Ethnic décor: ideas and tips for decorating your home with taste

Decorating your home in ethnic style means creating a welcoming atmosphere, warm and homely, that evokes remote and exotic places. If you see yourself as adventurous, curious, energetic, perhaps a little eccentric and a lover of travel, then this is the style for you! At the heart of ethnic décor are warm tones, natural materials and references to travel and distant lands. It is a very colourful style, with many shades and variations, and in recent years it has become especially fashionable. While this popularity has made ethnic-style furniture and accessories easier to find than in the past, it has also led to the mass marketing of products labelled “ethnic” that are not actually handmade and, therefore, not authentic. As a result, there is a high risk of ending up with rooms that feel impersonal and unoriginal. To help you give your home a unique and special touch and convey genuine emotions, in this article we will share plenty of ideas and useful tips for creating the right atmosphere in your home. What's more, you can buy all the images in this article directly online from our photographic art gallery as modern pictures and prints.

The history and main features of ethnic style

Ethnic décor has its roots in the distant past, when the first travellers began to explore faraway, unknown and exotic places. In those days, journeys to places such as Africa, the Orient or Latin America were especially long, dangerous and expensive. As a result, the objects these travellers brought back from their adventures always aroused great curiosity and admiration at home, shrouded as they were in the mystery of those unknown lands and embellished by the fantastic tales that came with them. Because these journeys were so costly and dangerous, objects from such remote places were particularly rare and expensive, and displaying them at home was a way of showing an adventurous spirit and flaunting one's wealth.

Although people commonly talk about a single ethnic style, in reality there are several variations inspired by their places of origin: Oriental from China and Japan, Arabic from Morocco, Central American from Mexico, and African, which is undoubtedly the most widespread and the one we will focus on most in this guide.

Decorating in ethnic style

To decorate your home in ethnic style, you need to keep in mind the constant references to nature, to travel and to exotic places. The materials to use are therefore wood (especially rattan and teak, widely used for furniture), bamboo cane, straw, brushed iron and brass, wicker (an excellent choice for seating), rice paper and papyrus to decorate your walls, terracotta for vases and cotton for fabrics.

Sofas and seating are a central element of ethnic décor: they should be in a neutral colour so that they form the base for the rest of the visual composition, which features very warm, vivid colours. Accessories and fabrics are also very important in giving this style its distinctive character. So let your creativity run free with curtains, rugs, stylised sculptures, wooden or ceramic vases, exotic lamps, colourful cushions, scented candles and incense, drums or tribal masks. Anything that carries our imagination to faraway places is an excellent candidate for ethnic style. Another original way to personalise your décor is to display photos and souvenirs from your travels, creating a direct link with emotions from your past.

Thanks to its versatility, we can either decorate our whole home in ethnic style or use just a few pieces to create a refined contrast in rooms furnished in another, more neutral style: for example, ethnic furniture or accessories in a home with modern décor make a superb contrast. As a general rule, it's important not to overdo the elements of this style because, given its heavy use of warm, vivid colours, you risk creating an oppressive atmosphere or taking away light. In these cases, you can turn to black and white pictures and prints to lighten the tones of the room. Below are a few images that could do the job.

To strengthen the connection with nature while evoking faraway places, an excellent solution is to decorate your home with exotic plants that harmonise with the rest of the décor. You can achieve a similar effect with nature pictures and prints in colours that go well with ethnic style, like the ones we suggest below.

The themes and colours of ethnic style

An ethnic interior should evoke the vivid colours of African sunsets, the multicoloured bustle of fabrics and spices in a Moroccan bazaar, the calm of animals drinking at a lake and the villages of indigenous tribes. The basic colours to use, then, are the warm shades of the setting sun, such as red, orange and yellow, the brown and soft green of the savannah, and the blues of the sky and lakes. Strong, vivid contrasts are very welcome, while white should be avoided and neutral colours kept to specific pieces, such as sofas and armchairs.

When putting together your colour scheme, bear in mind that too many dark or vivid colours can make the atmosphere heavy and gloomy. With several colourful pieces in a room, a useful idea is to paint the walls in neutral tones to lighten the space and bring back brightness. For wall decoration, we can use pictures and photographic prints depicting scenes from these exotic places, natural landscape prints or abstract and stylised subjects, geometric designs and tribal motifs.

Now you are truly ready to give your ethnic-style home your own unique touch! Share this article with your friends. Don't forget that you can buy all the modern prints we have shown you in this article online from our gallery. And if you need specific advice for your décor, get in touch: we will answer your questions!