Are you faced with an empty room following a move? Or maybe finally getting around to decorating after living somewhere for several years (we’ve been there…). Whatever your situation, sustainable home decor brands can help you combine aesthetically (and ethically) pleasing home goods to fill that blank canvas.
Let’s face it, much of what we bring into our homes doesn’t score high in the social or environmental stakes. So how do you decorate sustainably?
Aside from incorporating overall principles of sustainable interior design, you can narrow your search to sustainable home goods and accessories that are made by brands using responsible materials, ethical labor and green business practices.
To help in your search, we’ll soon be employing our new Brand Rating System to assess brands against a range of ethical and sustainability-related criteria, like transparency and climate impact. You can read more about that here.
We independently research all featured brands and we ask them to confirm their claims. In many cases we personally review recommended products. This post contains affiliate links which means we may earn a commission if you buy something. Learn more here.
Ethical Home Decor Ideas
We’ll start with the best of the best, like The Citizenry, who celebrates individuals makers from around the world through entirely fair trade certified manufacturing and a business model that reinvests 10% of profits into maker communities.
Let’s not forget LIKHÂ, a fair trade brand offering Filipino-crafted organic home decor that’s as biodegradable as it is adorable.
Index: Eco-Friendly Home Decor Brands
- LIKHA Jump to brand
- Village Thrive Jump to brand
- The Citizenry Jump to brand
- Ten Thousand Villages Jump to brand
- Parachute Jump to brand
- Uncommon Goods Jump to brand
- Etsy Reclaimed Furniture Jump to brand
LIKHA
About LIKHÂ
Price Range: $40–$180
LIKHÂ provides decor enthusiasts with a range of Filipino crafts made with natural materials.
Their affordable home decor—which includes planters, baskets, coasters, and ornaments—will add natural beauty and texture to any space. Add a Giraffe Planter to your terrarium, or start your house full of plants off on the right foot (er, hoof?) with any one of their coco coir animal planters.
LIKHÂ’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
The artisans who handcraft each fair trade home decor piece use natural materials specific to the region, including coconut coir, manilla hemp, seagrass, rattan wood, alpaca fiber, and mother-of-pearl. Most materials are byproducts of the agriculture industry.
Supply chain & labor practices:
LIKHÂ only works with ethical artisan partners scattered throughout the Philippines, all of whom earn 25% above the living wage. Some are World Fair Trade Organization-certified and LIKHÂ itself is pursuing Fair Trade Federation certification.
As members of the non-profit Nest Artisan Guild, everything they do is in pursuit of empowering small artisan communities in alignment with the UN’s SDGs.
Carbon commitments & green practices:
Offering fair trade home goods that are made by hand using locally sourced materials that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill, keeps their carbon footprint low.
Village Thrive
About Village Thrive
Price Range: $29–$170
Choose from Village Thrive’s selection of handcrafted natural home goods, ranging from planters and baskets to throw blankets and wall hangers.
Lovingly display all your favorite minimalist jewelry on their Arch Rattan Jewelry Hanger, or complete your nursery with the Beaded Baby Mobile.
Village Thrive’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
Balinese artisans use natural materials like organic cotton, bamboo, wood, leather, rattan wood, and clay.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Village Thrive supports local artisans in Bali, Indonesia, encouraging them to use traditional heritage techniques passed down for generations.
The brand is committed to providing these artisans with a sustainable income, as well as creating opportunities and helping lift them and their family’s out of poverty. Regular visits ensure ethical production practices, fair trade wages, and safe working environments.
Carbon commitments & green practices:
Products ship in compostable mailers, recycled protective packaging, and eco-friendly tissue paper.
The Citizenry
About The Citizenry
Price Range: $55–$$1,595
The Citizenry celebrates all individuals across cultures and continents.
All of their sustainable made home goods are decorative—including rugs, pillows, bedding, throws, fair trade blankets, and kitchenware— but their decor section alone is filled with a huge range of products that are both pretty and practical.
Shop big or small across a range of mirrors, vases, baskets, wall art and tapestries, coasters, trays, bookends, and planters. The Azibo Woven Wall Hanging will single-handedly solve that awkward space above your bed, though you can further spruce up that space with their alpaca wool throws.
The Citizenry’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
For soft goods and pillows, you’ll find materials like organic cotton, linen, and alpaca wool (which is basically an ethical cashmere alternative).
Other materials used in its eco-friendly decor range include FSC-certified hinoki cypress and Tikal wood, palm leaves, rattan, sansevieria fiber, hardwoods, bronze, ceramic, and more.
Most materials are locally-sourced as per each artisan partner, and some bear GOTS and/or OEKO-TEX certifications.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Across The Citizenry’s home decor, fair trade items are made in workshops around the world. You’ll see items from artisan partners in Japan, Mexico, India, and various countries in Africa.Regardless, fair trade practices are audited by the World Fair Trade Organization.
On average, The Citizenry pays twice the fair trade wage requirements as well as entrepreneurship grants, which allow them to grow their businesses.
Carbon commitments & green practices:
Unlike Target and Ikea (the fast fashion of the home goods world), The Citizenry implements a slow fashion ideology through handcrafted, limited quantity products to ensure it and the culture responsible for it are valued.
Ten Thousand Villages
About Ten Thousand Villages
Price Range: $7–$175
A Maker-to-Market model that puts people and the planet first makes Ten Thousand Villages unique. As one of the best fair trade home decor brands, TTV shows you that behind every handcrafted object, there’s meaning and a craftsman’s story.
They strike an ideal balance between offering fair wages and providing budget-friendly options across their range of affordable sustainable home goods, including lanterns, vases, statues, wall decor, textiles, baskets, and so much more. If you love setting a room’s mood with candles, upgrade them with the Stone Globe Candleholder.
Ten Thousand Villages’ Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
To name just a few materials in use, you’ll find candle holders made of recyclable iron, picture frames made from recycled saris and recycled hex nuts, and sculptures or bookends created out of sustainably sourced Kisii soapstone.
Supply chain & labor practices:
TTV was a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO), and holds partnerships with Level Ground Trading, the Fair Trade Federation, and Equal Exchange. They’ve invested over $100 million towards breaking cycles of generational poverty for 20,000+ makers in 30 developing countries.
Carbon commitments & green practices:
Aside from prioritizing renewable and natural material, they encourage the creative reuse of resources (i.e. textile scrap, water, and energy) from their artisan partners.
Parachute
About Parachute
Price Range: $29–$1,799
Parachute started with the aim to save lives (hence the name) with safe bedding, but soon expanded to areas outside the bedroom.
As one of our favorite sustainable rug brands, you can obviously find decorative rugs, but that’s not all. Throw pillows, vases, essential oil diffusers, baskets, throws, lamps, and curtains are more items that will save your otherwise boring room.
Parachute’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
Prioritizing natural materials, expect to find cotton, linen, wool/alpaca, organic jute, and natural rubber in their textile goods, some of which are certified by OEKO-TEX. Other materials used include palm leaves, ceramic stoneware, and powder coated steel.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Some of their home decor is made in India (like their Craftmark certified rugs), while others are produced in the United States. Many come from family-owned factories in Portugal, out of materials largely sourced in Europe or nearby in Egypt.
Carbon commitments & green practices:
Between offering rug samples and experimenting with circular products, Parachute wants to reduce wasted resources.
They’re Climate Neutral-certified and eco-friendly home goods bought online are sent in recyclable shipping mailers made from 80% recycled content.
Community & charitable giving:
Parachute partners with the United Nations’ Nothing but Nets campaign and run a mentorship program called the Home for Dreams Initiative. Through it, they partner with and provide grants to Black entrepreneurs to tackle some of the injustices faced by marginalized populations in the business world.
Uncommon Goods
About Uncommon Goods
Price Range: $18–$985
A company that prides itself on being all out of the ordinary, you’ll love the huge range of quirky sustainable home goods and accessories at Uncommon Goods. This curated online marketplace partners with small businesses and individual crafters all over the world and markets their products to a larger audience.
If you didn’t think an indoor compost bin could double as decor, let the Living Composter prove you wrong. Who would have thought decor could efficiently deal with food waste?!
If worms aren’t on your list of decor ideas, check out the Repurposed Book Tree crafted from upcycled books.
Uncommon Good’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
To feature on Uncommon Goods, home decor brands must utilize unusual, reclaimed, or recycled materials—from old books to old climbing ropes. Leather, feathers, or fur are strictly off-limits.
Supply chain & labor practices:
This Certified B Corp puts people first. Pay for hourly team members is more than double the federal minimum wage and provides entire family leave and education/training reimbursement benefits
As for their partner artisans, they pay a generous wholesale price and are always open to price adjustments and negotiations based on the maker’s need. For specific labor details per product, be sure to read the detailed maker descriptions.
Etsy Reclaimed Furniture
About Etsy Reclaimed
Price Range: Various
Etsy is one of the best and biggest platforms to directly support a global community of small artisans, craftspeople, and makers of all things—already making it an excellent source for one-of-a-kind handmade ethical home decor.
Add in the Etsy Reclaimed market, and you have a recipe for a mind-boggling amount for reclaimed, vintage, and used decor in any category imaginable, from the big (sustainable furniture) to the small (ornaments). If you’re in need of a way to display all your Etsy decor finds, Modern Timber Craft turns reclaimed lumber and barn wood into floating shelves and other storage pieces.
Etsy Reclaimed’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Materials:
Reclaimed wood is the reclaimed material of choice for many Etsy sellers, sourced from fallen logs, old pallets, salvaged timber, or even just old furniture. You’ll find lots of other creative material repurposing, including pipes, metal scrap, and more.
Supply chain & labor practices:
Etsy supply chains are usually small, and many of the artisans and craftspeople work out of their homes.
Carbon commitments & green practices:
With Etsy Reclaimed, you can help reuse materials that would likely go to waste otherwise. Etsy also offsets 100% of shipping carbon emissions for their sellers, and small, slow handcrafting means minimal emissions associated with manufacturing.
