How home decor impacts your mood

For the purpose of this article, I will focus on the home environment and how design affects your mood — for better or worse! Since my job revolves around creating environments that inspire, nurture and serve, I’ll start with the moods associated with inspiration.

1. Your home can make you feel happy…

…..or it can make you feel sad. Your environment can promote feelings of happiness through colour, scents, sounds and objects that have meaning to you.

Here are some tips for designing a happier home:

• Paint your rooms based on their purpose. If your bedroom is painted yellow or orange, probably not the best thing to promote sleep or relaxation, which is the primary purpose of a bedroom. The psychology behind colour is very real, so let’s use what we know to be a tool for our good.

• A house is not a happy and inspiring home until you make it yours. Bust out some sentimental objects, put those photographs you love in frames, and enjoy those happy feelings every time you look at these things.

2. Your home can make you feel energetic…

…or it can make you feel tired. Your environment can give you energy or drain your energy through your colours (a lot of these elements overlap), decor, light and layout, among other things. Here are some energy-boosting design tips:

• Decorate with plants. Studies have shown that incorporating decor that mimics outdoors will promote energy and boost your mood.

• Re-arrange your furniture. Observe how you move throughout a space; play with different layouts.

3. Your home can make you feel safe…

…or anxious. You should feel safe in your home, but all too often we don’t.

• Cover those windows at night. I know window treatments are expensive, but they are well worth the investment.

• Add a lamp. Even a dark corner can make us uneasy at night, so just add a lamp or light.

4. Your home can be comfortable…

…or it can be uncomfortable. Your furniture factors into this, and so do things like decor and layout.

• Get comfortable furniture. I mean if you have kids and you don’t want to worry about them staining the furniture, don’t get white chairs.

• Decorate. With stuff you love. If you ignore the decor and styling portion of a room, you end up with a stark, empty-feeling room that will never be comfortable.

• Make the layout easy for you. A comfortable room means one where you don’t feel like you have to exert a lot of effort to find a seat… or the wine glasses.

5. Your home can make you feel calm, focused and productive…

…or it can really stress you out. Although unfortunately, our homes can stress us out without even knowing it if they are unorganised, messy or don’t include enough natural elements (light, plants, etc.).

• Tidy up. Start with creating a home for everything. Pick something up, look at it, and ask yourself, does this have a home? If not, carve out a place for it or throw it away.

• If you don’t have the option of adding more windows and natural light to the room, bring in some plants. They not only make us less stressed, but they can eliminate toxins in the air. Bonus!

6. Your home can allow you to be welcoming…

…versus the dreaded “uh oh! so-and-so wants to come over but it looks like this!” One of the biggest contributing factors of happiness (and mood) is relationship. The quality of your relationships, in particular. Your home should serve you in this area, big time. Even if you’re not looking to entertain all the time, having the ability to be open and welcoming to friends, family and guests when you want to has real physical, mental and emotional benefits.

wknd@khaleejtimes.com

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