The psychology of interior design

 

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.

Comments

[condy]

very interesting info which a layman like me can understand and apply. i agree that there is a difference between a house and a home as my current house lacks a bit of "prospect" in that it is surrounded by buildings, and "refuge" is also weak because private space is harder to find. when i think back of my happiest times, they were mostly found in my previous house which are much better in both aspects.

[Colin]

Condy, Thanks so much for the comment. From your description of your living arrangement, it sounds as though, like most of the rest of the world's population, you're living in a high-density urban region (and I'm guessing in Asia based on your IP address). It can be a tremendous challenge to find ways to design psychologically amenable living spaces in such settings, and I think this will be one of the great challenges for architects and planners in coming years. I suspect that we in the West have much to learn from Asia in this respect, and I'm hoping to get some beginner lessons on my upcoming visit to Singapore.

Don't forget though that sometimes it's possible to make smaller changes in the interiors of our spaces that can have a big effect on psychological comfort. Some design variables scale nicely from the level of urban streetscape to that of the smallest room in your dwelling, or even to the contents of a tabletop.

[condy]

hi colin, yes i live in singapore, reportedly the most densely packed country in the world! ;) the urban planners here www.ura.gov.sg are always coming up with "concept plans" every few years to try to squeeze more people onto an already very crowded island. public housing blocks are reaching 50 stories, just giving an example. still they deserve some credit for long term urban planning, which is not common practice by governments in this part of the world.

its great to hear that you are visiting singapore! if you are interested, you can visit the Singapore City Gallery (run by the government urban planning agency) http://www.ura.gov.sg/gallery/index.html it has quite a bit of interesting information on urban planning in singapore.

[Philippines property]

First of all thank you for the list. Like to try it on myself.

Deirdre G

[Recepti]

Hi...Your article really got me thinking man..... an intelligent piece ,I must say.

[soapstone counters]

I really enjoyed your post about interior design. I will have to come back again to read some more of them.

[Colby Moore]

This could add a little bit of "spice" to home design in a sense that these aspects should be followed without sacrificing the style that you want to integrate it with. About connecting with nature, what color can you suggest that could blend with nature and, at the same time, give any person the feeling that they're at home?

[ready made curtains]

We are all affected by the colors on the walls around us, sometimes without even realizing it. It is important to consider the psychological effect of a color before painting a room.