How to use Scent?
Now that you’ve considered what you’re hearing, it’s time to think about what you’re smelling as you try to decompress: Smelling lavender helps you relax (it also encourages you to be more trusting of...
What we See and Touch
It probably won’t surprise you at all to know that touching soft things, such like the flannels that baby pyjamas are made of, is relaxing. If you want to banish the stress demons, make...
Clear that Clutter once and for all!
Visual clutter, known in the psych trade as visual complexity, is a sure-fire way to work your internal stress meter up to dangerous levels.If getting rid of clutter was straightforward, however, you would already...
How to REALLY relax in a Space?
To really relax in a space, people need to feel in control of it, that no one can intrude visually or acoustically without their permission—in other words, no one can see or hear them...
How to Travel Stress-Free?
Many of us now are starting to travel again (hurray!) outside our own car—but travel is stressful—we’re packed into airplanes, trains, and buses as close as sardines (sometimes it seems closer) and don’t have...
Theatre for conversation
There are ways that design can make it more likely that you’ll have a constructive, mutually-beneficial conversation with someone else—whether you’re trying to negotiate world peace or help your teenager understand that they do...
Loud noises could give you a heart attack!
Avel Moreyra and colleagues that determined that “People experiencing high levels of noise from cars, trains or planes were more likely to suffer a heart attack. . . . Patients were divided into those...
Evolution and Biophilic Design
Humans are a young species and still working with the same sorts of mental apparatus and ways of processing incoming information from our physical world that we had in our first few generations as...
Green Plants and Biophilic Design
Plants are important in any biophilically designed place, but biophilic designing involves much more than just distributing a few plants around. But since plants have come up, let’s start with them. Seeing green leafy...
De-clutter and then move those plants in…
If you live in a place with bad natural light, if you always forget to water (if this is you, please don’t ever bring home a kitty, puppy, or baby), or if things just...
Why we need Natural Materials
In biophilically designed spaces there are plenty of natural materials, slate and stone on floors, for example, and wood with visible grain on floors, walls, table tops, wherever it might be. Using wood with...
Colours and Biophilic Design
We have special relationships with some colours. Around the world, wherever you ask, people are more likely to tell you that the colour blue is their favourite colour than any other shade. Coincidentally, or...
Light, Sound and Movement
Flooding a space with natural light (minimizing glare with blinds as needed during certain times of the day, as needed) is biophilic design at its finest; it elevates our mood as well as our...
In conclusion – Biophilic Design in situ
Not surprisingly, research has shown that it’s best for our brains and our bodies if we layer multiple biophilic experiences together, so we’re hearing nature and seeing natural materials, and feeling the tickle of...
How to Design your Garden
There’s all sorts of science that can be applied to create a great garden—from studies of what sorts of fertilizer are best for dahlias when to how many hours of daylight petunias actually need...
Having a Positive, Productive Conversation
There are ways that design can make it more likely that you’ll have a constructive, mutually-beneficial conversation with someone else—whether you’re trying to negotiate world peace or help your teenager understand that they do...
Keep those blinds open!
Satish, Joseph, and Nanavati, recapping the benefits of natural light, report that “Exposure to daylight, in particular, plays an outsized role in our overall well-being and mental health. Like almost all animals, humans have...
Odd Spaces can make Great Spaces!
If when you read “odd places” in the title of this article and thought, “at last, what I should do with that weird space under the stairs OR that 2 foot by 3 foot...
How to fix an Odd-space?
If your odd space is wrong-sized there are things you can do to alter how big or small it feels that don’t involve paint. A more brightly lit space seems larger than a less...
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...
Places for Dogs, Cats, and Fish
Our pets, at the very least, seem like our very good friends, and we can make sure that they enjoy living in our homes as much as we enjoy having them share it with...
Living and Loving
February is love month. We’ve been hearing this since we have been old enough to hear anything at all. The consumer products juggernaut that fills all our communications with advertisements, sometimes now flowing like...
Let music and scents be the food of love!
In many a boudoir scene on the silver screen, not only do candles predominate, but before the person to be romanced arrives, some scent is sprayed in the air and background music begins to...
What does your home say about you?
At least according to the experts in these sorts of things, it seems most likely that people will form their most useful opinions of others when they actually have some idea who those other...
Starting Anew – Aargh! to Aahh!
People putting together plans for new homes pass through a set of predictable phases. The first is euphoria: “Wow, I’m going to have the opportunity to do something new, to create the sort of...
Creating places to mingle in your home
Places where people will have positive, pleasant conversations: Will allow everyone who wants to make eye contact at any time they feel like it. Parties require the sorts of everyone sits in a ring...
Living with Stress
Goldring and Bolger investigated how daily stressors influence lives and found that “Prior research shows that daily stressors lead to greater psychological distress. A separate body of research links daily stressors to physical symptoms...
Refreshment time!
During the holidays, we often need to not only work at whatever our job is but also spend time catching up with family, friends, and colleagues, all of this can lead us desperate to...
Fish Tank Heaven
We have mentioned the restorative, de-stressing, etc., power of fish tanks lots in earlier issues, but now, it seems, they’re officially “in” (see reference to the NY Times article below). Fish tanks are finally...
Getting your Home ready for the Fall
Autumn can be the most depressing season. Sure, the leaves all turn pretty colours and the nip in the air means it’s OK to have a nip or two of hot spiced punch (with...
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