The Small Design Choices That Change How a Home Feels
How do you design a home to be comfortable? Do you make sure the couch cushions are big and fluffy? Should there be a fireplace in the living room? Do you need to throw a blanket over a chair?
The truth is, there’s really no way to be sure.
It’s not like you can pick out this color and that rug and have your home be comfortable. Comfort doesn’t have that much to do with aesthetics as it does with stuff you don’t notice and stuff that isn’t very fun.
Let’s see what those are.
Stuff You Notice Without Realizing It
It only takes a few seconds to figure out whether you’re comfortable in a space or not. And sometimes you can’t even explain why you feel the way you feel, especially if you’re surrounded by nice furniture, and you feel… Not great.
That’s because there’s more to first impressions than just what you see.
Natural Light
A house that isn’t bright enough can never feel welcoming and pleasant unless you’re a vampire or a bat. And for the most part, the issue with the lack of light isn’t that there aren’t enough windows.
It’s the way the light moves through space, as well as the shadows that come from the lack of it.
Daylight changes a lot from morning to evening.
If you have a room that faces the South, you’ll get warm, direct light for most of the day, and all the colors in that room will look richer. If the room faces North, the light will feel calmer, but its color will be a bit more gray.
The surprising thing is that bigger windows don’t necessarily mean better light.
Having 2 smaller windows on adjacent walls is much better than having one giant window because the light can enter from more than 1 angle. And since natural light is so important, you want to make sure to get this right.
A Room Should Feel Balanced
A large room can feel cramped, and a small room can feel airy and open. Weird, isn’t it?
That’s because that feeling has nothing to do with square footage but with balance. It’s all in the proportions and scale.
The height of your ceiling is a big deal for this because a wide room with a small ceiling is almost a cave. On the other hand, a tall and narrow room is like a tunnel. And then there’s the size of the stuff that’s in there. Huge pieces of furniture have no place in a small room. Pay attention to negative space, that’s the real key here.
There should be just the right amount of empty space between all the pieces to make a room feel balanced.
Color Ties Everything Together
Choosing paint colors can be overwhelming, but take your time with this. Color isn’t just something that covers the walls.
Warm colors (soft terracottas and muted ochres in particular) ground a room and make it feel more intimate, especially if the space gets cooler light because they absorb the blue in it and make the room feel cozier.
Obviously, cool colors like blues and greens do the exact opposite. They reflect a lot of light and can make a room that gets a lot of sun feel calmer.
Improvements You Can’t See
There’s no paint or couch that can fix a drafty home or temperatures that go wild.
The solution to these problems is behind your walls, especially if you live in an older home. Most older homes have small gaps that are supposed to allow the air to move in and out, but that causes drafts and sometimes even problems with moisture.
Modern construction takes care of this with continuous insulation systems.
They literally wrap the whole building in a layer of insulation on the outside of the framing. This makes it impossible forheat to travel between the wooden studs, so the temperature becomes more stable and comfortable.
The Details That Become Important After You Move In
Moving day is very exciting, so you don’t even pay attention to everything around you. But once that honeymoon phase is over, you’ll notice stuff like airflow, paths, acoustics, good carpeting, etc.
Good design takes all of this into account because furniture and decor can only get you so far.
Conclusion
Picking out new tiles, a couch, bedding, and kitchen counters is very fun. And don’t let anyone tell you that stuff isn’t important because it is.
Living in a nicely furnished space does a lot of good for your mental health, so don’t feel guilty about wanting that for yourself.
However, that can’t be all you focus on because you won’t like the end result. Insulation isn’t very fun, and neither are windows, but this is what makes a difference between living in a comfortable home and living in one that looks pretty at first glance.