Coastal main image

Coastal inspiration is a perfect design style for an ocean view home. Coastal inspiration uses the colors outside your windows, the whites and creams of sand, the golden sun and tan shadows, the sun-baked olives of sea grasses, and the infinite blues and greens of the sea in your color palette. It also embraces the casual, easy feel of beach living, with approachable comfort and natural elements like wood, stone, and glass in both the architecture and the interior design.

Gone are the days of kitsch and clutter with shell-encrusted lamps and tide-pool wallpaper. Modern coastal inspiration is clean and elegant, mirroring the spare and sweeping designs of nature at her most elemental and majestic. A touch of whimsy can be found in some designs, but the overall focus is where the sea meets the land and sky.

coastal colors

Trip Haenisch offers a wonderful example of strong coastal inspiration in this Malibu living room, with white sands, golden sunshine and shadow, ocean blues and greens coming together in a fresh, breezy look that makes you want to dive right in. The ocean blue-green that is carried throughout the house isn’t a single note, though. It varies like your own Monterey Peninsula views, sometimes stormy and deep in a whimsical bath, sometimes pale sea-foam in the glass tile of a kitchen backsplash.

Want a bolder pop of color in your sand and sea? Try a nautical touch, but you don’t have be literal and use signal flag accent pillows or sailing prints. Take a look at the accents in a Joan Behnke coastal home with pops of color taken from nautical signal flags in vivid reds, golds, and black, which hint at nautical without being obvious. Behnke also has a great example of natural elements in the powder room mirror framed in curvy polished driftwood

asian inspired

You don’t have to stick to a single influence. Combine and build a richer design with Mediterranean or Asian. These other elements can add rich texture and form, such as the estate designed by Martyn Lawrence Bullard, which has distinct Asian notes. The colors echo the coastal view with rocky hills and gorgeous oceanfront, but the shapes and textiles have an oriental flair that hints of Morocco or Malaysia. Malibu and Martha’s Vineyard aren’t the only coastlines in the world!

We love the beautiful and welcoming coastal inspiration seen in modern design trends. It’s clean, classic, and easily enriched with other inspirations to create a design that fits your taste and lifestyle while honoring the beauty of nature right outside our ocean view homes.