Atlanta is a city in the trees. Technically a rainforest, which is such a cool fact, and it explains almost everything about how I use color. So when people ask me about biophilic interior design, I don't start with the research on cortisol or productivity. I start with the view out my window: layer upon layer of green, never matching, always working. Biophilic design is just the practice of letting that logic indoors, and most homes need far less equipment than the trend suggests. You don't need a living wall. You need nature's palette, natural materials, and real light.
Here's how I think about it, as a designer and as a painter.
What biophilic design actually means at home
Strip away the jargon and biophilic design is three moves: bring in living things, choose materials that came from somewhere real, and let daylight run the room. A fiddle-leaf fig in a corner is a start, not a philosophy. The rooms that feel genuinely restorative get all three layers working together, the way a garden does. And they stay livable. Houses should be lived in, and a room you're afraid to water a plant in has missed the point entirely.
Green and blue are forever colors
The sky is blue and the trees are green. You can never get tired of looking at a blue sky, so I don't think you can ever get tired of seeing blue in your home, and the same goes for green. That's the whole case for building a biophilic palette around them: nature has already done the market testing. Green also happens to have more shades than any other color in the rainbow, which means a green room never has to be one note. Moss, olive, celadon, bottle green. The trick, as always, is undertones. A yellow-green and a blue-green in the same room will quarrel unless something mediates, so pick your lane and let the plants supply the variation.
The rug is the garden
If you want a room to feel grounded in nature, start with the actual ground. Wool is the original biophilic material: sheared, spun, and dyed, nothing synthetic about it. A solid green rug does quietly what a wall of planters does loudly, which is why the CHROMA solid color wool rugs earn their place in this conversation. Hand-crafted in New Zealand wool, saturated the way a lawn is saturated after rain, they give you the green story underfoot and leave the walls free for light and art. If your palette leans blue, same collection, other lane.
Florals without the greenhouse
My love of layered, patterned, abundant interiors comes straight from the abundance of our landscape here. Florals are how you get that abundance without turning the house into a nursery you have to maintain. A floral pillow against a solid sofa, botanical drapery in a bedroom, The Meadow floral decor on a bench that needed one more layer. Pattern pulled from nature reads as life even when nothing in it needs watering. That's the perfectly imperfect mix I'm always chasing: real plants, woven ones, and the contrast between them.
Light, unfiltered
Daylight is the one biophilic element you cannot buy, only unblock. Pull the heavy drapery back to the edges of the glass, keep sheers if you need privacy, and stop putting tall furniture in front of windows. I'm a sunshine person, and I will trade a bookcase for a window's worth of morning light every single time. Watch how the light moves through your rooms for one weekend before you buy anything green; the plants will live where the light already is, not where the empty corner happens to be.
Complete the room
The pieces I'd add around the green: planters that look like objects rather than buckets, botanical art, and a watering can you don't have to hide.
Biophilic design questions, answered
What is biophilic interior design in simple terms?
Designing with nature instead of just near it: living plants, natural materials like wool, wood, and stone, colors drawn from landscape, and as much daylight as the architecture allows.
Do biophilic rugs have to have leaf or plant patterns?
No, and I'd argue they mostly shouldn't. A solid wool rug in a deep natural green does the job with more sophistication than a printed jungle. Save the literal botanicals for pillows and drapery, where a little goes further.
What if I kill every plant I bring home?
Choose forgiving ones, pothos, sansevieria, a rubber plant, and put them where the light is rather than where you wish it were. Then let materials carry the rest: wool, linen, rattan, and wood bring nature in with zero mortality rate.
Does biophilic design work with traditional interiors?
Beautifully. The English and the French have been painting rooms garden-green and hanging botanical prints for two centuries. It's the least modern idea in design; we just gave it a new name.
Keep reading
For the layered look that all this greenery deserves, start with the art of layering textures and patterns, then see why organic paint belongs on the shortlist and how warm wood floors set the ground floor of a natural palette.
