Designers Wild Over Outdoor Themes Inside

Wilderness themes in home decor are being promoted for weekend cottages, dens and living rooms, in both vintage items and modern designs.

Popular elements include fishing items such as rods and reels, tackle, creels, trapper’s baskets and decoys. Also hot are accessories with a wild-animal look, such as lamps with simulated wild skins or reptilian textures.

Lamps such as these “feed people’s desire to bring the natural world into their homes, as well as creating interesting decorative textures and colors,” said Bart Russo of the Lam Lee Lighting Group.

The Home Furnishings Council offers these tips for integrating wild animals into home decor:

* Consider replacing an ordinary paper lampshade with an imitation animal-hide shade that casts an amber glow when the lamp is lit.

* Look for furniture that incorporates simulated animal parts, such as an elephant base on a small table, legs that end in claws and painted animal motifs or printed animal-hide finishes on armoires and chests.

* Use animal accents as a visual punch line--a pair of iron monkeys as bookends, for example, a frog candlestick or a stone fish in a real glass bowl.