Using Garden Accessories to Decorate a Family Room

by Veronica Smith

Family rooms are a cozy, pleasant area of the home where families gather to spend time together. Decorating your family room by using gardening accessories can be a fun way to add a real down-home feel to your family room. There are lots of different garden accessories that you can use to create a nice visual effect.

Functional Items as Art

Sometimes it doesn't take a lot of thought to decide which types of gardening accessories would be perfect for the family room. If you have a family member that has a collection that lends itself to this type of decor, it can be a great way of not only displaying the collection, but also decorating the room. 

Some examples of this might include a collection of tractor or farming accessories, which can be used not only as art, but can even be incorporated into furniture accessories, such as a table or stand.  When you use collectibles in this fashion, you have the advantage of having a room that is decorated in a truly one-of-a-kind fashion that has a special appeal to the collector.

Floral Accents

You might also want to go with a more floral approach when choosing gardening related accessories for your family room. 

You could use a metal watering can as a vase to hold a floral arrangement. Using a piece of picket fencing along the bottom portion of one wall also can add a stylish and rustic garden look to a room.  Plain terra cotta flower pots can be used to create an arrangement, and could be used to grow flowers or herbs to add a nice natural touch to the room.

Sundials and Weathervanes

There are other items that are commonly used in the garden that can add an eye-catching accent to your family room. 

If you have a sundial, or perhaps a weather vane, these can be used in the family room as an attractive accessory.  An interesting and decorative garden trellis could even make a nice piece of wall art in the family room.

A colorful "Welcome" mat by the door leading into the family room can also be a nice touch.

Mailboxes

A fun idea that you can use in your family room to bring a little bit of the outdoors inside is to use either a rural mailbox or one that is designed to be mounted on the side of a house. 

This can actually be a good way of encouraging family organization in a stylish fashion. You might choose to have one mailbox to be used as "incoming mail" and another as "outgoing mail", and use them to organize mail flow.  Many of these styles of mailboxes can be quite stylish on their own, or you could choose to paint them to suite your own design needs.

Other Ideas

There are also garden touches you can add as furniture accents. You could make an end table from an oak barrel, or even install a garden swing as an interesting seating option in the family room. All of these ideas can be used to bring a little bit of the garden indoors.

While looking for an opportunity in decorating Veronica Smith found herself working with AmericanArtisanArt.com where she developed her own unique style for contemporary wall sculptures and metal wall sculptures