Durango’s charm comes from a mixture of many unique elements and, undeniably, nature plays a large part in that charm. We know that having a serene and inviting outdoor living space is a wonderful way to take advantage of our beautiful surroundings, but there’s no reason to leave nature behind you when you close your door. There are a ton of creative ways to incorporate that wild charm inside your custom home or remodel. Read on to find out our five favorite ways to incorporate nature into your home.

Attached Greenhouses

Houseplants are a great way to keep touches of green in your home year round, but for a more robust selection and the added benefit of possibly growing your own food, a greenhouse attached to your house is a great option for any gardener or green thumb.

Any greenhouse will give you a longer growing season and the ability to expand the variety of plants you can grow and with the right mixture of plants and proper planning you could keep your plants growing year-round. An attached greenhouse means that all of those advantages will be accessible without having to trudge through snowdrifts in winter or even having to put on shoes any other time of year. Were you to create a sitting nook within your attached greenhouse you could have a lush and warm escape when the winter blues pop up mid-season.

Atriums and Courtyards

Having an open air space in the center of your house such as an atrium or a courtyard can really make it feel as if you’ve brought the outdoors in. You can get as creative as you’d like with this space: create a peaceful Zen garden, grow a stunning array of flowers, or even keep a live tree growing through the middle of your home.

Atriums and courtyards come with the additional advantage of being much more private than your typical backyard, so you get a more intimate and secure outdoor space that is usable at all times of the day. Being sheltered by the rest of your house, your atrium or courtyard will be accessible more often, even during windy days or other weather that might otherwise keep you inside. Additionally, such a space in the middle of your house allows you to throw open the windows for increased ventilation. Imagine fresh air circulating from both inside and out rather than trying to push through the whole of your house from one end to the other.

Exterior Pocket Doors

If an atrium just won’t work inside your home, but you love the idea of all of that fresh air, consider the ability to open your house more fully to the nature around you. A wall of windows can be a gorgeous accent in any home and provide unobstructed views to the outside of your home, but to fully embrace what lies beyond, imagine removing all such barriers altogether. All the windows you can plan for can’t measure up to the freedom and openness of exterior pocket doors. Better than your standard sliding glass doors, pocket doors slide away into your wall and completely out of sight leaving your entertainment space open to the outdoors and all of that fresh air.

Green Walls

Living walls can help bring nature into your home subtly.

To truly bring a bold splash of nature into your home there are few options as unique as a green wall (also called vertical gardens and living walls), a wall in your home that is bountiful with a blanket of live plants covering its whole. The inherent beauty that a living wall brings to a room comes with the valuable benefit of increased air quality. All plants help to filter toxins out of the air, so your collection of house plants does help, but a green wall can contain thousands of individual plants that all work nonstop in cleaning up the air you breathe. Some plants are better at filtering than others, so to truly maximize this benefit from your living wall pick an assortment of plants that brings a balance of unique beauty and high filtering ability.

Indoor Water Features

If air quality is a concern for you, having an indoor water feature offers the dual benefits of maintaining the balance of indoor air while bringing with it the feel of nature. A water feature can act as a large and aesthetically pleasing humidifier as water evaporates from the fountain into the air; in the typically arid environment of Durango, such a feature can be invaluable. Water features also create and release negative ions that assist in drawing dust and other impurities out of the air. Living in a house with naturally purified air and balanced humidity brings many health rewards from healthier skin to better respiration and overall wellness.

When you live in Durango you’re surely familiar with all that there is to gain from spending time in nature. Continuing that experience in your home, in whichever ways you choose, garners you those benefits day-to-day and at times when getting out into the wild isn’t an option. Adding any of these elements to your home plans would be an excellent way to embrace all that nature has to offer.

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