The Meaning of Home Décor

There are businesses, magazines, and televisions shows all dedicated to discussing, creating, reviewing, and displaying home décor, but it is difficult to pin down exactly what the word means. The home part is deceptively simple, but the décor part is little more than a tantalizing whisper, promising something, but never quite telling you the answer.

Décor is obviously taken from the word decorative, which means something that is displayed for beauties sake. A decorative piece is one that is for show, or at least, is intended to make a space look more interesting and attractive.

The shortened, décor, takes this concept to a new level, stretching it throughout a space and on into other rooms. The décor, is the decorative nature of a space, it is that ineffable quality that defines the atmosphere, and gives it its personality and presence.

When looking at home décor, you are most often talking about objects, which will contribute to the decorative nature of a space, presumably the home. However these items do not have to be merely decorative in nature. They can also have a functional aspect, and in fact many of the utensils we use in our life serve this dual purpose.

However saying that something is a piece of home décor is not tantamount to saying that it is beautiful, or artistic, or even that you like it. Instead home décor implies that the object has a decorative nature, that it is a home item which will add to the atmosphere of a space.

This nature doesn’t always have to be insisted upon either. A simple tin kettle, designed entirely for functionality, is a piece of home décor because it will add to and affect the decorative nature of a space. Just because an item doesn’t want to be decorative, doesn’t mean that it isn’t part of the homes décor.

When we open up the definition of the word suddenly anything can be a piece of home décor, as long as it is visible, and in a home. If it is outside the home it would be called garden décor, or office décor.

In this way décor becomes the result of the various details that make up the entire world. That is because anywhere you go, no matter how base, will have a decorative nature. It is strange to think about the décor of a prison cell, but in fact this unwashed mess would be a type of décor, albeit a very negative one.

So while décor is concerned with beauty, it can also be the result of a lack of beauty. It exists independent of effort, as a subset of any given environment. However when you take a human mind and start influencing the decorative nature of a space, suddenly, you have a form of art.

When you get a person, a human being with a mind and a unique perspective, involved in the appearance of an environment, suddenly you have a reciprocal situation, in which art influences the world, and the world influences art.

In this way it is the human decision to start changing things that makes décor into an art form. There is no linguistic way to separate between natural décor that occurs from life, and planned décor, which is the result of planning and forethought. There is also a gradient in between which can involve things like holding onto a keepsake that you like, or bringing plants or flowers into the space for a time.

In the end, the word décor, and by extension home décor, refers to the decorative nature of a space. This can be naturally occurring, with life just tossing everything where it will, or it can be due to an act of will on the part of a human being. If so, then décor turns from natural chaos, into a human art form.

Rustic Home Decor
home decor made from stone