Your short guide .. How to design your home to suit your emotional needs?

In 2008, The New York Times reported that many architects complain that their clients ask them to act as if they were mental health professionals rather than designers, and that clients also complain that architects do not understand them optimally, and what appears It is not far from the truth that the clients do not know exactly what they want, they want a house that brings them comfort, psychological peace and tranquility but they do not know what this house looks like.

The most prominent story related to this dispute occurred in the state of Connecticut, in the United States, where a house was sold at auction after a married couple considered it to be a "dream house", an area of ​​​​approximately 2500 square meters, and the couple spent 21 million dollars to prepare and design it in the Tuscan style, but after If the building was completed and they moved to it, they discovered that it was not suitable for them at all for reasons related to the design of the house and even its area, as the wife complained, saying that less than half of this space was sufficient for them (1).

Did you have that feeling when you stayed in a hotel room, a comfortable and beautiful room, but it does not suit you, does not express anyone and does not belong to any of its residents, what we mean here is the difference between what you see as a beautiful place and what you feel is a place that belongs to you, expresses you, and you feel In it, you are in your own home, not just in any beautiful home.

Many interior designers work on this goal: that the house you prepare for housing turns into your “home,” and this is exactly what Donald Norman, a professor of cognitive sciences, referred to when he launched the term “emotional design,” and in home design it means that your home meets With all your needs, here are some foundations that professionals recommend to use in the design of your home.

The emotion that binds us to things

In his book Emotional Design.. Why do we love (or hate) everyday things?

Published in 2003, Donald Norman coined the concept of emotional design to refer to design concerned with creating emotional connections between a user and a product;

To build a more enjoyable experience for users that aligns with both the rational and emotional perspectives of human beings in their view of everything that surrounds them.

Emotional design evokes feelings as shown in the aesthetics of design. The emotional role is very important in our experience of things. It directly affects cognitive processes such as memory, problem solving, perception and thinking. That is why emotional design is used in different disciplines: branding, emotional marketing, and industrial design. architecture, and home design (2).

Emotional design is used by professionals and interior designers to help you reveal inner feelings you may not have thought of, and then provide optimal advice on how to evoke positive emotions with different designs.

Interior design psychology aims to maximize your comfort in your home. Small changes in colors and textures can improve your mood and evoke positive emotions within you (3).

A house that collects your memories and reveals your experiences

In emotional design you do not have to adhere to certain rules dictated to you by designers, regarding your desire to keep a feeling in your home there is no designer like you, just follow your heart in designing your home and achieve what you alone want by connecting with your own feeling, in the end your home will be a space far from standards Only your needs define the design standards.

This is how emotional design takes into account the nature of your environment, your energy, and the spaces available to you to choose the right colors and materials. In addition to your tastes and preferences, your social habits and the nature of your personality play an important role in the design;

If you are a social person who loves to receive visitors at home or belong to a large family, the organization of the house is different to be a place to welcome your guests and transfer good energies to them, but if you are a bit introverted or do not prefer your home to be the meeting place, you will provide the space for other personal experiences.

Emotional design is concerned with infusing your home with things that remind you of positive experiences, a piece you bought on a happy trip, an expensive gift you have, a picture with a lot of meaning, and even phrases that mean messages of strength that motivate you. Commitment to simplicity as the most emotionally responsive thing to people in order to become calmer (4).

In the end, your home is a mirror for you of your experiences, memories and places you have traveled to, which means that a corner of the house is associated with a deep sensory experience;

To make yourself calm, active or happy (5).

How do you use emotional design in your home?

• Get rid of everything that makes you feel guilty or brings up bad memories.

• Gather in your home things that express your happy memories to fill the area with nostalgia.

• Put in each room one of the antiques that is important to you: your grandmother's old chair, or even an antique.

•  Use colors to make yourself feel the way you love it.

• If you can't paint the walls, you can include your favorite colors in the rugs or bedding.

• Hang a picture of a beautiful landscape that will be your happy place.

Use colors to create your own feel

In the early nineteenth century, "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe" published his book "Color Theory", and dealt with the psychology of colors that today's interior designers rely on to give different effects.

In choosing room designs, the first thing you will have to do is think about the feeling you want to feel in that space to find the pieces that bring those feelings, and here choosing the right color for the room is critical to the mood of those in it (6).

The light colors evoke a feeling of more openness, the white color reflects the light and gives those present a sense of the strength of the light and the spaciousness of the place, while the dark colors give a heavy feeling and a feeling of closedness and absorb the light. Keeping in mind that a color does not overpower our choices, it produces monochromatic arcana that may dull your senses or make you feel sleepy, so it is recommended to add some touches to the room such as a pillow panel or a piece of rug of a different color.

It is known about the effects of colors that the warmer ones increase appetite, which is why they can be chosen in the dining room.

Red color pushes people to eat, and it can be used to add warmth to spaces and make them more intimate, and orange provides bursts of energy and strengthens the spirit of innovation, but more of it can leave a feeling of fatigue, and yellow is associated with happiness and creativity.

Like pink, a calmer alternative to red, it evokes a feeling of happiness, love and peace, and is suitable for children’s bedrooms. As for cool colors, it relaxes the mind and reduces appetite. The blue color evokes feelings of confidence, openness and stability, and is suitable for living rooms. The light blue color gives a sense of calm, while blue evokes Dark some feelings of sadness.

Thus, by identifying what the colors evoke inside us, we can mix them in the rooms and corners of the house to give us the feeling we love. It is recommended to mix three colors: a color for the largest elements in the walls and floors, a calmer color for furniture, large elements, and finally a third color for small decorative pieces (7) (8). ).

light and plants

Once you put color on the walls it is time to decide how to fill the space. Which element you will choose to fill a space helps define the function of that space. Some materials like stone and wood tend to make our bodies feel better because they are completely natural. In contrast, manufactured objects tend to be cooler(9).

Between what emotional design cares about is your share of natural light, and the space occupied by the sun around your home, it takes care of distributing furniture to ensure that light is used, to get an ideal experience, by entering the light into the workplace perpendicular to the table or desk for example, as Emotional design takes into account the safety factor in the distribution of furniture, it is important for example that the room door is in the field of view when you are in bed to avoid the unconscious tension caused by insecurity when the door cannot be controlled visually.

Natural plants provide a fresh and natural environment, and it is the space in which the air pollution rate is less, and more than that, it contributes to reducing noise. If you have the opportunity to plant them around your house, you will notice how they isolate street noise more than walls and fences do (10).

Finally, emotional design does not create a purely aesthetic experience as much as creating a space that can inspire your feelings, says Toby Israel, an environmental psychologist and author of Places Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Perfect Places. She is keen to help her clients reach “emotional goals” through decoration, and she learns in lengthy sessions about their memories and lifestyles before she does her design work, and she confirms that the story of the house is a life story, and embodying this story is not science, but art(11 ).

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