Considering Guests

“Visiting” season is upon us!

At the end of the Western calendar year, many of us pack up our suitcases and travel to the homes of the few people who haven’t hit the road.

How can your home be most welcoming to your guests?

• Places where people have pleasant times together smell good. Places can smell good for all sorts of different reasons.  Places that smell good smell comfortably clean.  That means that they don’t smell musty or like the trash or like sweaty/dirty humans.  Smelling of cleaning products can be taking this “smelling clean” to an extreme unless those cleaners have light, sort of gentle scents reminiscent of nature.  When places smell clean to us we interact more pleasantly and positively with others and our stress levels fall, which is a good thing because having someone in your home who doesn’t live there can be a very stressful experience—and every little bit of stress-busting helps.  You can use scents in your home strategically, as discussed in this article.  For starters, the smell of lavender is relaxing and many household products (and gifts received, such as potpourri pillows), are scented with lavender.
• Your guests need a territory that’s theirs, even if just for a few hours every day as they decompress at the end of the day and try to fall asleep.This means that the space where they’ll be reclining on the sofa (which has become their bed) is out of the view of others, because of the architecture/interior design generally or because during their visit standing screens or tallish plants have been relocated.  If screening isn’t possible, you need to simply leave your guests territory with the promise (which you keep) that you won’t return until morning.  To really “claim” their territory your guests will need to be able to arrange a few of their things around themselves, so try to provide a horizontal surface for their iPad after they put it aside to go to sleep and a chair on which tomorrow’s outfit can be draped to get the wrinkles out, for example.  In the very best territories, we have some control over the conditions we experience, so, if at all possible, allowing your guests to open and close nearby drapes, to reset the thermostat, etc., can be a good thing.  When we’re in a territory we control we relax and we feel profoundly comfortable, just like our earliest ancestors did when they knew that the location they’re in was safe and secure, at least for a little while.  If at all possible, locating your visitor’s territory so that it seems secure and that they will know if anyone is nearby, is a plus.  This means that a hallway or kitchen (that people might access early morning, for example) behind the couch where people will sleep is less than desirable.  If someone is sleeping on a sofa in a relatively open area, guests will feel more relaxed if the back of that couch is tall, if there’s a row of tall-ish plants behind the sofa, if the sofa is pushed against even a half wall, etc.  When we’re settling down to sleep, especially, our most primitive thought patterns take over;  a place where our earliest ancestors might feel safe enough to bed down for the night still makes us feel good.   You earn bonus points if when your guest lays down to sleep they have a view of the entryway to the space that they’re in.
• Pick up, and neaten up your home if guests are imminent. Your home doesn’t need to be “eat-off-the-floor” clean or “ready-for-royal-inspection” clean, just neat-ish.    Vacuum.  Throw away your collection of empty food delivery containers.  Return books to the shelves where they spend most of their lives and clean dishes to their cabinets.  The point here is to manage visual complexity (discussed in detail here) to make your visitors feel more comfortable.  Shoot for a look (colour, pattern, order, etc.-wise) like a residential interior designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (for example, as shown here: https://meyermayhouse.steelcase.com/).
• If people have a view out the window of a natural setting or inside can see green leafy plants, nature scenes in art (paintings, photographs, etc.) and natural materials, they’ll also be more comfortable and likely able to refresh mentally. Similarly, we’re more relaxed in spaces featuring curving lines (in 2-dimensions in upholstery, wallpapers, rugs, etc.) and 3-dimensions (the way that the arm of a sofa gently rolls over or the back of that sofa forms the vague outline of a distant hill, etc.).
• While you are picking up, take a look around and make sure that the messages people will pick up from being inside your home are the ones that you want to share. If you’re proud of your time as an Olympic sailor, make sure a related photo finds it way onto the mantle piece, etc.  Just picking up your home, as mentioned earlier, sends powerful messages about how you live your life to visitors (and simultaneously, how you expect them to behave in your home).  Silent signals to your guests that they are welcome and that you hope they are comfortable, whether that’s an extra, snuggly blanket that people can use if they want or individually wrapped travel-size soaps in the bathroom or bottled water by the bed, are powerful communicators.
• Your guests will not only want to sleep during their visit but also do things such as recharge the various electronic devices with which they travel. Accessible wall outlets are key in both hotel rooms and spare bedrooms.  Guests with special diets will want to be able to use your kitchen without disrupting your day, so brief kitchen tours and logical placement of tools can make everyone’s life easier.
• Recognize that visitors to your home may have a different personality than you do; designing to support various personalities is discussed in this article.
• As you plan the spaces in your home where guests will spend time, take a look at the findings of people who have researched hotel design, discussed in this article.