Home decorating decisions are often heavily influenced by the homeowner’s personal style and preferences. A home should make a statement about the homeowner, but there is plenty of room to creatively accomplish this. Your decorative choices play a major role on mood and mental health, so home decorating efforts should take this into account as well. These are some of the primary ways that home décor can impact mental health and how you may make smart improvements going forward.
Psychology of Color
Each color that you introduce in your home can influence mood. For example, yellow has a happy, vibrant feel while blue has a calming feel. These effects vary based on the intensity or paleness of the hue as well as by the color combinations that are used together. Learning more about the psychology of color can tell you about the impact that your current color scheme has on you and your family members. It may also provide you with insight into preferred color combinations based on the mood that you want to achieve.
Space and Orientation
The concepts of Feng Shui are deeply rooted in space and orientation concepts. Your current furniture layout may be contributing to a stressful ambiance and making you feel generally unhappy or flustered. By rearranging the furniture slightly, you may improve feelings of peace and calmness in your home. Educating yourself about Feng Shui is a great starting point. After learning about Feng Shui, you may decide to simply relocate your existing pieces to different areas of each room. However, you may need to invest in current pieces to achieve excellent results in some cases.
Accent Pieces
The accent pieces in your home décor seemingly have little impact on mood or ambiance, but this is not the case. A room that is cluttered with numerous accent pieces may create a claustrophobic feel. Furthermore, the decorative impact of individual accent pieces is lost when the room has too many items in it. Careful selection of a few meaningful pieces is a smart idea. Each piece can stand alone and will play a major role in décor. For example, farmhouse pottery can be placed intermittently throughout a country kitchen to complete the feel of an inviting, happy space.
Every aspect of your home’s décor plays into the mood of the home. Because you and your family members spend so much time in this space, the overall ambiance can dramatically affect mental health. Analyze your space with these factors in mind to determine the best strategy for improvement.
Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.