Let there be Light
As we move toward the solstice and beyond, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll have fewer hours of day light every day and that means less natural light in your home. This...
The Silence of a House in Autumn
When the weather finally gets so cold and nasty that you have to close your windows, it will become clear to you very quickly that your house is very quiet. With the windows closed,...
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...
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....
Create a Work Zone to help when Working from Home
Puglisi and colleagues studied the experiences of people working remotely and develop related recommendations. They report that data from their surveys of remote workers “show that 55% of the workers perform their activity in...
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...
Getting out in Nature helps Boost Brain Power – It’s Official!
If you want to improve your little grey cells and also make yourself happy, get yourself out into nature. Write yourself a “green prescription” and take a walk outside, in a park, forest or...
Summer / Winter / Seasonal Stressors!
At this time of year you’re likely to be experiencing particular environmental stressors. Humans are most comfortable, our moods are good, and our brains work most effectively, when temperatures are around 70 to 72...
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...
Really Low Cost
In the second article on designing the space to live the life you planned, we look at how you can change your home or office which will cost very little. Your house or office...
Healthy Eating – Aided by Design!
The weather finally turning warm each year is a wonderful moment. It’s that time when we can leave our homes without the coats and sweaters that have encased us for months. Our moods near...
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...
Designing your Yoga and Meditation Room
Yoga and meditation are routes that lots of us take to getting and staying mentally and physically healthy. Anyone who’s done either knows that there are some places where yoga or meditation seems to...
Moon Effects – “Science News”
So it seems that science is proving that we are affected by the moon’s cycle! Casiraghi and colleagues used “wrist actimetry to show a clear synchronization of nocturnal sleep timing with the lunar cycle...
Entertaining People from other Countries? Countries and Comfort
This is the article you need if you often entertain people from countries besides your own and you want them to feel comfortable. A questionnaire was sent to participants out in nine countries: Brazil,...
Where You Sleep…
This is SUCH an important list! Are the colours featured the not very saturated but relatively bright ones that humans find relaxing? Blues are good colors for bedrooms because we associate them with feeling...
Bathroom Renovation
Bathrooms can be tricky places to renovate because often people can’t decide what they are actually meant to be. Are they Zen zones where users will bliss out or activation zones where people shed...
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...
Happy Memories
Don’t ignore your own positive prior garden or yard experiences. If your childhood garden featured brightly coloured furniture you loved, use the same style again in your current garden if you can, regardless of...
Water Features
Now, for the water element. If a river or stream or pond or lake or ocean borders your property, great. Make sure people in your yard or garden have an unobstructed view of it. ...
Get Ready for Mingling!
Not being able to be in the same place at the same time with friends and family during the pandemic has made us even more interested in doing just that. Humans are a social...
Importance of Greenery during COVID – Biophilic Design does it Again!
In another of our science-based research short reports we bring you this lovely study. Dzhambov and teammates probed links between the presence of indoor and outdoor greenery and the wellbeing of people during the...
Outdoor Plants
First, let’s talk about outdoor plants. The research consistently shows that mental refreshment and lower stress levels flow most smoothly and certainly from looking at green leafy plants. If you live in a desert,...
Art and Light
Art and other decorative elements can be great additions to gardens, particularly ones that have an organic curvy form, since they’re relaxing to look at, but what’s designed to be seen but missed visually...
Making Space for Meditating
Meditation is, for many, a spiritual activity, and for all a relaxing, calming one—but no matter why people have decided to meditate, studies indicate that it has positive repercussions for their minds and bodies....
Zoning Out!
Zone out! Create zones in your yard or garden, even if they’re tiny, so that users can, to the extent possible, develop their own sets of experiences, having options boost moods. Some areas should...
Curves & Hedges
Cushions that have curves The links we make between curving things and feeling comfortable is quite strong. Curving lines in art make it likely that piece will make a space feel more blissful and...
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