How to Fit Driftwood Furniture into Your Home Decor
When it comes to decorating your home, one of the most important things to do is to select the right furniture. Furniture comes in all shapes, colours, materials, and styles of course. You should choose what is right for you and the style that you want to create for your home. One increasingly popular option for furniture material is driftwood. You can incorporate it on a large scale or a smaller one.
Where Does Driftwood Come from?
Driftwood is actually a bit of an umbrella term that is used for any kind of wood that washes up on beaches or is found in the ocean. But that is also part of the appeal of driftwood. It can come from a wide variety of wood sources.
Most driftwood consists of smaller pieces of wood like sticks and twigs that come from large trees. Larger pieces might wash up from ships, logging facilities, floods in coastal areas, and more.
The Feel and Look of Driftwood
Although driftwood can come from a lot of different places, it does share a few common characteristics that make it attractive and desirable for use in home décor. Because driftwood floats for miles in the ocean, it absorbs a lot of salt and gets a lot of sun exposure. This causes those pieces of wood to become bleached or lightened extremely in colour.
Because driftwood is beaten around in the ocean by waves and weather, it gets worn down a great deal by the time it reaches the shore. The end result is that driftwood has a very smooth texture when you run your hand over it. This also eliminates a lot of the hard edges of the wood and leaves more rounded edges. Both these characteristics of driftwood, its lightness and its smoothness, give it a very natural look, which is why people like to use it in home décor.
Using Driftwood DIY Style
There are many furniture designers that like to adopt driftwood directly into their designs. This is a popular incorporation for a lot of outdoor furniture or beach-style pieces. But did you know that you can incorporate driftwood into your home yourself? There are many do-it-yourself types of driftwood projects you can explore. And if you live close to a beach, you have a pretty renewable source of material as well. You can talk a walk in the early mornings to see what new wood has washed up.
Home Décor Framing with Driftwood
One popular DIY driftwood method is adding small pieces of driftwood to already existing objects around your home.
For example, many people frame paintings, mirrors, or other objects in their home with small pieces of driftwood. This is a nice, subtle option that fits into almost any home or style. From far away, the driftwood blends in well together. The lightness of the driftwood creates a relaxed frame that complements whatever it is framing. As a viewer moves in closer, however, they can see and appreciate all the small and intricate details of the driftwood.
You can also feature driftwood as a centrepiece on a coffee table. Other decorative elements around the home can accentuate the driftwood, such as with a palette of whites and pale blues to complete a beach theme.
Bigger Driftwood DIY Projects
Although finding smaller pieces of driftwood along your local beach is more common, you can find bigger pieces of driftwood as well. These bigger pieces of driftwood are great to use for more ambitious DIY furniture projects, such as tables and chairs. Because these kinds of projects need to be sturdier and sometimes weight-bearing, you should make sure you have all the proper tools and materials.
This includes things like nails and screws for securing it in place. But you also may need tools for shaping the driftwood. One great tool for this is a sander, like the ones reviewed at Sander Solutions. Sanders allow you to smooth out any parts of the wood that are still rough. Electric sanders are also great for shaping pieces that you want to fit together.
