Although a lot of us share our homes with our beloved pets, most interior design trends and styles are human-centered and focus more on the people's comfort rather than our pets'. Since our four-legged friends eat, sleep, play, and live a portion of their lives in our homes, our decorating and space planning ideas should include them just as must as they include us!
But how do you make pet essentials fit in your home without interrupting your spaces? Home design for your pets can be just as simple as choosing furniture for yourself.
Built-Ins
If you're starting a space from scratch, some space-saving solutions for your pet's food bowls include building them into the cabinet space in your kitchen. This can look like an open space at the end of your island where your pet's bowls can be placed in a "hutch" style, or it can be its own cabinet entirely. Built-Ins, however, require proper planning ahead of time. If done properly, you can even have a built-in space for a bed or crate space. Built In pet essentials allow the pet furniture to not only be easy to manage but can also fit perfectly with the decor of the rest of your home. What's great about giving your pet a built-in space for their own is that they, too, can enjoy what your home has to offer by being fully integrated with it.
Pet Perfect Fabrics
Often, our furry friends will leave more than just paw prints on our hearts. Pet fur and dander come with being a pet owner, and it's hard to manage a clean and tidy home if your pet is a big shedder (any husky owners out there?) Although it can be a little bit of an investment, advancements in textile technology have gifted us high-performance fabrics for upholstery that make it easy to sweep up fur and clean pet stains from little accidents. Consider microfiber fabrics that are so tightly woven together that pet hair has a hard time sticking to it making cleaning simple. Microfiber is not only easy to clean and sturdy, but is also available in an array of colors, patterns, and uses allowing you to find the perfect fabric that will take on anything your pet has to challenge it. For our frisky kitties that seek something to scratch, microfiber, faux suede, and synthetic polyester are best for resisting tearing from claws.
Designated Play Space
There is always one wild child in a family. In some cases, that may actually be your pet! Your dog gets the zoomies or your guinea pigs decide it's time to explore outside their cage. How do you manage pets that just want to play, but you don't want them to mess up your beautiful home? Establish a designated play space. In other words, set up an area where your pets are allowed to play freely in. Whether that be an area in the family room, their own room, or a combination of spaces in your home where their toys and messes are less likely to disturb you. For small pets like guinea pigs and rabbits, setting up a corner of your home with a small barrier is enough to give them the freedom to hop around without risking losing them under your sofa. For larger pets like dogs and cats, this task can be a little harder to manage but nonetheless possible.
Consider where this space is. Is there enough room for them to roam about freely? Do they have everything they need within reach? If your pets are big on messes, take a look at your flooring and consider how they might affect the wear and tear. Hardwood floors, for instance, require quick action cleaning to prevent absorption and staining and are much easier to scratch or dent. Ceramic tiling or laminates, however, are much easier to clean and are less likely to retain significant damage from claw scratches and stains.
These are some paw-some design ideas! Let us know in the comments how you've integrated your beloved pets into your home.
If you're ready to explore how else we can design for your furry friends, let's connect through a complimentary discovery call.