Green Home Design Ideas

As a people, our current wasteful lifestyles won't be sustainable for long. This is a fact that we're becoming more and more aware of every day. And so green home design, formerly a small market, is spreading steadily over the world. Some experts predict that green home design will soon make up a huge slice of the real estate industry.

In the U.S., housing accounts for 38% of the country's carbon emissions. Especially if we want to stop global warming, building our homes with green home designs will have a significant effect on the future. If you're looking to incorporate a bit of green home design, there are a hundred small things you can do to green-up your home. But for those into truly lowering their home's impact on the environment, there are four basic green home design rules to follow.

Rule 1 in Green Home Design: Go Small

Large homes are a symbol of wealth, status, and success. But large homes use up an incredible amount of energy for heating and cooling-- and this energy generally comes from nasty fossil fuels that muck up our environment. These homes also require more resources for building and create more waste as a result. So it's important for you to build small if you want to incorporate a green home design.

Green Home Design Rule 2: Incorporate Passive Solar Design

Passive solar cooling and heating is one of the most important elements of green home design. The relatively simple concept behind passive solar design is to design a home according to the climate. In warm climates, design is used to reduce the amount of heat absorbed by the home. In colder areas, design is used to reduce the amount of heat lost. To do this, green home design is incorporated into the orientation of the building, the location of the windows, the flooring (stone is best), and other elements of the home to reduce the amount of energy wasted.

Rule 3 in Green Home Design: Recycle and Reuse Materials

Almost everything used in a traditional home harms the environment in some way, either by its manufacture (plastics and artificials) or its transport (naturals). The use of renewable or recycled materials which are manufactured locally helps to reduce the damage building can have on the environment. Consider installing bamboo or recycled wood flooring and incorporate a green home design using recycled materials, such as cellulose insulation and lumber composites, throughout the home.

Rule 4 in Green Home Design: Shrink your AC

Heating and cooling a home accounts for the huge majority of its energy consumption. And no matter how tempting a large AC system might sound during the hot summer months, this type of system can ruin your good intentions for a green home. Big air conditioning systems cool the air too much and too quickly, causing them to turn on an off constantly. Because of this, they don't last nearly as long as smaller systems, creating a huge amount of waste along with energy loss.