What is a home? We may
first think of basic needs such as protection from the elements and security
from the outside world, but this is only the beginning of what we expect a home
to give us. We want much more than a roof
to keep the rain and snow off of our heads—we also want our homes to make us to
feel happy, peaceful, comfortable and healthy.
How do we turn a simple set of walls, floors and ceilings into an
inviting space that can nurture our bodies and minds? We can call on many different types of
experts to help us find ways to improve our living spaces, including
architects, interior designers or even special friends and neighbours who possess
a “good eye” for design, but there are also many useful research findings that
can help make the difference between a house and a home. Studies in the field of environmental
psychology show that what makes us feel comfortable and happy in our homes may
be connected to survival instincts that we’ve carried within our DNA for millennia. Based on these findings, here is a list of
home design tips, all of which will improve home comfort, and many of which can
cost very little to implement.
1. Take refuge. It makes sense that our earliest ancestors
would have been more likely to survive if they knew how to find secure places
that provided shelter from the elements and protection from predators. This might help to explain our modern
preference for cozy corners, embracing alcoves and even variations in ceiling
heights. The famous American architect
Frank Lloyd Wright was a master at creating such places of refuge within homes,
and savvy designers today also understand how even the placement of furniture
and the selection of materials can enhance feelings of comfort and security in
modern homes. Take a look at your
space. Where do you go when you need a
quiet, sheltered space to make a difficult decision? Chances are your mind is telling you where
your home’s refuges are located.
2. Show prospects. A human being prowling the African Savannah
would not survive for very long if all it ever did was hunker down in locations
of refuge. Protecting oneself often
means being able to predict what will happen next, and making accurate
predictions can be based on being able to see what’s going on in your
surroundings. At the same time that we
like to feel the protecting arms of refuge around us, we also like to be able
to take in prospects—the great views and long vistas that go with certain
privileged locations. This is most
obvious to us in outdoor settings (think of scenic look-outs on tourist drives
or even raised tee-offs on beautiful golf courses) but we can make effective
prospects indoors as well. Great rooms,
those large and sometimes formless combination rooms in modern suburban homes,
can often be arranged to build prospects.
Locations in large rooms that offer both refuge and prospect are usually
the most prized sitting and resting spots.
3. Build a mystery. Imagine yourself on an engaging walk
along a beautiful forest trail. Every
bend in the trail hints at a new view lying just ahead and prompts you to keep
moving forward, exploring one mystery after another. Psychological experiments suggest that we
humans possess strong preferences for such mystery, the subtle promise of a new
sight lying just around the corner. Does
your home contain such alluring mysteries?
One favourite place to create such effects is in entry ways. As visitors enter your home, is everything
laid out on show before them or are some of their views slightly occluded,
inviting them inward to explore? It
might seem as though it would be difficult and expensive to change the views
from entry halls, but sometimes even small changes or clever placements of
decorative screens, furniture or even large plants can create alluring mystery
in a home.
4. Connect
with nature. Speaking of plants,
there is firm scientific evidence that exposing ourselves to views of nature
not only can make us happier, but can exert a tangible impact on health as well. One often-cited study showed that patients
recovering from surgery in hospital experienced less pain and were discharged
more quickly when they were housed in rooms containing windows that showed
views of natural, outdoor settings. To
obtain such effects, it isn’t necessary to knock huge holes in your walls to
get picture windows. Indoor plantings or
even paintings or photographs of natural settings can produce some of the same
kinds of effects, as can the use of natural materials for furniture or
ornaments. An herb garden on a sunny
windowsill or a potted palm in a living room can literally bring a room to
life.
5.
Don’t tip the scales. Scientists don’t completely understand the
connection between views of nature and our comfort and ease in built spaces,
but one idea is that natural views contain particular kinds of visual patterns
that our brains find rewarding. Natural
views contain patterns that repeat at a number of scales. Take a close look at a fern—one of the most
ancient and ubiquitous types of vegetation.
You’ll see that the shape of each major leaf is similar to the shape of
each leaflet and that each tiny frond on a leaflet looks the same as the whole
leaf. There’s something about this kind
of self-similarity that we find pleasing.
If you think carefully about this, you may be able to think of ways to
arrange the decorative elements in your home to mimic this feature of
nature. When using patterns found on
carpets, walls, or furnishings, try to think of ways to make the patterns in
one place pick up elements of patterns in another. This doesn’t mean trying to match patterns so
much as trying to make them complement one another over a range of scales. And you don’t necessarily have to use natural
patterns to achieve these kinds of effects (though this can sometimes make
things easier). Many abstract designs
achieve this kind of connection of scales using mixtures of design elements
over a large range of sizes. Great examples
can be found in the exquisite designs found in Turkish carpets. Though design pieces such as these are beyond
the budget for most of us, looking at photographs of such designs can give you
ideas about how to connect scales.
6. Search
for centres. Some experiments in
psychology have shown that where we walk, where we want to stop and rest and
what we want to look at when we are there are affected by the sizes and shapes
of the spaces in our houses. One way to
take advantage of this is to find ways to build centres in your home. A centre is a quiet place of repose where
there is no foot traffic. We go to
centres to sit and rest, to daydream and, perhaps most important of all, to
talk to one another. Look around at your
living spaces. Is your seating located
too close to the pathways that are used to go from room to room? If so then these spaces are not able to
function properly as centres. In the
famous words of Gertrude Stein, “there’s no There
there.” Sometimes very subtle changes
can put the There back in the there. Can
you change the orientation of a chair or a sofa to make an oasis of quietness
in a busy room? Sometimes even changing
the lighting of a space can make centres.
Can you bathe your seating area in an inviting glow? Floor coverings such as area rugs (using
natural colours and materials if possible) can help to define centres as well.
In the
colder seasons, we spend a great deal of our time indoors. We all want to live
in homes that make us feel comfortable and happy but we may lack the time or
budget to undertake major home renovations.
By understanding some key findings in environmental psychology, we can
see how subtle changes in materials, designs, lighting, and placement of
furniture can help us build homes that contribute to our well being.
