Nook spaces and visual complexity…

Your odd space may have spent part of its life as a nook and time as a nook can have a serious and powerfully negative effect on your future efforts to keep random stuff out of it.  Once a place has been a catch all, moving it along to a future, non-storage use is among the most difficult of all possible design manoeuvres to execute well, it has a level 10 (of 10) level of difficulty.

If your nook becomes too filled with stuff, it will stress you whenever you happen by, so you won’t spend any time there at all, which wastes square footage you’re heating, cooling, and paying taxes on.  So, resist the temptation to just drop whatever in an odd space, put it away.  If you have a problem with visual overload in the rest of your home (read this article for information on visual overload), you may decide to use your odd space for storage and block its contents from view with a curtain, screen, or wall.  A little logic, and tailoring shelves, storage boxes, and other containers to the dimensions of what you intend to place on/in them, singly or in sets, minimizes wasted space and maximises items stored.  If you’ll use your odd space for storage, make sure that it’s warm and dry enough so the items you’ve decided to save don’t fade out of your life covered in mould.

A small odd space is easily overloaded visually, so you’ll need to keep art and other decorative elements in check—too much going on visually is stressful, and we avoid stressful places whenever we can.  If your odd space is less than 4 feet x 4 feet, you’ll want to skip on wall art altogether, unless the space is quite bright or has an exterior window.  Nature art, if a reasonable add, can and will help users refresh mentally.

For example, as discussed in this article (also search for curves in our search bar top of our website here), we find looking at curving forms more relaxing and comfortable, while more rectilinear ones, featuring straight lines, make us think of functionality and efficiency.  Pair a couch with curving arms or legs with relaxing scents in your recharge room, not a couch whose cushions and arms and legs are straight and edge meet at angles so sharp you could cut open vegetables with them.  Also, for overall space planning, etc.:  symmetrical arrangements of things are relatively calming to view, while asymmetrical ones can be exciting to look at.