Keep warm and feel safe
The warmer we are the safer we feel. Hornstein, Fanselow, and Eisenberger link feeling something warm feeling safe: “a physically warm stimulus was less readily associated with threat (compared to soft or neutral stimuli;...
Invisible Differences
Some differences between people who will visit a space are invisible until they clearly are not so at all—until eyes start to water and noses get red, for example. You love Fluffy your cat...
Senses
Sometimes people to your home have some sort of “difference” that they’d rather not be publicly discussed (although today there are many fewer topics that fit into this category than in the past) but...
Designing for Who You Are and Who They Probably Are too!
One of the things that’s clearest about space design is that everyone feels better when their personality aligns with the place that they find themselves. But who are you? Who are the people who...
Entertaining and Eating Together
One of the fabulous things about autumn is the cosying up and cooking for family and friends (as well as just for ourselves). Creating a space for comfortable eating in your home is important...
Fall and Food
One of the first questions that generally gets asked about design and eating is if colours on walls, plates, etc., can influence how much we eat. The answer: surface colours do indeed influence our...
Refresh your Home during the Fall season
Design can encourage us to be more active, even to workout. Design can help you transition from making excuses for avoiding working out to exercising with vigor and enthusiasm (at least some enthusiasm). As...
Temperature Wars
This is the time of year when there are often quite lively, shall we say, debates over where to set the thermostat in your home or office. Please consider this article a public service,...
Hygge
Hygge actually accomplishes what it claims—it relaxes us in a powerful, profound way. This will surprise no one who’s read articles we’ve written in the past that have reported that: Being in warm, dim...
Airports are Going Biophilic!
A recent article in the New York Times (“The Trouble With Airports, and How to Fix Them,”) should brighten the day of anyone who has ever, or may ever need to spend time in airports....
Do masks make us distance less?
Lee and Chen found that face masks may influence how far we choose to be from other people. The researchers report that via data collected through an online survey they found that “A smaller...
Live in a Green Area, if you can
Atiken found that “People who live in green neighbourhoods are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease. . . . The researchers analysed the odds of developing any new cardiovascular disease, and the number of...
Learning Spaces – 1
Cognitive learning is hard, hard brain work, whether you’re 8 or 80. Spaces where you plan to learn new material, whether they’re a home schoolroom, a home office, or a classroom outside a home...
Learning Spaces – 3
There are a range of educational philosophies and styles that teachers may favour and some more rigorously encourage movement during lessons than others. Movement requires a space to move in, and that can influence...
Planning a Party? – The Long Read
The PARTY CHECKLIST! It’s probably been a while since you’ve been able to plan any sort of gathering that includes more than you and your cat. Neuroscientists (who would no doubt by this time...
Dorm Rooms / Shared Kids Bedrooms
In a shared bedroom the main difference would be to make sure that each child has some space to put out/display a couple of things that remind them about what they value about themselves...
In the Car
You have some ability to customize the interior of your car to help you deal with situations you encounter as you drive. If you want to relax, the traffic has gotten your blood pressure...
Future Space
Loads of people are proclaiming that future mingling will be much less prevalent than in the past. There’s even discussion of whether we’ll need offices in the future, for example here: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210721-whats-the-purpose-of-the-office-and-do-we-still-need-it There are...
Enjoying Mingling
Article after article is trumpeting how much people are enjoying interacting with others again or how much they long to do so (see this one, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/insider/working-empty-newsroom.html ) Of course we’re glad to...
Living alone together
Recently, there’s been more attention to people, generally those getting a little long in the tooth, who are choosing to have relationships with others but not marry or move in together (see this article,...
What’s up and What’s down
We think a lot about the vertical surfaces (walls) in the spaces where we find ourselves, but not so much about the horizontal ones, the ceilings and floors. Science is clear about how they...
Design changes that are FREE!
Some changes you can make to your home or office can have a powerful effect on your wellbeing but are essentially free. Here is a useful list for you The single most important...
Early experiences affect us more than recent ones
Have you ever gone somewhere where you had a good time a few years back? Or revisited a place which was associated with a bad memory? It turns out that those early memories really...
Design and Physical Health
Design can support physical health in more than the expected ways. Use of safe materials, ones that don’t off gas toxins, for example, is an obvious design-based route to physical health. Design can make...
Eating out!
Restaurant Design Eating out is fun, and restaurants are often create places to spend time. Restaurants are also designed to encourage you to eat, particularly items that have great profit margins. Design significantly influences...
Value of Time in Nature – “Science News”
New research shows that the more time we spend in nature the more generous we are, it creates a sense of transcendence. Castelo lead a team that confirmed previous findings and determined via lab...
Living Your Best Life Minute – Shopping Tips
In this section, we’re going to initiate a new feature – how to use environmental psych in specific situations that you’re likely to encounter outside your home and office, as you live your life....
Spaces for Mingling
How to design for Mingling We have had a whole issue on this in April 2021 so be sure to check that out. But one of the most important aspects of our lives as...
Why We’ll Still Gather – From a Psych Perspective
Loads of people are proclaiming that future mingling will be much less prevalent than in the past. There are compelling reasons to believe, however, that after we’ve all been vaccinated we’ll continue to find...
Post-COVID Home Design
The single most important message, design-wise, we can draw from our experiences during the pandemic related lockdowns is that we need to make sure our homes, going forward, provide us with options as to...
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