Yes its true, interior design styles can impact your mental health and your emotions. The way your home looks could be affecting your mood. By understanding the psychology behind interior design, you could help to make your home a happier and more productive place. Here are just several elements of interior design and how they can impact the way we feel.
Let There Be Light
Lighting has a big impact on the way we feel. Bright warm lighting tends to energize us (perfect for areas like kitchens), while dim cool lighting can help us to relax (perfect for bedrooms and bathrooms). It’s better to use less lighting in the evening – too much bright light before bed could prevent you from being able to get to sleep by tricking the brain into thinking it’s still daytime.
Most of us rely heavily on artificial lighting in our homes, however natural light from the sun tends to be healthier for us. It helps us to produce vitamin D, which is a vital nutrient required to help lift our mood. By promoting more natural light in your home, you could make it a happier environment. There are lots of ways to introduce more natural light into a home from adding extra windows (including skylights and glass doors) to making use of reflective surfaces to help reflect sunlight (this could include mirrors or polished materials).
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Colour Me Good
Certain colours can also influence the way we feel. Warmer colours (e.g. reds, yellows, oranges) tend to make us feel more energetic and tend to be best suited for rooms such as kitchens and dining rooms. Cooler colours (e.g. blues, greens, purples) meanwhile tend to have a calming effect and are better suited to bedrooms and bathrooms.
Overuse of strong colours can be a little jarring, so it’s worth adding a few neutral colours into the mix – these include whites, browns, greys and blacks. Contrastingly, too many neutral colours could make a room feel slightly sterile and dull, so make sure there are a few pops of colours within your decor.
Colour can be incorporated into everything from the colour of walls to the colour of furniture. If you have brightly coloured walls, it’s often more effective to contrast this with neutral coloured furniture. Similarly, if you have brightly coloured furniture, this should be contrasted with neutral coloured walls.
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Texture Matters
The texture of materials used around the home can also impact our mood. Soft, flowing, curved surfaces tend to promote a more relaxing and comforting atmosphere. Examples could include a round mirror, silky curtains and soft carpet. Hard and angular surfaces meanwhile help to promote structure and work and are often better suited in kitchens and home offices. Examples could include a square mirror, rigid blinds and a hardwood floor.
As with colour, you should try to bring a balance of textures to each room. While lots of hard and angular textures can help to make a kitchen feel more organised and practical, the odd curved feature could help to give it a sense of homely comfort.
Plants Add Life
Houseplants can also have an impact on our mood and are one of the easiest interior design styles to deploy. Studies have found that having plants around the home can help to reduce stress, boost productivity and improve sleep quality. This is for a number of reasons – plants provide a fresh source of oxygen, help to clean indoor air, produce aromatic scents and help bring natural pops of colour to a room.
Flowers are perfect for adding a sense of energy to a room – by exploring different floral shapes and colours, you can find the bunch that has the greatest visual impact. Succulents and more simple plants tend to be more calming and may look better when placed among already busy decor.
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Clutter Will Bring You Down
Having lots of clutter in your home could be making you feel stressed and is not one of the interior design styles we recommend. Research has shown that people find it harder to get to sleep in a cluttered bedroom, while a cluttered office can make it harder to concentrate on work.
Getting rid of clutter from your home could help to create a calmer and more relaxing environment. If you can’t get rid of it, consider finding creative ways to conceal clutter such as storing it away in cupboards and containers so that it is out of view. The act of decluttering itself can be a great stressbuster – we may dread it and put it off at every given chance, but once we get started it can often give us a great sense of reward.