A Guide to Southwest Interior Design

With its breathtakingly expansive landscapes, arid deserts, and quiet beauty, the American Southwest is a place unlike any other on Earth.

Southwest interior design reflects the region’s singular nature. It’s distinctly American, full of earth and jewel tones, a rustic and rough-hewn aesthetic, and intricate, creative patterns.

It’s a bold design choice, but a rewarding one. In this guide to Southwest interior design, we’ll reveal the essentials to mastering distinctive Southwest design, from wild patterns and bright colors to unique textiles reflective of the Southwest’s captivating Native American history.

Finding the Right Designers

The first step of any guide to Southwest interior design should be one word: authenticity. Too often, designers and home décor companies create approximations of Southwest design not truly reflective of its rustic but engagingly bright nature.

Your first job should be finding fabrics, textiles, and colors that actually are uniquely Southwest, not just Southwester-lite. Our array of Southwest fabrics are inspired or recreated from our extensive archives of vintage and bold Southwestern-style stripes.

These historic weaves and patterns fit well in any modern Southwest space, complementing rustic décors such as hardwood benches and chairs or terracotta pottery. Southwest interior design should look and feel real and natural — just like the actual Southwest landscape. 

Woven Art 

When picking out patterns and fabrics for your Southwest interior design, look toward Southwestern American Indian culture as a starting point.

Brightly colored patterns adorn much of Southwestern style in repeating geometric shapes like triangles and rectangles that either stand-alone or form within stripes. Large, braided, and skinny stripes abound, but there’s also room for tweeds, houndstooth, dots, and checkerboards within Southwest interior design patterns.

These patterns and fabrics are best conveyed in heavy woven rugs and tapestries with an organic, slightly rough-hewn feel and texture, conveying a bold color vibe with intricate and unique patterns — often different patterns within the same fabric or accent item — that are playful, sharp and eclectic. 

Play With Color

Let the colors you love be your guide to Southwest interior design. There’s a bit of everything here to work with, from earthy clay, orange and dark brown tones to bright purples, greens, and yellows. 

The colors of Southwest interior design are inspired by nature, but also bright as a shiny jewel. In the form of art, rugs, or pillows, the colors match well with other popular elements of Southwest design, such as woven baskets, wooden furniture, pottery, and leather accents.

These are pops of soothing and rich colors that reflect the desert but also the culture of its inhabitants. That’s why you’ll see light grays, sand, and rust paired with sunset pinks, turquoise, and greens at home on any cactus or desert flower.

Warm and Cozy

Southwest interior design is a perfect blend of minimalism and rustic chic. It’s a great platform to combine different materials and colors you love seamlessly into spaces that are at once stylish and comfortable.

There’s a certain depth of warmness that Southwest interior design that soothes and impresses unlike any other.

ColorLoom Hand-blocked Print Fabrics To Try

We've carefully picked out ColorLoom Southwest prints that fit nicely into a well-designed room or home. Below is a small sample of the best options to try out. Click the thumbnail to take a closer look at the product on our product page with a zoomable image and complete description of the fabric.

For a complete list of ColorLoom fabrics that can help you achieve the Southwest look, view the full collection of over 63 fabrics we picked out.