peach around our home! Moral of the story: stay away from too many dark colors when decorating a coastal-themed space!
Natural Light (or Its Artificial Counterpart)
This is something that I make sure is in every home and office I consider when moving. I absolutely love an abundance of natural light in my spaces. I thrive in the sunlight, and I think it’s in my tropical lineage, but I cannot function when it’s dark and gloomy outside. It’s unrealistic to expect floor-to-ceiling windows to allow sunlight in every space and climate, but, when, possible, we like to open the windows to let the sunlight in for as long as possible! On gloomy days when we really need some sunlight, we like to pretend by installing full spectrum light bulbs instead of fluorescent ones, because full spectrum bulbs mimic sunlight! Anything other than harsh, fluorescent lighting is perfect, in our opinion.
Natural Woods and Wood-like Pieces
If we could, we would literally take driftwood off the shores on holiday and find a way to add them to our home decor. Since we can’t do that, we have resorted to finding natural, untinted frames and shelves. Similar to the way that lighter colors add depth to the space and give the illusion of having more space, natural woods brighten the walls that they’re on (if they’re shelves and frames), and add a minimal, beachy touch to any room!
These are just some of the ways that we’ve been trying to incorporate coastal living into our spaces, regardless of the season. Until we can live beside the ocean all year long, we’ll be aspirationally decorating our homes to pretend that we can go outside and enjoy the ocean air every morning instead of the chaos of the city. Coastal living is a whole vibe, and we’re so excited to be able to give you some beachy inspirations!
