Years ago, while I was studying for my MBA, I lived in an apartment with a couple of classmates. Like most student home interiors, our apartment was furnished with hand me downs from our family and friends.
Our living room had a huge chocolate brown sectional from the 70s and a tiny Ikea nightstand that served as a coffee table. The juxtaposition of the sectional and the coffee table alone was a lesson on the importance of scale in a space.
And we had a TV but I can’t remember what it used to sit on. Whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty but it did the job. That is all I can remember about this space. And I don’t think we had any decor – not even throw pillows.
We continued to live together as we finished business school and started working. Since each of us had a decent income at that point, we decided it was time to properly furnish our living room to reflect our new all grown-up-and-no-longer-a-student status.
We decided we wanted our space to feel like a cigar lounge. Yes, I said a cigar lounge. Why? I’m not sure. What I remember is that we wanted it to feel cozy, lavish, and sultry.
We dreamt of warm wood tones, and rich chocolate, burgundy, and terracotta tones in everything from our walls to furniture and accessories.
I remember that our execution of this dream wasn’t exactly that great but I still remember the party we had to celebrate afterwards.
Why am I telling you this story? When was the last time you thought about how you wanted to feel in a certain space in your home? Our feelings about our home interiors are not something we give much thought to. Especially if it’s a place we’ve been living in for a while.
Link between Your Home and Your Mood
It should be though because there is this definite link between the space we are in and how we feel in that space. Space psychology or environmental psychology is the study of this relationship between people and the spaces they occupy.
We know design principles like balance, proportion, and symmetry create a sense of harmony and comfort in home interiors.
I often start my pitch for Daakor by asking the person I’m speaking with to imagine walking into the lobby of a luxury hotel.
Your flight may have been delayed or canceled, but the minute you walk in through those doors into that lobby, you immediately feel at ease, calm and relaxed.
That space was designed to make you feel that way.
Think about most modern workplaces. We’ve all heard about the beautiful Google, Facebook and Apple campuses in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
I spent many years at Deloitte and was lucky enough to see the transformation of Deloitte offices in New York, Amsterdam and Toronto as they adopted their Workplace of the Future strategy.
These offices had spaces that were designed impeccably to help facilitate a strategy that encouraged planned and spontaneous connections between their people. There were distinct spaces targeted to help building community.
Like Deloitte, many businesses spend thousands of dollars designing beautiful office spaces because they want their customers, clients and employees to feel and behave in a certain way.
“Architectural cues can provide reinforcement
to the desired behaviors that we would like
to see enacted in specific place types.”
Migette Kaup
Interior Designer and Environmental Psychologist
For as long as I can remember, I have been keenly aware of this relationship between the space I was in and how I felt. I know that when I was little and my room was a mess, I felt stressed. I still feel this way if my home is not tidy and organized.
As an adult, I moved a lot. It gave me the opportunity to experiment with spaces that I called home. I really began to see the impact different elements of decor had on how I felt. I noticed how calm I felt in a bedroom that was painted a dark blue gray tone compared to how energized I was in the home office that was painted red in the same apartment.
And it wasn’t just about paint colour. I felt stressed in the living room I had that was sparsely furnished. I was trying to be a minimalist at a time when all I wanted from a room was warmth or comfort. It felt cold and uninviting instead.
Interestingly, I felt the same kind of stress when a space felt crowded, like when my spare bedroom was used as a home office, guest room, yoga room and as an extension of my closet without purposefully designing it for these activities. Hello, Covid lockdowns and work from home days, right? Well, this was well before these pandemic times but I know you know exactly how I felt back then.
I learned that by properly furnishing and decorating my home interiors to look and function the way I wanted it to, I was able to change how I felt in those spaces. In fact, I learned that I could create a space that made me feel exactly the way I intended through careful design. I also learned that as time goes by, how you want to feel in your home also changes.
A good interior designer or a decorator is aware of this link between the interior of your home and how you feel. Then you won’t be surprised to learn that there are a few tricks we use in the industry to create spaces that make us feel comfortable, safe and relaxed.
Here are our recommendations on how you can create home interiors that make you feel great.
Make it Functional
Our biggest tip for making a room function the way you need is to make sure you get your layout right (get our tips on how to get your layout right here). Layout has to be based on the function of your home interiors.
For example, I mentioned earlier about a spare bedroom I had, that I used as a home office, a guest room, a yoga studio and an extension of my closet.
Initially, this room was nothing but clutter with a desk, a day bed where some of my seasonal clothes were thrown on and had a yoga mat, blocks, straps and other related accessories laid out all over the small floor space.
First, I created zones in the room where one side worked as my home office space and the other side functioned as the guest room with the daybed. The middle served as a workout and yoga space.
I used two small dressers as nightstands that were perfect for storing clothes and I also utilized the space under the bed to store some of my seasonal clothes.
One of the drawers in the dressers also served as a perfect place to store all of the yoga accessories. I created a space in the room where I could place the rolled up yoga mat.
By thinking through the functions of the room, I even manage to allocate a couple of drawers from the nightstands for guests to unpack when they visit.
Ample storage is key to managing clutter. Get creative when you are tight on space. Keeping out clutter is key to creating a zen space.
Let Light Guide You
Studies have shown that our mood and energy levels are directly influenced by how much natural light we are exposed to everyday. Natural light not only makes us look great but it does the same for objects in our home interiors. It helps create an alluring ambiance that makes us feel hopeful.
Use window coverings that allow you to control the light in your room when you are using the room. Strategically placed mirrors can help reflect light to areas that may not be in the path of direct sunlight.
What if you don’t get natural light in your space? All is not lost if you don’t. There’s nothing wrong with adding artificial lighting by using floor lamps, table lamps, sconces and overhead lighting. You can learn more about lighting here.
Embrace Plants and Flowers
We have posted a few times on the benefits of having houseplants and flowers in home interiors for your mental health.
I have found that even spending $20 on a grocery store bouquet, or even less in the Summer to pick up some flowers from the Farmer’s Market, lifts my mood for the whole week. Checkout this post on some ideas on how to incorporate flowers into your home without breaking the bank.
Plants are known to improve your mood and to lower stress, fatigue and anxiety. They also help clean up the air around your home. We’ve posted previously about when to use real vs. faux plants and how to incorporate houseplants into your design plan.
Choose the Right Colour
If you’re someone who has been interested in interior design for a while, then I bet you already know about colour psychology when it comes to home interiors. Some colours make us feel calm and relaxed, and others make us feel anxious or excited. It’s important to pay attention to the colours in your home.
Ask yourself if the colour in a specific space makes you feel the way you want to feel in your room. Remember that how you might want to feel in a space can change over time. Dated interiors can make you feel tired and bring about low energy. It might be as quick and easy as changing your wall colour to add some new energy into a space.
You can find our tips for creating a colour palette here.
Sprinkle Your Personality
Most importantly, surround your home interiors with things that give you joy.
Just remember this is not giving you the excuse to clutter your space. Find creative ways to display collections. Checkout this post on how to add interest to your bare walls.
In my home, I display photos I have taken in my travels, in black and white and framed beautifully. My coffee table features books on interior design, photography and travel as those are things I’m most passionate about. It also has a silver decorative box from Peru and inexpensive black and gold bowl that I fell in love with on a trip to Ikea.
I also change around the decor in my home depending on my mood. Over the years I have collected many things I treasure and rotating them as my decor allows me to control the clutter.
Your home interiors can impact not only your happiness but also your productivity, efficiency and ambition. The tips we discussed above like the layout, function and spaciousness, the lighting, use of plants and flowers, colour palettes and how you layer in your personality can all improve your mood, help you focus and decrease anxiety.
By the way, pretty much everything my roommates and I did to create that cigar lounge look for our living room back in the early 2000s, is totally on point for 2022 design trends.
