Consequences of Time in Nature
Joye and teammates report that they “tested the ‘nature-as-reward hypothesis’, which suggests that superior cognitive task performance following nature exposure reflects a general performance improvement, driven by the reward value of beautiful things. ....
Your Home’s “Face”
The façade of your home is the face that it presents to the world. Just like our own faces have a big effect on the instantaneous opinions formed of us as people, the front...
The Value of Biophilic Design
The neuroscience research makes it very, very clear that being in a biophilicly designed space elevates our wellbeing. Need proof of the value of indoor biophilicly designed spaces? Here’s a representative sample of research...
Beaches are best!
Hooyberg and colleagues, using virtual reality, determined that “beaches caused lower breathing rates than urban environments and lower SCR [skin conductance responses] than green environments. . . . the heart rate, HF-HRV [high-frequency heart...
Culture and Art
Brinkman and colleagues found that people from Austria and from Japan literally use their eyes differently when looking at European and Japanese art and photographs. The researchers report that “Possibly those differences are related...
Desirable Amounts of Greenery
In a study relevant to the design of offices everywhere, at home and elsewhere, Elbertse, and Steenbekkers report that their “study aims to explore the effect of different volumes of indoor greenery on perceived...
Health by the Sea
Geiger and colleagues report that they analyzed “data from the Seas, Oceans, and Public Health In Europe (SOPHIE) and Australia (SOPHIA) surveys to. . . . find broad cross-country generalizability that living nearer to...
Feeling Happy at Home
Shepherd, Selvey, Earon, and Wiking studied row house communities in Denmark and in the United Kingdom and learned that “The key drivers to happiness [resident wellbeing]: balancing the private and the communal; personalising the...
Exercise Effects and Biophilia
Zhang and colleagues learned that “Physical activity performed in a natural environment, especially among green spaces, is associated with mental health benefits. . . . [study participants] engaged in incremental cycling exercise at a...
Neuroscience of Water – Seeing it, Hearing it
Water has been and will remain crucial to our species continued existence—so, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that neuroscientists have studied how seeing and hearing water influences what goes on in our heads,...
Using Natural Materials
It’s renovation season! As you ponder your re-design options keep the benefits of using natural materials – wood, stone, linen and cotton, etc. – in mind. Working natural materials into spaces is an important...
Memories, Selfies and other Photos
Selfies play a different role in our lives than other photos. A Niese-lead team found that “When photographing moments in their lives, people can use a first-person (capturing the scene as they saw it)...
If you want a bargain, avoid long sun exposure….
Maybe some things are better off done away from daylight. Sun and colleagues report that “We examine sunshine-induced mood and its impacts on investors’ bidding decisions in the primary market where seasoned equities are...
More on Subjective Perception
Feeling things as it turns out, relates to believing things. Dinse, Newen, and Tegenthoff learned in a study using hypnosis that “If we sincerely believe that our index finger is five times bigger than...
Benefits of Virtual Art
Trupp and colleagues have learned that seeing art virtually shares benefits with seeing it “live”: “Brief online art viewing can significantly reduce negative mood and anxiety. . . . we used a Monet interactive art...
Adding Water
Water can be a great addition to an interior space—not the random water burbling in through a broken pipe or flooded field—but water in a gently moving desktop fountain or in an aquarium stocked...
Don’t always Follow Trends…
A lot of people make a lot of money creating and publicising trends, in design and elsewhere. They’d like you to think that your only option as a rational human being is to follow...
Ventilating a Space!
You may or may not have much control over the ventilation where you live or work, you may be able to open or close a window or be able to change the flow rate...
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...
Garden!
Fjaestad and team’s work confirms the value of gardening; they learned via data gathered from people 46 to 80 years old that “Compared to participants who did not engage in gardening, those who gardened...
Get your Kids into Nature
Li and Sullivan determined that when “Perceived childhood nature exposure was calculated as a cumulative score based on the perceived nature in residential surroundings from up to three childhood home locations weighted by duration...
Sunlight
Vermeer has been the darling of the art world, and loads of people outside that hallowed circle, for years, and in “Why We Want to Live (and Work) in That Vermeer Light” Emily Barger...
Plants Prevail
As they do most Springs when plants revive outside, plants inside are a hot topic. In “Eight Ways Indoor Plants Can Improve Your Home” (2023, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230324-eight-ways-indoor-plants-can-improve-your-home) Dominic Lutyens shares that worldwide “a trend for...
We like what we know
Darda and colleagues share that they “we explored Northern American and Indian participants’ aesthetic judgments and preferences for abstract and representational artworks. . . . no evidence was found for an ingroup bias ....
Assessing Art
Kuhnapfel and colleagues report that “in a gallery-like setting . . . we tracked movements of participants that engaged an abstract artwork. . . . moving more/more dynamically related to more reported insight. ....
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...
Smelling the right Smells outdoors
Gardens can be planned so that the scents that they generate serve well those that smell them. From a psychological perspective the best scents for your garden to produce (also, the best garden-based scents...
Building in Good Neighbours!
We can build and use our homes in ways that increase our positive bonds with the people who live nearby. Sit on your front porch or steps if you have them from time to...
How to design so people… behave…!
Want people to do something particular in a space? Sit quietly and read? Enjoy a movie with others without interjecting comments for all to hear? Eat using the table manners their grandmother would be...
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