How to decorate your home to promote health and relaxation

When we visit, we immediately realize if the space suits us or makes us uncomfortable, but often we don’t know why. There are neuroscientists who investigate what are the characteristics of pleasant interior spaces, that favor relaxation, tranquility or concentration.

Personal taste and intuition are the tools we use to furnish and decorate our homes and workplaces. That’s fine, but it’s worth keeping in mind what scientists have discovered. With carefully controlled experiments that measure physiological and psychological responses, they can determine the effects of design elements on the brain and body.

Decoration can improve health

The importance of interior decoration goes beyond aesthetic pleasure. Design can improve mood, lower blood pressure and even lower the risk of developing degenerative neurological disorders, explains David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect: How your mindset can transform your life, in the magazine New Scientist.

Experiments in adults and children have shown that environments that stimulate unconscious attention allow the parts of the brain responsible for directed attention to rest and recover. It is the theory of restorative care. “The effects are similar to those of meditation,” says John Spengler, professor of environmental health and human housing at Harvard University.

Decoration tricks to promote relaxation and well-being

How is unconscious attention stimulated? Biological evolution over thousands of years has made sights and sounds related to nature are familiar and fascinating to us.

Many studies prove the effectiveness of nature images. Hospital patients whose rooms face natural surroundings they need less painkillers and leave the hospital sooner than those whose windows face a brick wall, for example.

Students who can see green outdoor spaces they concentrate better than those facing buildings or bare walls.

1. Details that remind of nature

If you are not lucky enough to live or work in a building with large windows and surrounded by gardens, meadows or mountains, you can recreate nature inside.

In practice, we can surround ourselves with plants, wallpapers with realistic foliage, paintings with nature scenes, sculptures that reproduce trees or animals, and sounds of birdsong and waterfalls.

2. Put natural wood everywhere

Natural wood furniture or wood paneled walls are preferable to white or solid colored surfaces. A study led by Xi Zhang, from Jiao Tong University in Shanghai (China), has found that a decoration with natural textures makes you feel happier and less tired.

Wood has special qualities. Touching it lowers blood pressure compared to aluminum and plastic, which tend to increase it. Even the smell of wood is relaxing.

On the other hand, natural wood furniture does not contain glues that can release potentially harmful volatile compounds, as is the case with plywood.

3. Wide and open spaces

We like and feel good open spaces. At home, we can throw walls if they are not necessary and not place the furniture in a way that obstructs the view. At the same time, we like corners where we feel protected. According to neuroscientists, these preferences are the result of having lived for thousands of years in the savannah, where we scanned the horizon in search of novelty.

Oshin Vartanian, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Toronto (Canada), explains that small, enclosed spaces produce increased activity in the brain’s anterior median cingulate cortex, which responds to threats. On the other hand, the open spaces they activate the areas of the brain involved in visual exploration and a much more relaxed state of mind.

4. Bet on order instead of chaos

Another aspect to take into account is the order. Although the studies are not conclusive, it seems that well-ordered and organized spaces, with symmetries and repetitions instead of chaos, They can promote efficiency at work and even a better diet. Clutter is associated with procrastination and habit disturbances (although some clutter may be related to creativity).