Joy. Just joy. What if walking in your front door felt like that? Maybe with some wow and ahhhh, too. What if you could bring that to your home’s interior design vibe and have fun doing it?
While digging into the far reaches of the internet for design trend nuggets and inspiration to offer you in the season soon to bloom, a trend came up we haven’t explored here before. (And it’s too darn good not to share immediately.)
Let’s talk about the dopamine decor interior design trend. If having a home that evokes a sense of joy, wow, and ahhhh sounds pretty good, you will love this one. We’ll get you up to speed on what dopamine decor is all about, the common design elements to keep in mind, and how to add some or a whole heck of a lot of it to your home’s design style — with plenty of furniture upholstery fabric inspiration to help you along the way.
(Warning: The content ahead may cause smiling.)
You Rule: A Quick Dopamine Decor Design Style Primer
First, a tiny bit of science. Because dopamine? Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that does all kinds of important things in your brain and body. For our purposes, we’ll use a wildly oversimplified popular notion of dopamine: It’s the “happiness” chemical our brains produce given the right stimuli. Now, imagine that the “right” stimuli just happened to be your home’s interior design style. Yes, please.
And here’s the best part. You already know how to do it. You’re already doing it. Dopamine decor brings joy and pleasure because it’s fundamentally about having more of what brings you joy and pleasure.
Think of dopamine decor as the yummiest candy with your absolute favorite flavors at its center. Your favorite “flavors.” Dialed up. And the only rule is you make the rules. Rather than trying to fit your personality into a design style, you start with your personality and build the style around it. Playfully. Joyfully. Boldly.
4 Ways To Free Dopamine Decor Design Style To Play In Your Home
Start with some treasured object, color, or texture. Something that makes you feel some kind of way you love feeling. Use that as the source for your design inspiration. Simply put, dopamine decor means more (and more) of that. Let’s look at some common elements:
Colors
Colors often play a big role. And the more boldly you choose, the more heightened your response to the space is likely to be. That might mean bright, dazzling hues like a summer’s day. Or maybe rich, warm jewel tones. It’s about unabashedly turning what brings you joy up to an eleven in your favorite space.
Patterns
Colors don’t need to be single-tone, either. A space built with a love of a particular animal or art piece might find itself adorned in patterns and textures echoing those items. Colors and patterns, mixed and matched, support, bolster, and amplify the experience, singing your favorite visual melody.
Accents
Whatever inspiration you’re building around, lean in. Let your inner child be your interior designer. You know how a child can LOVE a color, food, team, band, etc., with absolute certainty. Let yourself feel that. Dopamine decor frees you to go all in. Accent wall? Nah. Accent room.
My Favorite Things
Let’s say your inspiration is a vintage piece of luggage, a record collection, or pics from favorite adventures. Bring in some of those actual and related items as decor. Play with it. Perhaps a gallery wall, an end table made of antique luggage, or loads of plants to create a certain tropical feel. You simply remember your favorite things, and then you don’t feel… well, you know the rest.
One last note here. Your version of the style doesn’t need to go full-on Barbie film set. Or feel free. Do as little or as much as you’d like until you find the sweet spot for the “dopamine hit” that best serves you and your life. As a rule(ish), noisy and cluttered isn’t the vibe — curated and intentional is. Choose intentionally but playfully.
How To Choose Fabrics That Give Your Home A Dopamine Decor Style Hit
Let’s play. Dopamine decor is uniquely suited to the simple power of upholstery fabrics to completely change the look and feel of a space. So what might it look like in your home?
At the risk of joyful redundancy, dopamine decor is about playful boldness. First, decide what vibe you want to celebrate — colors, textures, objects, or whatever else flips the switch for you. Then decide how much or little of your home you want to transform. You may want to redo foundational elements or simply accents.
The key is to let them do their thing. As in, there’ll be extremes ahead but you get to choose your feel. Here are some fabric ideas to get you started:
Color My World
Feeling like a cozy bedroom in deep, rich jewel tones? Go with amethyst purple, ruby red, or sapphire blue. Love the living room to sing with sunshine? Feel free to go fruity with lemon, watermelon, or peach tones. Building a boldly biophilic family room? Let nature thrive with furniture in mellow vibes like natural white, birch beige, or mossy green. (Yes, you can have neutrals — if you want them.)
Sir Mix-A-Lot
Play with textures and feels. Again, what’s the energy you seek? In that same bedroom, you may want velvet, silk, or chenille. That lit living room might feel like a place for cotton, linen, or microfiber. Your newly nature-scaped space stays grounded in a tweed, denim, or jacquard.
Delicious Details
You’ll likely be adding details that delight you, like favorite objects or other nifty bits uniquely in your joy zone. Do the same with upholstery fabric accents using patterns like an animal print, embroidered floral, colorful abstract, or maybe a travel-themed print. Whimsy for the win.
Your New Dopamine Decor Home Vibe Is A Gift From Your Inner Child
Real talk. Being a grown-up has its perks and its drawbacks. Among the drawbacks is that, somewhere along the way, you learn to mute your great joys. Among the perks, you can unlearn that.
Dopamine decor — with its celebration of joy — is design’s gift to that unlearning. It’s a chance to make yourself a better listener to what lifts you up and helps you feel your best. And then use all the perks of your grown-up self and build your home’s interior design vibe around those things. Around your joys.
We’re here when you’re ready to come out to play. With the largest furniture fabric upholstery store online, whatever you dream we can help you make it real in your home.
And, outside of leaning into curation rather than clutter, the only real rule in dopamine decor design is that you rule. You get to play. Boldly. Joyfully. And the result is you get to come home more happily than ever. Ahhhh. That’ll do.