Finding perfection in the imperfections is an excellent motto to live by. Not only does that apply to life, but it applies to your home. Chances are, your home decor will never be perfect, which is where the idea of Wabi-Sabi comes in. This Japanese aesthetic encourages appreciation for the imperfection and impermanence of items. Instead of perfection, it focuses on simplicity, acceptance, and authenticity. If you’re frustrated with your home aesthetic and feel like you just can’t get it right, you might want to swap to the Wabi-Sabi idea of home decor to accept your home just the way it is. This includes using organic, textured wood material, incorporating many handmade items, and using vintage and worn items to your advantage.
Opt for Handcrafted Furniture
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There’s never an item of handcrafted furniture that’s perfect, which is why it’s perfect for Wabi-Sabi. Instead of choosing expensive furniture with straight, clean lines, reduce stress and simply choose unique, handmade pieces that showcase natural imperfections. These imperfections include uneven surfaces, minor dents, or slight color variations. Besides, having a story behind your furniture makes it a great conversation piece.
Choose Textured Fabrics
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Even though organic, natural fabrics are typically imperfect, they make excellent additions to your Wabi-Sabi room. Ensure you use fabrics with natural textures like linen, cotton, or wool. The more natural your space feels the more cohesive the imperfections will feel when you work into your space. Use these fabrics as accent pieces for your pillow, blankets, or art.
Display Worn or Distressed Items
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Because distressed items look imperfect, they make excellent additions to your Wabi-Sabi home decoration. You can embrace gently worn or distressed furniture, such as a vintage leather armchair, vintage throw pillows, a vintage suitcase, or a weathered wooden table, and display them in your living room as focal points.
Integrate Unfinished Wood
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Many people walk in the forest simply to look at the trees. You can incorporate this natural element of Wabi-Sabi into your home using raw, imperfect, or unfinished wood for furniture, shelving, or flooring. This is an easy way to showcase the beauty of natural grain. Bringing natural elements into your home also helps reduce anxiety and improve mood.
Incorporate Handmade Pottery
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The best way to display imperfect items is to incorporate hand-thrown ceramics and pottery that reflect the irregularities of the craft. If you’ve recently taken up pottery, you can incorporate your art into your home by displaying your pieces on your coffee table or bookcase.
Celebrate Cracks and Chips in Decor
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Instead of hiding items with cracks and visible wear and tear, put them on display for everyone to see and celebrate! Strategically use items with visible cracks, chips, or wear, like cracked bowls or chipped vases. This works well with vintage items in your attic or pieces from your grandparents. Bring them out and celebrate their age and history.
Go for Muted, Earthy Colors
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Because Wabi-Sabi is all about the imperfections in life, it’s essential to choose colors inspired by nature, which is naturally imperfect! Use colors like muted browns, grays, greens, and ochres, which evoke a sense of warm, calm, organic earthiness. Use these colors in your pillows, blankets, artwork, and furniture.
Opt for Simple, Organic Shapes
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Avoid overly sleek, symmetrical designs in favor of organic, irregular shapes that feel more natural and evoke a sense of imperfection. Organic shapes look more welcoming and relaxing than straight, clean lines, especially when surrounded by other imperfect items like natural wood and handmade items.
Bring Nature Indoors
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The natural world is imperfect, which is what makes it so beautiful. Bring the natural world into your home by incorporating elements from nature, like branches, stones, and dried flowers, to evoke a sense of imperfection and transience. These don’t have to be overbearing, large pieces but subtle elements you can add to your home.
Incorporate Faded or Patinaed Metals
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Aged metals like brass, copper, or iron are naturally imperfect, which is why they bring additional warmth and character into your space when they have a natural patina. Use these as accent pieces in your home or as utensils, mugs, and trinkets displayed in your bookcase or on your shelves.
Use Worn or Vintage Rugs
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Head to your local antique shop and grab a worn or vintage rug with a story and perhaps some history. Choose ones with faded colors and patterns to evoke that nostalgic feeling of coziness and childhood. Incorporating woven rugs brings a feeling of peace and comfort to your space. These also act as great focal points for an otherwise simple room.
Embrace Asymmetry
Many home decoration aesthetics suggest using clean, straight lines. However, in the Wabi-Sabi style, asymmetrical furniture or decor, such as a lopsided bookshelf, mismatched table lamps, or uneven wall art, is essential to create visual interest and imperfection.
Install Natural Stone Surfaces
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Stone is everywhere on our planet, and it’s never perfectly shaped. For the Wabi-Sabi style home, incorporate stone countertops, tiles, or floors that display irregularities and natural veining for a more grounded, imperfect look. The more worn down and imperfect the stone, the better! You might be able to purchase stones that are dented or irregularities for sale at a low price.
Create a “Curated” Look with a Mixture of Old and New
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There’s no better way to combine the past and the present than by combining new items with antiques or heirlooms. This simple decoration style creates an eclectic, imperfect collection that tells a story. Head to your local vintage sale and pick up a few worn-down, imperfect items that seem to have a travel story to tell. Incorporate this with your modern furniture for an eclectic look.
Display Cracked or Unpolished Mirrors
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Even if they say a cracked mirror brings bad luck, it gives your home an appealing Wabi-Sabi aesthetic! Display mirrors with slight cracks or aged finishes that reflect the beauty of imperfection in your living room or bedroom. These can be smaller mirrors that you hang up as accents since they may not fully function well as a mirror.
Use Uneven Flooring
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Because Wabi-Sabi strives for imperfections, you must also consider your imperfect floors. To embrace irregularities in your space, opt for flooring with natural variations, like reclaimed wood or uneven stone tiles. Ensure these don’t inhibit walking through high-traffic areas but add a subtle and straightforward natural imperfection.
Opt for Handwoven Textiles
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Using as many handcrafted materials as possible in your Wabi-Sabi home decor is essential. This includes handwoven blankets, handmade throw pillows, or handmade curtains that showcase the unique patterns and textures of the weave that can easily be incorporated. If you love to travel, this is a great way to display all those handcrafted textiles you might have purchased as souvenirs during your adventures abroad.
Embrace a Simple Yet Functional Design
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Japanese home aesthetics favor simplicity. It’s essential to keep things minimal and focus on function over form when designing your Wabi-Sabi home. Do this by avoiding over-decorating and instead appreciating the beauty of simple items. Less is more when it comes to Wabi-Sabi, which is why a few statement pieces and worn pieces of furniture will do the trick.
Go for Natural, Worn Leather
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Because leather furniture or accessories have aged naturally, they will show wrinkles, folds, and patina as part of their charm. You can display leather pieces on your wall as art or use them across your couch or bedroom as functional statement pieces like blankets or pillows. Or, you can purchase a leather couch and use that as decor and as a statement piece.
Display Imperfect Art
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One of the most beautiful aspects of art is its imperfection. To incorporate this aspect into your home, hang art pieces with slight imperfections, whether a canvas with visible brushstrokes or an abstract piece with irregular edges. You could even grab your paintbrush and a canvas and paint abstract art to hang. It doesn’t have to be from a professional.
Incorporate Dried Flowers
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Instead of using a perfect bouquet that is perfectly shaped and cut, opt for the imperfect version and use dried flowers. Place dried flowers or arrangements in mismatched vases, embracing their faded beauty, cracked petals, and dried-up stems. Thanks to their vintage aesthetic, they make beautiful wall art, as if freezing flowers in time.
Choose Organic, Rough-Surfaced Glassware
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A beautiful part of the glass is its imperfections. While many people strive to have perfect glass tabletops in their homes, you can do the opposite and strive for glassware with all those imperfections. Try using glassware with imperfections such as bubbles, uneven edges, or slight color differences to capture the essence of Wabi-Sabi.
Create a Wabi-Sabi Garden
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Bring the Wabi-Sabi elements outside and incorporate an imperfect garden space with irregular stone paths, overgrown plants, sideways statues with broken pieces, and weathered garden furniture. Plan your garden to ensure it doesn’t look neglected and that the growing flowers and herbs are cared for.
Display Family Heirlooms or Keepsakes
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Placing your family history and vintage items around your home is an excellent way to showcase items passed down through generations. Embrace their worn, imperfect appearance as a representation of family history and vintage nostalgia. Every keepsake has a story to tell, which makes these decorations unique and ideal for Wabi-Sabi decor.
Embrace Broken or Repurposed Items
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Wabi-Sabi is the aesthetic to strive for revamping your home on a budget. Head to the thrift store and turn broken items, like a cracked vase, worn down statue, or a chipped cup, into decorative pieces, celebrating their imperfections by placing them in common areas in your room where your family and guests will see them. You could even wholly repurpose them and make a new decorative piece.
Display Worn Books and Paper
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Old, vintage, worn books make incredible decorations for the Wabi-Sabi home. Ensure you use old, worn books with frayed edges and faded pages as part of your decor. Their faded pages will help evoke nostalgia, history, and imperfection. If you have old journals and notebooks from childhood, you can also display them.
Create a Wabi-Sabi-inspired Bathroom
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If you have Wabi-Sabi elements in your kitchen, living room, and bedroom, you must incorporate them into your bathroom. Do this by adding natural stone tiles as flooring, rustic wooden shelves for storage, and simple, imperfect decor items throughout the bathroom, like handmade ceramic soap dishes or rough-textured towels.
Incorporate Textured Wall Finishes
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Instead of feeling stressed by imperfections in your painting or wallpaper, you can embrace them in Wabi-Sabi decor. Purposefully use textured wall finishes such as stucco, faded wallpaper, lime plaster, or uneven paint techniques to embrace the beauty of imperfection in your home’s surfaces. You can create a focal wall in your bedroom or do it throughout every wall in your home.