How important is interior design in your home?
What is interior design? Interior design is another term for interior environment, or what we surround ourselves with when we are at home, at work - or anywhere inside a building for that matter. Consider how you feel when you arrive at someone’s home or office or restaurant or even a shop. If you don’t feel comfortable in that space, for whatever reason, you will try and leave as soon as possible.
What if you had that feeling when you arrived in your own home? If you don’t feel comfortable at home then something has to be done, if you are to enjoy a happy and productive life.
Interior design is something that we live and breathe everyday of our lives – huge stores like Myer, David Jones, Saks, Marks and Spencer, all spend a lot of money working out how to make people feel comfortable (and of course feeling happy enough to shop in their stores!). Shops like Ikea make it a mission to help people feel at ease within the store so they relate to their merchandise and therefore want to buy their products to enhance their own homes.
But we don’t live in stores. We don’t have neat lives that look like vignettes in stores like Myer and Ikea. We want to feel at ease and comfortable in our own homes.
So it comes down to this question:-
What makes you feel comfortable and happy at home? The answer usually stems from three basic principles, 1. Scale and proportion 2. Practicality and comfort 3. Lighting and ventilation
This is where you need help, hopefully from a qualified, experienced and empathetic interior designer, that can relate to your lifestyle, your family set-up and your daily habits. Sounds frightening, but what you eat, what you wear, how you live, all tell a story so the best outcome for your perfect interior environment can be achieved.
Why is this important? If you are not completely comfortable in your own home, be it in your kitchen, bathroom or bedroom (usually the main areas of concern), then you will not be living your life to its optimum level and you will not realise the joy and ease that can be achieved by having a relaxed living environment.
This exact statement can be reiterated when discussing your work environment. So let’s go back to the three usual factors affecting our response to our interior environment:
1. Scale and proportion
2. Practicality and comfort
3. Lighting and ventilation
Picture walking into a huge auditorium and there is a small chair in the middle of the room. The host asks you to make yourself at home. What do you do with a tiny chair in such a huge space? You feel uncomfortable even though you have been welcomed by the hosts. Another scenario – welcomed by the same hosts into a tiny room with a massive television on the wall, large, overstuffed three piece lounge suite and coffee table, almost butting up to the tele. Make yourself at home – you immediately might start to feel fat! It is the Gulliver’s syndrome or Alice in Wonderland feeling – you don’t belong and you certainly don’t feel comfortable. Scale and proportion of furnishings have an immediate impact on our well-being.
Practicality and comfort – there is a myriad of furnishing styles out there, but they must feel good for YOU, not just look good. An example of practicality versus looks could be the bench seat up against an outdoor table – looks great in the brochure or on the showroom floor, but try getting off that bench seat if you are stuck between two other people – not a pretty sight.
Lighting and ventilation – I spend a lot of time and effort designing lighting layouts for clients – a room can literally be transformed into another atmosphere immediately with clever lighting. Don’t ignore this vital part of comfort and style in your own home – and for that matter in your work environment. Without adequate air-flow, with natural ventilation, any room will suffer and will be uncomfortable for its occupants.
These three elements are all major considerations is assessing how comfortable you are in your home and clearly spell out how important interior design is in your home.