Guest Post - Bamboo Decor for the Home

Blog friend, Amber Hash, is my guest today with a few fun tidbits about using Bamboo in home decor. Amber blogs at The Vanity Room & she resides in the U.K. {please note the "Old English" spelling of words such as "favour"}. Take it away Amber . . . 

Bamboo is currently very popular with interior designers and the public alike. Unfortunately, one result of this surge in favour is that the price of bamboo, and bamboo products,  has shot up. One of the advantages of choosing bamboo used to be that it was very cheap; this is now not the case! However, bamboo is still very much cheaper than hardwoods and this is because bamboo takes about four years to reach maturity while an equivalent crop of hardwood will take approximately one hundred years!

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Bamboo is very attractive, being a fine-grained, smooth-textured substance. The colour ranges from a warm light honey colour to a soft reddish sandy brown, which enables customers to choose the exact shade that will best suit their décor.

Switching from a carpeted floor to a wooden one can be a major expense. Hardwood floors require a fair amount of careful maintenance to ensure the floor is never wet, not exposed to too much sunshine or harmful chemicals and this can detract from the pleasure of a beautiful wooden floor! A bamboo floor does need some looking after, but is much more forgiving of spills and splashes! Bamboo floors naturally have some flexibility which makes them a pleasure to stand and walk on. One downside of bamboo flooring is that it can fade slightly in sunshine, so do take that into account when planning your bamboo floor!

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Bamboo is touted as being an eco-friendly product and, broadly speaking, this is true. However, please do make sure that you are buying from a company that pays its workers a fair price and allows the bamboo to grow to maturity before being harvested – there have been some reports of unfair employment practise and immature bamboo being used to make product that then do not last as long as they should.

Bamboo is friendly to the environment in growing rapidly, so being a sustainable crop, and in being readily bio-degradable. Because of its newfound popularity you can currently buy an amazing wealth of products and goods crafted from bamboo; from chests of drawers to wash basins to storage containers, from table and chair sets to computer keyboard and mouse!

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You can even find wall panels to use in your décor scheme, quickly and easily fitting them into place and creating a wonderfully warm and welcoming finish on what would have otherwise been plain cold walls.

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The downsides of bamboo products are that they can lose or change colour over time and that they sometimes need oiling in order to stay in good condition. The many advantages of bamboo far outweigh these minor issues though! Bamboo is safer than plastic, needing no chemicals to be used in the processing (NB, please be aware that some type of bamboo processing CAN release harmful toxins, yet another reason to be absolutely sure that you are sourcing your bamboo products from a reliable and reputable company!) Bamboo is as lightweight as plastic and as strong as ceramic without the brittleness of the latter. Some people are so very fond of bamboo that they even use it in the home as living décor!

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Thank you Amber. I enjoyed learning more about bamboo.