Why Choosing Vegan Interior Design is to Your Benefit

Why Choosing Vegan Interior Design is to Your Benefit

Over the last few years, there has been an exponential growth in veganism across all industries. Consumers, whether vegan or not, have voted with their dollar for products free from animal cruelty. Vegan interior design is one of the industries that is seeing this major shift in mentality. 

modern kitchen
A Modern Kitchen

What is Vegan Interior Design?

Vegan interior design is interior design without the use of animal products and free from cruelty. Unfortunately, many people unknowingly support a vegan home. Veganism aims to practice a lifestyle that inflicts the least amount of suffering. At first glance, you may overlook the animal products in your home, but there are probably a few staple items derived from animal sources.  Leather sofas, wool carpets, and down pillows are some of the main animal-based products found in homes. If you’re interested in learning more about vegan alternatives, check out this blog post: “Vegan Interior Design: Best Secrets.” 

In addition to reducing harm, vegan interior design aims to create a sanctuary for you to live your best life. Whether you have a tiny house or a mega-mansion, you want to feel safe, happy, and comfortable in your home. 

So now that you understand the general goal of vegan interior design, why should you incorporate it into your home? Why is choosing vegan design beneficial for you and your family?

An Eclectic Living Room

Align Your Values with Your Aesthetic

First off, wouldn’t it be wonderful if you enjoyed spending time in your home, rather than feeling overwhelmed or uncomfortable? Thoughtfully choosing your space’s furniture, products, and layout creates a sense of calm within your home. Even if you are a fan of the bright, colorful, and patterned design, it can be a calm sanctuary. Choosing vegan design is a great way to align your home’s aesthetic with your values. Luckily, vegan design products are just as beautiful, durable, and functional as traditional design products, so there is no compromising! We are all conscious of the products we put in our bodies (food) and use on our bodies (beauty products). However, we don’t often think about the products we sit, lie or walk on. By choosing vegan interior design, you are choosing to increase the comfort, safety, functionality of your home without the cruelty. 

living room with ottoman
A Modern Living Room with Vegan Leather Pieces

Vegan Interior Design is Safer

vegan kitchen nook
Vegan Kitchen Banquette

Safety and health is another crucial aspect of vegan design. You may hear from mainstream interior design sources that leathers, downs, and wools are safe for your family to use. And while this may be the case if you are producing the material yourself, most of us are not. Most interior design materials are sourced from large, automated operations where the quality of the products is overlooked to make a profit. 

For example, almost 90% of the leather goods produced use chrome-tanning, the process of dying leather to make it durable enough to be used. Chromium is a toxic heavy metal that can harm the respiratory system and reproductive systems. While using or wearing a chrome-tanned leather product may not harm you, the manufacturing process is where you see significant adverse impacts. Up to 50% of the chromium used in the manufacturing process is leached into the environment. Since most of the leather processing is done overseas, there is little regulation on chemical dumping. In addition to chromium, there are many other harmful chemicals used in tanning leather, like formaldehyde. 

You may be thinking, ‘haven’t humans been tanning leather for over 5000 years?’ Yes. Humans have been using animal hides for over 7000 years but mainly through a process called vegetable tanning. Vegetable tanning uses fewer chemicals but requires more skill, time, and money to accomplish. 

So what does this have to do with safety? Safety goes beyond just the four walls of your home. It extends to the people involved in creating the furniture you plan on using as well. By choosing vegan products as alternatives to the mainstream animal products, we choose safety for industrial laborers. We are choosing to support a healthy and safe environment for our planet. 

It’s the Ethical Choice

Another significant reason to choose vegan design is for ethical reasons. Non-vegan design uses animals for exploitation and profit with very little respect or regard for the living animal.  Large industrial animal agriculture operations are necessary to produce enough animal products for big-box retailers and their clientele. By eliminating the need for animal products, vegan design chooses not to exploit animals by using their bodies for profit. Vegan design is cruelty-free and often aligns more with peoples’ core values than traditional interior design. Most people want to be in harmony with nature and wouldn’t use animals in our homes if we had to raise and care for them ourselves. We can see a picture of a cute baby cow and feel empathy towards it, which is precisely the reason we shouldn’t be using their skins for our sofas. 

We all care about animals, and many of us have pets we love like family. But often, there is a disconnect between the animals we treat like family and the ones we use for our benefit. By having compassion for other living creatures and embracing vegan design, you are creating a home that is a sanctuary and free from suffering and cruelty. 

cow and dog are the same
The only difference is in your own perception.

A Glimpse into the Future

A Custom and Modern Bar

Lastly, you should choose vegan design because it is the future of interior design. As with any industry, new and innovative technology evolves every year, even every month. The trends in vegan interior design are moving towards reducing animal products and rethinking how we use plants. With exciting developments like pineapple leather, industry leaders are reimaging how manufacturers can use plant waste. By diving into vegan interior design now, vegan design experts will equip you with the knowledge needed to learn about this changing industry.

Vegan interior design does not mean you have to change your entire lifestyle to be vegan. Instead, it means adopting a plant-based design style that promotes animal welfare, environmental protection, and a healthier, sustainable home. I highly recommend choosing vegan interior design for any homeowner or even renter who wants to make a difference in their life and the world around them. 

Since transforming my business from a traditional interior design firm to a vegan interior design firm, my clients and business contacts have been excited and open to changing their views on design. While the term ‘vegan’ may be novel in the design world, it doesn’t mean that vendors, designers, and clients aren’t open to learning what the term entails. I have found that more people embrace vegan interior design than shy away from it. 

So, is vegan interior design for you?

The short answer is yes; it’s for everyone. It is a choice to reduce suffering on our earth and live in a home free from cruelty but still full of beautiful, functional, and luxurious design. While the industry continues to grow, we will see exponential growth in available home goods that I hope will inspire the future generation of homeowners.

If you are excited about vegan interior design and would like to learn more about how you can bring it into your home, contact me today to book a discovery call. Let’s create the home of your dreams and design a sanctuary. 

Sources:

The Dangers of Chrome Tanning on the Environment

Three Reasons You Should Avoid Leather in Your Home

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