7 Ways To Make Your Minimalist Home Cozy And Inviting

Texture is HUGE.

If you take nothing else away from this article, learn to love the texture.

What does that mean exactly?

Basically, use a variety of materials and shapes that pull your room out from being flat.

In most rooms, this is as simple as using a mixture of cloth and hard materials like wood or stone. Throw pillows are a classic way to add some texture to the mix.

That means you should be strategic with your throws.

This is your chance to really make things pop and make your minimalist home inviting both visually and physically. But don’t go crazy with the pillows.

There is such a thing as too much. Two to four is probably fine for most rooms.

One way to add a lot of coziness and warmth into your space is by using throw blankets.

Throw blankets are a super-easy way to bring in new textures like chunky yarns, chenille, or even faux fur if that’s your thing – textures that probably aren’t getting in otherwise.

They really do add a nice cozy feature to an otherwise minimalist home.

One of my favorite throw blankets right now is a really lightweight baby alpaca throw.

It’s super soft and it makes me feel cozy every time I wrap up in it.

Of course, I’ve also taken up crocheting blankets. So, we have a lot of homemade blankets around my home, which also adds a nice personalized mix.

Need be though Amazon has some great cheap throw blankets too!

The third way that you can incorporate a little more of an inviting atmosphere and remove some of the sleek and sterile feelings of a room is by adding texture to the walls.

Now, this is an area where you should really be simple and strategic. So don’t bombard your walls and just call it texture!

A simple painting or a few geometric box shelves can be nice to really pull your walls out from feeling flat and oppressive.

Texture on the walls is also great for decreasing the echo and sound bounce.

So, your home will even sound cozier. I’ve seen a lot of people hang up a tapestry, or even use hats as wall decor.
It works as long as it’s done in a strategic way.

If you’re a ‘red’ kind of person, then splash away in your decor – but try to just use a splash.

Those bright overbearing colors on walls can have the opposite effect of inviting.

If you’re trying to make your home more inviting, you should reserve those colors for accents. And that’s great because it’ll really make that favorite color of yours pop in what would otherwise be a muted room.

Warm colors, like taupes, beiges, and off-whites, or even some of the cooler colors, like certain tones of gray, can really add a sense of coziness and calm.

They can be more inviting than stark white walls.

The color that I use here is gray with a hint of blue.

Even though it’s not one of the warmer colors, it’s still very muted and allows other colors that I want to bring out in splashes to really stand out.

Natural woods are seriously the secret sauce for everything.

We’re humans – there was a time when we weren’t living in lavish sterile homes.
Our roots crave nature.

That’s why using natural woods, stone, and even pebbles as the foundation for our home design is so appealing and soothing.

Wood in particular brings a really warm and cozy vibe and gives a sense of feeling grounded to the space.

Of course, you can have these things and still tout a minimalist home.

You’re going to have to use something to make your home livable, so it might as well be something that will rejuvenate you.

You could have your walls, counters, and all of your cabinets be any shade of white you like! As long as there’s a decent use of wood in the mix, it’s going to be soft and inviting.

Now, maybe you don’t have any wood in the structural building of the home you live in. That’s totally fine!
Natural woods can be brought in through tables, desks, lamps, frames, bins, shades, you name it.

Something to make your minimalist home feel super inviting and spacious but ALSO cozy (depending on how you use it) it is light.

I’m a huge fan of natural lighting.

I’m sitting right next to a big window right now. And honestly, the windows in this place were probably one of the biggest selling points for me.

As humans, we all need light. Even if you don’t think you like light (most of my family would just as soon have all of the shades drawn and live in a cave for some reason), your body loves light.

We need light in order to keep away from depression. But it’s also beneficial in creating a spacious home environment because it can impact the way that the shadows fall across the room and the way the room feels.

Now, if you don’t have a lot of natural lighting that’s totally fine. You can always buy natural light bulbs or daylight bulbs.

Of course, where you put those bulbs is going to make a difference. So if you’re wanting to have a more calming, relaxing space to be able to read a book or wind down at the end of the day, side lighting is really great for that.

I try to use overhead lighting as little as possible because it’s much more oppressive and stark. Kind of like being in an office building or something. Especially if overhead fluorescent lights wear on your eyes.

Now, if you really want to amp up the coziness, then you’re going to want to bring in some golden-toned lights, like salt lamps.

These are great to put in places like by your bed or reading nooks or office spaces.

While dim, yellowy lights are great for reading, they can make your home feel stale and dated if used everywhere.

Plants a little more texture and color to a room.

And also, it just adds this bit of nature that we’re all really in tune with.

Now, if you’re really bad at growing plants like I am, you can get some of those benefits from fake plants.

I’ve accepted my black thumb and have incorporated a lot of nice artificial plants into my home because I still really do like to see them. I just don’t like to see them die.

Or if you live in a place that’s freezing cold most of the year, it might be hard to grow natural plants.

Again, you can incorporate some kind of natural-looking artificial plants into the mix.