How Interior Design Affects Our Health - Part One
When we think about health and wellness, Interior Design doesn’t usually come to mind.
The truth is, Interior Design affects every part of our daily lives, and most of the time we don’t even notice it. The way our home, workspace, or anywhere we spend our time is designed can make us feel safe and comfortable, stressed and anxious, inspired and motivated, and so much more.
Think about how your home makes you feel when you walk into it at the end of your work day. Does walking in your front door calm you after the hustle and bustle of the office? Do you instantly feel at peace stepping into your living room? Or do you avoid going home because it stresses you even more? Do you have certain rooms in your house that you gravitate toward or spaces you tend to stay away from completely?
Now think about WHY you feel those things when you’re in those spaces. Are they cluttered? Are the walls dark and gloomy? Is the room lacking natural light? Are your things neat and organized and easy to access when you need them? Or is it total chaos trying to function in the space?
Some spaces make us want to be together with people we love, to celebrate and enjoy each others presence. Other spaces give us a solace away from life and space to think and be alone to reflect and dream. Some rooms are good for work and motivation, others are better for sleep and relaxation. The Interior design of the space sets the mood, and in turn affects your mental and physical well being.
My biggest goal when working with my Interior Design clients is to make sure they love the home they live in. I want you to enjoy your spaces and WANT to be there. I want them to reflect you and your family’s personalities and likes, as well as function properly for your lifestyle and daily needs.
There are so many different factors of design that impact our health, but I want to focus on 5 main areas that I think you can implement changes in today to help improve your daily life. Let’s talk about Sunlight or Natural Light, Spaciousness & Organization, Plants or Flowers, Color, and Artwork. These five areas of design can make a big impact on the way we feel in our spaces each and every day. There is so much ground to cover with this topic so we are going to break it up into a few different posts. Today we will tackle Sunshine & Natural Light, and Spaciousness & Organization.
Sunshine & Natural Light
I’m sure it isn’t a surprise to anyone that sunlight is good for our health. Aside from providing Vitamin D, Sunlight can help reset your circadian rhythm which in turn aids in your sleep by making sure your body’s internal clock is on the right track. Sunshine has been clinically proven to brighten our mood and reduce depression. People tend to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder (or SAD) during the winter months when there isn’t as much sunshine.
Example of sheer drapes between regular drapes to let more light in.
What if your room doesn’t have any windows, or if it has minimal access to natural light? Well this can be a little trickier to remedy, but we can still bring some nice lighting to the space if we are creative. Mirrors are a great way to increase the light in a space that only has a small amount of natural light available. It will help reflect the light in the room and make the room feel brighter and larger at the same time. Adding well placed mirrors to your space is a great way to add more light.
Click here for a great blog post from Home Advisor about color temperature.
So how does all of this apply to interior design? Well, let’s start with our windows! Make sure you open your curtains or blinds and let in that sunlight! This way, even when you can’t be outdoors, you can make sure you’re getting that good ole Vitamin D through your windows. If you’re concerned with privacy, you can dress your windows with sheer drapery panels that will still let in a ton of light but blur the vision for any unwanted onlookers. The technology available for window coverings these days is vast. You can automate your blinds to open at a certain time each day and close at sunset each night. You can link things up with your Alexa or Google Home device and be able to tell them to close your curtains whenever you want with your voice or an app on your phone. These automations make closing and opening window treatments on hard to reach windows easy as well.
The large mirror in this room allows the light from the windows to reflect on the rest of the space and makes the room seem twice as large.
If your room doesn’t have any natural light at all, you can mimic the sunlight with certain light bulbs. Make sure you are buying warm light bulbs for spaces you want to relax in, like the living room or a bedroom. Brighter, more blue colored light bulbs can be good for a space where you need to focus, like an office or the kitchen, but can sometimes be hard on your eyes. Make sure to stay away from too much blue light in the evening hours, because that can keep you awake more at night!
Organization & Space
The way a space is organized largely affects how it functions. This is a big part of Interior Design that most people don’t ever think about. Designing spaces isn’t just about making them LOOK pretty, they also need to FUNCTION well. It does no good to have a beautiful kitchen if you have no place to store your pots and pans or your food for that matter! If a space is disorganized it can breed frustration and downright anger!
The first step to making sure your space is organized, is to EDIT the things in the space. Take careful inventory of everything there and decide whether each piece is necessary. If it doesn’t make you happy to look at it, or if it’s something you haven’t used (or even seen!) in over a year, you should probably get rid of it! Donating things to charity or selling them in a garage sale or online can be a great way to make sure someone else is using the items you no longer want or need. Of course if something is completely worn out or damaged beyond repair, it may just be best to throw it away or recycle! Sometimes it helps to bring in a friend for this stage of the process because they can be objective about things and help you make sure you aren’t hoarding unnecessary items.
Once you have done a good edit on your things, it’s time to organize! Interior Designers are great at this part of the process because they can help you pick aesthetically pleasing boxes, bins, or folders to keep your items in. Storage doesn’t have to be ugly! There are plenty of really pretty baskets and bins you can use to incorporate your chosen design when organizing your things. You may also want to consider hiring a professional organizer. They can go a step further than a designer because they know how to make the best use of certain spaces and can help you categorize things properly.
pretty baskets with labels can make your organized items look good
You may also want to consider where certain rooms are placed in your floor plan if you’re building your house or remodeling. For instance, a laundry room next to or in close proximity to the master bedroom is so helpful on days you have large loads of laundry. The Mud room of course needs to be close to the main entrance you use for your home so that you can easily discard your dirty shoes and coats first thing before you enter your living area and get things dirty.
You might want to think about incorporating a dog wash area in your garage, or maybe a trap door into the pantry so you can easily unload your groceries from your car. All these things are ways to organize your life, minimize the chaos, and be more efficient in your daily tasks.
Next time we will talk about Plants & Flowers, Color, and Artwork. Stay Tuned! You can also head over to our Instagram page @sarahlorraineinteriors and click on our “Design & Health” Highlight to see the series we did in our stories there. It has all the same information this blog post does!
When your items have been sorted through and organized, you’ll find that your space will improve your productivity because you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for more quickly. This can in turn boost your mood, and keep the frustration at bay. Your mind will be more clear and you’ll have peace when trying to get things done!
An organized space can also appear larger. When there is less clutter, there is more space.
Another way organization comes into play with design is through the layout of your home. Organizing your floor plan and furniture in a way that makes sense is a huge part of what I do with my Interior Design Clients. If the flow of traffic through the room doesn’t make sense, you’ll find yourself tripping over furniture legs, or crowded into a corner trying to maneuver through the room when there are several people in it.
@Matthew.North on Instagram is known for his “Plan Attack” where he takes awful floor plans and shows how they could be improved. Check out his work on instagram here.
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