Lighting and Your Emotions (Part One)
May 23, 2007
Do you feel unhappy in your home and you don’t know why? Maybe you need to let the light shine! Add new light to your rooms for an instant uplift.
Lighting affects you more than any other design detail in your home. Your choice of lighting fixtures, light bulbs, and color of light makes a difference in your emotional and physical comfort. Lighting is both an art and a science.
Correct use of lighting benefits you in many ways. Besides allowing you to see, lighting sets the emotional atmosphere. You spend most of your day in activity. You need good lighting for these activities, to see clearly, to prevent fatigue, and to support your happiness.
Lighting helps change a room for different uses more easily than any other design detail. We can light a room for the occasion or the activity of the moment. The change and variation provided by lighting enhances the rhythms of our daily lives.
From flickering candles and twinkling party lights to advanced micro-lighting systems, lighting gives us either a comfortable or a miserable emotional atmosphere. Understanding the effects of different lighting helps you select the exact fixture and light source to create the desired emotional setting.
11 Tips for Stripping Wallpaper: How to Get Rid of Ugly Wallpaper!
May 22, 2007
I broke my promise to myself and stripped wallpaper again. The only reason I did this is for $100,000 profit. My family and I did not have time to wait for professional help. We sold our investment property before finishing the work and needed the home ready for appraisal.
While stripping the wallpaper, I realized that many homemakers get wrong advice for this horrendous task. After years of experience on 28 houses, I offer my tried and best tips:
1. Use a clothes steamer or rent a professional steamer 2. Soak a large section of the wall 3. Run a “Paper Tiger” scoring tool across the damp section 4. Steam the section again 5. Spray the section with fabric softener and hot water 6. Score the section with the paper tiger again 7. Steam again 8. Remove any curling edges (sometimes large areas peel off) 9. Scrape with a six inch sheetrock blade 10. Repeat the above steps on the section until most scrapes off easily 11. Scrub with hot water, TSP, and a sponge with a scratchy surface
Don’t live with ugly wallpaper any longer!
P. S. Please email me if you have any additional tips that would help others!
Selling Houses: Payback of Window Treatments
May 21, 2007
If you’re planning to show your home mainly during daylight hours, think about your selling season, market conditions, and the benefits of window treatments. Window treatment tips from innovative Design Psychology can help you sell your home for more money.
Real estate market conditions influence decisions regarding window treatments. Hot markets require fewer embellishments in order to sell, whereas increased competition from many listings similar to yours may require extras like great-looking window coverings to attract buyers.
Remember, daytime light is always best if it enters your home in from the outside, because natural daylight makes people happy, while the absence of natural daylight depresses people. When a room is too dark during the day, boosting the light with specific daytime-like lighting helps maintain an aerial emotional atmosphere.
Security and Shelter
We feel exposed in rooms with no window coverings at night, because with interior lights on, people on the street can see into our private spaces, and uncovered glass also looks like a cold, black hole at night. So window coverings are important, both from the security and psychological perspectives.
Dont Hire Someone to Steal Your Joy: Decorate Your Home Yourself!
May 20, 2007
In researching what makes people happy, I discovered that “Planning” makes us happy. Therefore, why should a homemaker turn over planning to an interior designer who creates homes to make money and impress others? Furthermore, most designers ignore the important outcome of creating a home, which is to support the emotional well-being of the residents.
Most of us enjoy looking for that perfect accessory, daydreaming about colors for our rooms, and planning a new look for our home. You know yourself best. Don’t give all the happy moments of planning and choosing decorating details to paid professionals. Reserve the enjoyment of designing your home for yourself.
Homes decorated to support desired emotions create happy spaces for joyful living. Design Psychology, a new method for residential exterior and interior design helps you choose home improvements and furnishings for your happiness and productivity.
Follow the first and only rule of decorating for happy living: “Design happy spaces.” Choose design ideas for your pleasure as well as individual needs. Design spaces to give you and others comfort, reassurance, and merriment.
For instance, take the use of a room and ask yourself how you need to feel in this space? Did you answer calm and serene or awake and energized?
Physiological Response to Window Coverings
May 20, 2007
Nothing soothes the brain like Mother Nature, whose intrinsic scenery relaxes and refreshes us, consciously and subconsciously. Therefore, a view of nature should never be completely covered up during the day.
During daylight hours, windows should let in as much light and scenery view as possible, because people who can’t see out of their windows during daylight hours get depressed. A view of nature, trees, plants, sky, clouds, and birds diminishes stress, promotes general physical health, and contributes to psychological satisfaction.
Factors such as natural light, fabric color, pattern, and tactile quality will also affect the presence of the room. Fabrics with a soft, tactile quality are good choices for creating a romantic, elegant ambiance, but mini-blinds are hard to clean and look severe. Pleated shades are softer, while shutters have rounded edges, can be repainted to change decor, and will last forever.
Window Coverings as Backgrounds
Window coverings that span a large expanse require the same color considerations as walls, since they become backgrounds for people. Too many patterns on windows will detract from both individuals and furnishings, and small prints in large spaces tend to get lost while adding busyness to a room.
Do You Have a Master Bedroom? You Shouldnt! Tips for Remodeling Your Bedroom
May 19, 2007
The word “master” is an antiquated term that suggests control, domination, and inequality, and in today’s cooperative partner and/or single parent household, the label “master suite” has become obsolete. In that light, master bedrooms would more properly be called “main bedrooms” in today’s society.
Far removed from the hubbub of family rooms and busy kitchens, the bedroom is the place where your day begins and ends. Surprisingly, however, main bedroom redecorating frequently ranks near the bottom of most people’s home renovation lists. But if you want an immediate uplift of your emotional state, there are few projects that will do that more effectively than remodeling your main bedroom.
Remodeling Your Main Bedroom for Happiness
The main bedroom, with its softened textures, serene artwork, and muted patterns, intimately captures the warmth of a home. Passion colors, such as red, purple, royal blue, rose, or the gilt of gold, add drama and indulgence. Plan your main bedroom design with private times in mind, beginning with the purpose of the bedroom. Do you want a Passion Boudoir, Reading Room, or Private Sanctuary?
Passion Boudoir
What is Design Psychology and How Will it Help Me?
May 18, 2007
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the most basic aspects of Design Psychology, first asking a question, and then addressing the various concepts, in abbreviated form.
“I wish I had learned all this before we bought our first house 25 years ago, and before we had our children. Not only would our homes be more harmonious, but so would our lives together. It’s amazing to learn how colors, lighting, sounds, and patterns affect us so deeply.” -Angela Pederson, Palm Desert, California
What are the basic fundamentals of Design Psychology?
- Lighting & our psychological responses to light Color & psychology Patterns & reactions Textures & the sense of touch Scale & human response Styles, themes & desirable effects Ethnic traditions & the importance of heritage Furniture & arrangement for human comfort Sounds & repercussions Scents & sentiments Embellishments & emotional undercurrents
How can Design Psychology help me?
It can help you:
- Select from the mass confusion of home furnishings. Decorate your home right the FIRST time. Save time, effort, and money. Find out which colors, patterns, furniture, and accessories support happy feelings. Learn about lighting and color psychology, and the underlying emotional effects of your home’s design details.
Discover how Mother Nature can guide your home decorating, to create an environment that’s perfect for your emotional needs.
Design Psychology: Fabrics
May 17, 2007
From a riot of color in bold chintzes to the gentle rustle of taffeta, fabrics influence our mental attitude in many subtle and not so subtle ways. Playful patterns make us smile, while mixing prints and solids can present a paradox of dynamic energy. No matter which effect you’re looking for, you’ll want too choose the right fabric colors, patterns, and textures to reflect your interior design plan.
Emotional Factors
Fabrics make impressions on all of our senses. For instance, tactile pleasure is strongly reinforced by the softness of fabrics. The touch of a fabric suggests wealth (silk), formality (damask), or informality (burlap). Our hearing is enhanced in rooms with an abundance of noise-absorbing fabrics. The colors and textures of fabric affect our sight, and some fabrics also influence our sense of smell, offering scents that may be pleasurable, cooling, or annoying. Fabric colors even modify our perceived sense of taste.
Fiber and Texture
Fiber is what gives substance and texture to fabric, and may include such things as reeds, grasses, animal hair, or even plant seeds. When shopping for any type of woven fabric, look for a high thread count for softness and durability.
How to Decorate Spaces for People
May 16, 2007
When it comes to decorating your home, forget about the empty, lifeless rooms you see in interior design magazines and books. Instead, you should concentrate on designing all of the rooms in your home as backdrops for the people who will be living in those spaces. Here are a few simple techniques for designing dynamic spaces:
Don’t be afraid to leave some empty spaces in your rooms. Empty space allows for breathing room and lets the most important items in the room shine — the people who live there!
Avoid large patterns in your fabrics and wallpapers. As a general rule, use no designs larger than your palm, because they will interfere with the appearance of people in the room. Using smaller patterns on walls and furniture will mean that friends and family won’t have to compete with bold patterns for attention.
Use paint colors that complement people’s skin and eye colors. For light skin colors, use yellows, pinks, and beiges. For darker complexions, yellows, olives, and tans can make people look great.
Use textures that stimulate the sense of touch. Look for textures that are nice to caress, such as velvet, chenille, or satin. They’ll create a feeling of being pampered.
Seven Essential Color Concepts for Designing Spaces
May 15, 2007
Understanding a few essential color concepts will help you design your living and work spaces more purposefully. Embrace the colors that work best for your specific activity and emotional support. Here are seven Design Psychology color basics:
1. Light colors and cool colors recede; dark and bold colors advance.
2. Bold colors and large patterns take up visual space and help sparsely furnished rooms look finished.
3. Bright primary colors give off energy, while pastel colors absorb energy. Excessively bright colors, like excessively bright lights, are stressful.
4. Unrelieved monochromatic color schemes can be boring and, worse, depressing.
5. Adjacent rooms visually expand when the background colors are alike.
6. Northern exposed rooms generally need more light and warmth. Yellow-based colors add dimensions of light and warmth. Rooms with a southern exposure in a hot climate feel cooler when painted in blue-based colors.
7. Surrounding colors influence the appearance of nearby colors. A color appears lighter when surrounded by a dark background and darker when surrounded by a light background.
Use these color concepts to create your spaces for happiness and productivity.
(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.
