Your Front Door Colour affects your House sale!
Zillow shares information on front door colours and home sales. During their study actual and potential home buyers answered survey questions: “Homes with a front door painted slate blue — a chalky light blue-gray...
Nature and Patience
Xu and Ding report that “exposure to nature will lead consumers to be more patient in their waiting decisions. . . . marketers can reduce customer churn during peak or out-of-stock periods by decorating...
Autumn Fall is upon us and Winter will be here soon—how should you be preparing? Step 1 – Deal With Your Plants!
We’re spoiled at the end of the Summer. We’ve had all sorts of access to all sorts of green leafy plants, at our homes or in nearby parks or other spaces for months (well,...
Managing the Temperature without touching the Thermostat!
Our brains and bodies work and feel best in spaces where the temperature is 72 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity levels are 40% to 70%. Ideal conditions are not always achievable ones. There are...
Setting the Barbie Scene
The sets of the Barbie movie did not fall out of the sky, they were carefully crafted by a dedicated team of professionals. Kyle Buchanan (2023, “How Those ‘Barbie’ Dreamhouses Came to Life: ‘We...
The “Best” Gardens
Margaret Roach (2023, “More Plants, More Life, More Pleasure: What Sets the Best Gardens Apart,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/realestate/gardening-landscaping-ecological.html ) has spent a lot of quality time figuring out what sets the best...
Designing Schools
There are some aspects of great learning spaces that we can’t tie to our early history as a species, at least not well. They include: Effective screening to eliminate audio and visual distractions. Lots...
Quick Recap – Places to Focus
People learning need to be focusing on what they’re doing. Design supports focus when it: Uses colours that are not very saturated and are relatively light—a sage green or smokey blue with lots of...
Using Spaces to Remember…
Human minds really are fascinating and the way they work means that using spaces in particular ways can help us remember things. When we’re working or just musing, we offload thoughts to the world...
Barbie Pink!
With the global PR tsunami pushing people into theatres to see the new Barbie movie, it seems that the colour pink is everywhere. Looking at relatively unsaturated, light shades of pink is definitely relaxing...
Designing for Health and Happiness
Design can definitely make you feel happy, what’s technically known in the psych biz as improving your mental health. Being happier can be good for your physical health, it can make your immune system...
Boosting Physical Health, Via Place Design
The most obvious ways that design can improve physical health is by not actively harming users—off gassing fatal to inhale chemicals, being appropriate ergonomically, etc. Once all of the active threats are eliminated from...
How to design for creativity – The Long Read
The findings that follow are place-independent; they hold, and can be applied, whether people are at home, in a corporate workplace, at a co-working site, or somewhere else entirely. Also, always remember, that a...
Wild Swimming
Wild swimming has been having a moment, for the last few decades, and likely will get even more attention when people swim in the Seine during the 2024 Paris Olympics—although jumping into the Seine...
What shape and colour apartment?
Kleeman and Foster’s study of the implications of spending extended periods of time in home apartments during the COVID-19 lockdowns are fairly predictable: “Compared to the pre-pandemic period, after the lockdown residents reported less satisfaction...
Perceptions can prevail over Reality
In the course of your lives you’ve likely seen people respond to spaces and/or objects in them in a way that seems much more subjective than objective. Rest assured, the differences that you think...
Speaking and Designing
It may not seem that the language we’re speaking should have much effect on our responses to designed spaces but indeed it does. We pick up on social cues such as the language being...
Minimalistic Living
There’s a lot of push today for living in a minimalist way. Aaargh! Using resources thoughtfully is always a good idea, for many a reason, from saving the earth, to conserving your bank balance,...
Create Refreshing Views – Garden Design 101!
We’re not apt to think how our gardens can work for us, the way our home offices and kitchens do. Your garden can refresh your mind and cut your stress levels just as it...
Biophilically Designed Gardens
The gardens that have the most positive effects on our minds and our bodies actively apply important principles of biophilic design. We have discussed biophilic design in detail in here (and search in our...
Your Personality and Your In-City Home
Although there’s always the chance (day or night) to pop out of an urban residence, it’s even more important that that a home in the city aligns with your personality than that one outside...
What you can learn from Urban Design for Wherever you Live
Urban designers have done oodles of studies over the years, and some of the lessons that their work teaches are relevant whether you live in a city or not and their research outcomes align...
Ceilings to Look up to… the Long Read…
It’s easy to take ceilings for granted. Most of the time for the majority of us they’re a non-event, they’re up there blocking our view of the sky, part of a structure that keeps...
Flooring to Ground a Space
When we’re developing a space, we tend to think a little more about what’s under our feet than what’s overhead, but often not much more. The single best surface for any floor is hardwood...
Finishes that Complete Things in just the Right Way
Finishes tend to be an afterthought—we agonize over a colour for a surface, but not over whether that surface should be shiny or matte, for example. This is too bad as surfaces have a...
Transition Areas
Way too often we create the focal areas in our homes and imagine, it seems, that people will experience one space or another but not those in between. Zoning is key for the best...
Shiny or Matte?
Huang, Song, and Yang report that “glossy (vs. matte) finishes increase consumers’ perceived effectiveness of a problem-avoiding product while the reverse is true for a problem-approaching product. . . . we demonstrate that glossy [matte] finishes lead consumers...
It’s Color of the Year Time, Again
Pantone has decided that the color of 2023 is—drumroll please—Viva Magenta. To get an idea what Viva Magenta actually looks like, click on either of the links below. The CNN article quotes Pantone as...
Planning for Pleasant Conversations
The end of the year is the time for lots of idealized thinking about positive conversations—maybe memories of previous ones around a holiday table, planned ones with family and friends in front of a...
Spiritual/Meditation Vibes
Even those of us who are not particularly religious are likely to have spiritual thoughts in conjunction with our end of year holidays. How can you boost the “spirituality” of your home? Make the...
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