Looking for stylish Boho living room decor ideas? Here are budget friendly tips to help you create a beautiful Bohemian retreat
With my passion for interior design, I sometimes feel guilty for loving one aesthetic much more than another — rather like a parent having a favorite child.
In this confessional mode, let me admit to loving more relaxed, inviting styles more than any others, with Boho one of my chosen few. If you’re a Boho fan, how do you incorporate Bohemian decor ideas into a room?
The best Boho living room decor ideas work for neutral, earthy, and colorful interiors. Include natural materials, textures, and greenery. Add bold color and patterns through textiles, upholstery, pillows, throws, and rugs. Choose unique accessories, including folk art and vintage elements.
Boho is a casual, welcoming, slightly unconventional aesthetic that works well for a laidback living room. The joy of Boho is that it dovetails with many other styles and works with most color palettes, meaning you can refresh with Boho touches, rather than renovate completely.
I love Bohemian interiors because they have such a charming laidback style. It is warm, a little whimsical, and very liveable, in contrast to sleek, modern, and minimalist aesthetics.
It’s also versatile and can blend with an existing style, making incorporating Boho living room decor ideas easy.
Best Boho Ideas for a Neutral Living Room
Boho interiors are often characterized by bold, jewel tones, but that’s not true of contemporary, coastal, farmhouse, and Scandi-influenced Bohemian decor.
You can retain your serene, neutral living room and still enjoy a sprinkling of Boho.
#1. Embrace Natural Materials
Modern Bohemian living rooms tend to be more minimalist than the eclectic, maximalist Boho of the seventies.
Rooms are anchored by white, cream, or beige walls, with tan, taupe, and gray layered as accents.
Rather than vibrant colors and clashing patterns, neutral Boho is signaled through plenty of natural materials that add subtle textures and gentle earthy colors.
For example, incorporate pale wood, woven accents, jute, rattan, seagrass, and wicker for furniture and rugs.
Soft furnishings, upholstery, accent pillows, and throws are made from natural fibers, like raw cotton, unbleached linen, and nubbly wool.
#2. Bring the Outside In
Boho interiors are typified by plenty of greenery, which adds lush color and delightful textural interest to a neutral palette.
Include palms in terracotta pots, ivy trailing from shelves, and delicate ferns hanging from macrame baskets.
Include other natural elements like pampas grass, branches with blossoms, and informal flower arrangements.
Best Bohoemian Ideas for an Earthy Living Room
While neutrals remain timeless, this season’s colors are rich and earthy, ideal for Boho with a Southwestern, rustic, or global influence.
Start with a foundation color like terracotta or brown, and layer on gorgeous textiles and rugs.
#3. Display Textiles
Boho is often characterized by plenty of prints and patterns, which you can incorporate through textiles.
Stick to abstract and geometric patterns rather than florals, and indulge in spice tones, including charcoal, cinnamon, orange, and blue. Introduce textiles through upholstery, drapes, pillows, and throws.
One of my favorite purchases when traveling is a length of handmade or handprinted cloth. It doesn’t take up much space in my suitcase and can turn into a cushion cover or wall hanging. I adore the exquisite craftsmanship in Batik, Ikat, mud cloth, and Mexican embroideries.
I display them at home, often hanging a unique rug or tapestry from a curtain rail on the wall. They remind me of my adventures and bring a personal touch to my interiors.
Add further pattern and color to your earthy living room with rugs. Start with a neutral area rug and layer on vivid Mexican or Indian rugs to place visual attention in the middle of the room and create a more intimate space.
Alternatively, choose a single, stunning rug — like a Moroccan Berber — as the foundation of your room.
Bohemian style encourages overlapping of pattern and texture, so use more than one rug if you have a large space and no carpeting.
#4. Find Folk Art
Textiles aren’t all I collect when traveling — I also love picking up unique accessories with fascinating artistry.
I’ve traveled widely in Africa and love my collection of baskets, drums, and wooden carvings (rhinos are my favorite).
#5. Connect with Nature
Add natural inspiration to your earthy living room. Along with the wooden accessories I collect, I like to include handcrafted furniture, usually wood, bamboo, or rattan.
House plants are typically Bohemian, but cacti and succulents are essential if you’re doing a Southwestern-inspired look.
Best Maximalist Boho Living Room Ideas
If your taste runs along the lines of “more is more and less is a bore,” eclectic or vintage Boho is probably your style.
This Boho aesthetic embraces and mixes color, pattern, and texture — think free-spirited seventies hippy-style, and you have some idea.
#6. Clashing Colors
Eclectic Boho is all about bold, saturated colors, incorporating both the earthy shades of brown and orange, along with jewel tones like emerald green, burgundy, teal, purple, and gold.
Go maximalist with a bold wall and add colors from opposite sides of the color wheel to add intensity and contrast.
#7. Plenty of Patterns
Create a Bohemian fantasy by piling on the patterns through your favorite prints. Exuberant florals, polka dots, stripes, geometric, and folksy all live together in this joyful aesthetic.
Indulge your taste for leopard print (another of my favorites) and your delight in blowsy roses — anything goes.
#8. Vintage Elegance
The vintage, retro, faded, and lovingly worn all have a place in the maximalist Boho living room.
Create an inviting, intimate space by displaying favorite heirlooms, souvenirs, and special finds from thrift stores.
There is something particularly charming about vintage textiles, with their gentle, muted colors that match their more vivid cousins.
They also tend to have finishes like tassels, fringes, and velvet that signal Bohemian immediately.
Vintage and retro furniture is also Boho, so scour thrift and junk stores — even antique stores, if that’s in your budget – for unique pieces.
They don’t need to match and can be handmade or artisanal. These curiosities add character and individuality to your living room.
Look out for items with curved, uneven lines, carving, and weaving. Avoid formal, angular, and graphic lines, which aren’t Bohemian at all.
Also, consider natural fibers, like rattan, reclaimed wood, and painted items, especially with a folk-art touch.
One of the most typical Boho furniture items is the pouf or ottoman. These multipurpose items can work as footrests, additional seating, and even storage if you can find those handy hollow ones.
Final Thoughts
The casual Boho aesthetic is ideal for living rooms because it creates an inviting, laidback ambiance. Incorporate Bohemian elements into your living room, whether you enjoy a neutral, earth-toned, or colorful palette. Include pattern and texture in your textiles, upholstery, and accessories, focusing on nature-inspired materials, fabrics, and decor.
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