5 Home Design Ideas that Promote Wellness and Healing

The environments you spend time in directly impact your health – that’s what research tells us. So, it only makes sense for homeowners to design a living space that supports their well-being. All the elements from your home environment, such as lighting, acoustics, air quality, and biophilic features, influence your immune, respiratory and cognitive systems, as well as the quality of your sleep.

Wellness interior design plays a vital role in healing, whether you’ve experienced a major life change, such as divorce or loss, or recovering from an accident.

Here are some ideas on creating a living space that allows you to heal faster.   

1. Get Rid of Clutter

You may not realise it, but clutter is a big problem in your home, impacting your health in different ways. As researchers have found, having a disorganised living space can increase stress levels in your body, bombarding your mind with stimuli and signalling to your brain that there’s work to be done.

This stress can take a toll on your health, affecting nearly all of your body’s systems and diminishing the home’s air quality, thus triggering allergies and asthma.   

Read More: 30 Day Decluttering Challenge

Moreover, clutter can create feelings of sadness, worry, and even helplessness. Therefore, it is crucial to start by cleaning your home, but don’t expect to be done with this task in only one day. Begin with a small area, such as a shelf, a counter or a drawer. From there, you can tackle another room, and so on, until you clean the entire space. Remember that an organised home provides a sense of hope feeling invigorated and lighter, so it’s worth spending the time to get rid of the things you no longer need or simply organise them properly.

2. Prioritise Your Comfort

It’s probably a no-brainer, but homes should feel comfortable just as much as they are safe. So, consider whether your living space has a conducive temperature, and evaluate elements such as furniture, floors, and so on.

Look for ways to enhance your comfort level, such as adding a small carpet by the bed or incorporating comfortable chairs in the living room.

Also, when it comes to comfort, it’s essential to pay attention especially to your bedroom. This space should promote good sleep; if it doesn’t, you should address this by changing your mattress, adjusting the light, and so on.

Sleep plays a significant role in healing – if you’ve sustained an injury after a car accident, you need plenty of rest. 

This is important for several reasons. Firstly, car accidents are stressful and overwhelming, not only due to the traumatic event itself but also because you must navigate a complex legal process to receive compensation for your injuries.

Thus, it’s vital to ensure that you get enough sleep to manage stress better. Secondly, sleep also helps the body repair itself by producing proteins needed for an effective recovery.

Read More: How to Wake Up Refreshed from a Good Night’s Sleep

But don’t just consider physical comfort – the emotional comfort that your home brings you is just as important.

So, consider incorporating character-defining features, like photos of you and your loved ones, as well as sentimental décor. These things can make a significant difference in your home, making it a sanctuary where you feel safe and comforted even at the most difficult times.   

3. Reimagine your Space to Meet Your Needs

As you go through a challenging period in your life, you’ll have to make changes in the design to support your current lifestyle. Hence, consider what transformations in your living space would make your life easier. These changes can be both functional and aesthetic.

Perhaps you can reconfigure one of your room’s layouts to enhance functionality or refresh a space by changing the colour scheme and the furnishings.

Or maybe you want to organise your space better and open up your kitchen, dining, or living spaces to enhance the home’s flow and sightlines.

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Open Plan Living

Don’t let the current interior design limit you; instead, consider how you can recreate the space to meet your needs. Although it may not be possible to make all the changes you’re thinking of, it’s still worth making a list of what would aid your recovery. Once you do so, you can start making the feasible transformations.

Small, simple changes can make a significant difference in the design of your home, so don’t underestimate them.

4. Invite Nature In

Biophilic design (a concept that focuses on human connection with nature) has been proven to have plenty of benefits for healing. In hospitals, it helps enhance patients’ outcomes, resulting in faster healing times. Feeling relaxed and optimistic can reduce infection and make recovery from surgery much more manageable.

Moreover, biophilic design lowers pain levels. Hence, bringing nature into your home only makes sense, and there are several ways to do so.

For example, you can incorporate more houseplants in your living space, such as a large potted plant or a small tree. The more plants you add, the better it is, as they not only enhance your home’s aesthetics but also boost the air quality, thus promoting better health.

If you live in the city, chances are that your windows don’t offer the best view, making you feel disconnected from the natural world and generating feelings of sadness.

Fortunately, this can be fixed by adding art prints displaying some breathtaking views in your home, thus creating a soothing environment conducive to healing.

5. Optimise Lighting

The importance of lighting in interior design can’t be overstated.

Light impacts your emotional well-being and physical health considerably and is strongly linked with your mood. If you feel low, enhancing light in your home is imperative because it will boost your morale, making you feel more optimistic in your healing journey.

Letting natural light in your home also helps maintain your circadian rhythm, meaning that you will get better sleep, whose importance we already mentioned earlier.

Read More: How to Bring More Natural Light into Your Home

So, consider arranging furniture strategically to make the most of the natural light.

You can take things one step further by installing smart colour temperature light bulbs in your living space, helping improve your mood and energy.

Hopefully, the ideas presented in this article will help you design a home that allows you to recover faster. Whatever emotional struggle you’re facing, having a home where you can feel comfortable and safe will make it easier to navigate this difficult time in your life.

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