A Feel-Good Home: Create a Sanctuary

How You Feel Starts in Your Home

However you want to feel, whatever you want to do, starts in the home. A well-designed house creates a healthy, feel-good home environment that extends to your personal relationships, business interactions, and more.

Architecture holds much power. Architecture can transform your life, inspire your goals, and bring calm and comfort to an otherwise stressful environment. Creative designs of shape, colour, light and other elements to encourage you to move forward through the home, workplace and elsewhere.

Think of your favorite public place, where you feel cozy or comfortable. What does the energy feel like? How does it influence your own energy? Perhaps you feel excited, soothed, motivated. Why not start at home?
When I interview my clients, I would like to know in what state of mind they are and in the state of mind, they want to be. Understanding their favorite colors leads to a conversation on what their goals are, what invigorates them. “What is your burning desire?” I ask. This can all be translated into architecture, into your home.

For example, a person who is wishing to retire on a sunny beach has a different motivation in life than a start-up entrepreneur who is looking for inspiration to take his or her business globally. So their home and work environment should reflect their desired lifestyle.   

A Feel-Good Home: Many Ways Architecture Can Benefit Our Well Being:

For our clients, this is the most important stage of design. Through this conversation we can create sanctuary — and life — of your dreams. This approach benefits the well-being of society by revisiting the positive impact architecture can have on our mental health.

Comfort is a state of physical ease, but tranquillity is a psychological state. Many people create comfort in their daily life without creating the mind calmness required for a healthy personality. “Let’s find your favorite couch,” I say, “then look further.” Plants and water features make good starting points in creating a relaxing environment.

You can find the concept of flow everywhere in ancient philosophies. Feng shui is established on the logic of physics and nature. To welcome positive energy, spaces should absorb maximum sunshine. Water features create a comforting, almost musical accompaniment — among other details that are not always implemented in western architecture.

Meditation has been a part of Eastern culture for centuries and is just recently finding its way into ours. For a few minutes, we may listen to the recording of water on a meditation app. Bringing in a water feature into your living space is one way to make meditation a part of your whole day and night. Through nature, we generate the parts of ourselves that exist but perhaps lie dormant.

A Feel-Good Home: How Colour And Light Affect Our Mood

We’re human. Our moods may swing day by day, and that’s okay. Some days we wake up to a grey sky, which reflects in our mood all day long; another day we may feel very energetic. While we cannot paint our walls in different colors every day, LED lighting can wash a wall in a variety of colors. One color might be more interesting in the morning, some entirely different colors in the afternoon. Perhaps when you’re working on your passion project, you want a certain shade of yellow to inspire creativity. That can be done with a click of a button.
The best cure is prevention, and architecture has the power to prevent family crises and other events that could negatively impact our well being.

Solutions Can Come From Unexpected Places