Your Home is Your Symphony
June 14, 2007
“Dr. Carl Sagan once wrote, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Although Dr. Sagan was commenting on the wonders to be found in the vastness of outer space, there are also incredible design possibilities just waiting to be discovered right in your own home. In fact, your home’s overall design represents a symphony, and the individual design details are the musical notes you use to compose the melody and harmony for the symphony of your living space.
Your home should always bolster feelings of happiness, serenity, and comfort, and once you’re aware of a few simple rules, composing a home symphony that supports positive emotions and encourages joyful living is easy.
Begin composing your symphony by choosing the color of your walls. All of your home’s colors should harmonize, both inside and out. Once you’ve chosen your exterior colors, bring subtle shades of those same colors inside, using them as accents throughout your home. Harmonize your colors with ones you see in the natural world surrounding your house. Use colors that blend with the lighting from the natural environment and support a feeling of serenity and cheerfulness.
Creating Your Joyful Home: Inspiration to Make a Home Planning Journal
June 13, 2007
If you are planning a home makeover or remodeling project, here are some ideas to help you.
Inspiration to make a home planning journal from “Joy to the Home Planner:”
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” - Eliel Saarinen (Finnish Architect)
Declaration of Intent
Form your unique design plan encompassing your entire home, from the first glimpse, all the way throughout your home, and to the far reaches of the back patio, garden, or yard.
Think about the feelings you want to bring about: joy, peace, comfort, and contentment. Add in ease, simplicity, and economy. Start with your feelings and the emotions you want to bring about for yourself and those you share your home with.
Write down your ideas. Start with your desired emotion and expand until you create your personal design goal. Something like this:
“I desire peace. I want my home to sing in perfect harmony with the universe. I need to encourage nature’s music of bird songs and plan a birdbath.”
Viburnum
June 12, 2007
Viburnums are related to the honeysuckles, so it should come as no surprise that many of them have fragrant flowers. But that’s not all they have in their favour. No, this genus includes plants for all seasons and all reasons; foliage, flower, autumn colour, scent, groundcover, shrub or small tree, evergreen or deciduous, it’s all there among the 120-odd species and the many hybrids and cultivars. Indeed, they’re so variable that it would be quite possible to have an interesting garden of viburnums alone.
Although viburnums can be found over much of the temperate northern hemisphere and even South America, most of the common plants in our gardens, with the exceptions of the Laurustinus (Viburnum tinus) and the Guelder Rose (Viburnum opulus), occur naturally in temperate Asia or are derived from the species of that area.
About the only drawback with viburnums is that because they are so adaptable and easy to grow, they seem to have suffered from the ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ syndrome that sees common plants, however attractive and useful, relegated to the lower divisions of the garden league in favour of something more ‘exciting’. Well, don’t fall into that trap - every garden needs at least one viburnum.
Creating Your Joyful Home: Dawning of Your Emotions
June 11, 2007
“I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”
-Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727)
Creating a joyful home requires careful planning in order to choose the perfect interior design details. When you understand the underlying psychology of colors, patterns, textures, and finishes, you avoid costly mistakes in decorating your home.
In planning your home makeover, start with the feelings you want to bring about in each space. Consider your personal emotional needs. Think about the way you currently feel in your home and the way you want to feel.
Not all of your desired feelings need stimulation in every space. For instance, you may want your child’s bedroom to inspire creativity and your main bedroom to inspire intimacy, while your whole home inspires comfort, peace, and joy.
Choose from the following emotional groups you desire to inspire in your home:
1. Happiness, Joyfulness, Cheerfulness
2. Peace, Serenity, Tranquility
3. Elation, Excitement, Enthusiasm
4. Humor, Congeniality, Playfulness
5. Fantasy, Inspiration
The Secret to Your Home?s Interior Design
June 10, 2007
The secret to your home’s interior design is Love.
If you love yourself, you create a home for your happiness.
If you love your family and friends, you create a home for their happiness.
The next step of love is to be grateful for your home. Gratitude lays the foundation for creating glorious spaces to share your love.
The final aspect of love is joy. Homes designed for joyful living are not decorated for prestige and show; homes designed for gracious living are decorated for happiness and the joy of life!
Interior Design Psychology Tips for Decorating Your Home with Love
1. Don’t clutter your home with too much decorating. The important accessory in your home is you and your family or friends. Select quality furnishings for comfort, beauty, function, and emotional support.
2. Create spaces that support your emotional well-being and productivity. Determine the activity of a space and choose design details that support this use. For instance, soft gray walls in home offices give support for creative writing while slate blue striped walls offer organized tranquility.
3. Give tribute to your family heritage. Honor your ancestors by using design details that tie to your sense of tradition.
An Interview with Design Psychology Expert Jeanette Fisher
June 9, 2007
Interview with Jeanette Fisher by Gary Anderson, of www.abciowa.com
GA: Jeanette, just what is Design Psychology?
JJF: Simply put, Design Psychology empowers you to create a fabulous home that sustains your emotions, using techniques based on science. Design Psychology turns spaces into happy places.
GA: How is Design Psychology different from “traditional” interior design?
JJF: Our senses react to many other factors besides those of basic interior design, even though those factors can profoundly affect our emotions and happiness. Design Psychology addresses elements that interior design doesn’t take into consideration.
GA: What’s the difference between Design Psychology and Feng Shui?
JJF: The two concepts are compatible, and homeowners can use both Feng Shui and Design Psychology to enhance their homes. However, I believe that Design Psychology is superior to Feng Shui, because Feng Shui is based on superstition, while Design Psychology draws its concepts from science.
GA: How did you discover Design Psychology?
The Protea Family (Proteaceae)
June 9, 2007
Color Help: Color Imagery for Happy Homes
June 8, 2007
Color researchers have estimated that up to 70% of our subconscious reactions to people and environments are based solely on our reactions to color. With that in mind, it’s important that you give special attention to the effects you want to create when choosing the color schemes for the interior spaces in your home.
Color is a visual experience that influences our psychological reality. The way the mind perceives the colors our eyes see is called color imagery, and that mental image profoundly affects our emotions and physical comfort. Colors call out to our feelings and create the emotional atmosphere within a room.
So always begin your color deliberations by asking yourself what feelings you want to evoke in a particular room. Give thought to the purpose of the room. For instance, bathrooms should be retreats for cleansing rituals. In that light, what colors come to mind? Refreshing, blues, greens, creamy white, or your childhood bathroom color? Envision a Florida spring, tropical lagoon, or mountain waterfall. Expand on your joyful memories by adding colors that work for you.
Color Help: Choosing Color Combinations
June 7, 2007
Choosing a color scheme can be a nerve-wracking business. For instance, I anguished over the colors to paint the exterior of my Victorian house, I ordered every book on old house painting that I could find, and I discovered that they all contradicted each other on the basic "rules."
Finally, the color scheme came to me. I would paint the house with my favorite colors! I love amber and red, so, fair gold and burnt red it became, along with temple green, dark-shutter green, dark amber, white, and black outlined windows.
Temple green paint for porch ceilings, believed to keep out evil spirits, is a historic Southern superstition and tradition. Even our local historic art museum had the electrical junction boxes painted in this color. Black outlining of the muttons and mullions (the wood window dividers) highlighted antique glass and added depth to the windows. This type of paint outlining is like eyeliner — a makeup enhancement. The flat front edge of the window trim is painted in the sash trim color.
Color Help: Color Theory and Design Psychology
June 6, 2007
Color theory is an entire science unto itself, and to get a full picture of how it all works, I’d suggest picking up a few art books. In this article, however, we’re going to take a brief look at the essentials of color theory, in light of the concepts of Design Psychology. we’ll first list a term, and then offer a short summary of how the term relates to Design Psychology.
Hue
The base name of a color without any white, gray, or black added. The terms hue and color are interchangeable.
Color wheel
A color wheel contains twelve colors, based on primitive pigments. The three primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. Three secondary colors (composed of combinations of the three primary colors) follow: red and blue make purple; red and yellow make orange; yellow and blue make green. Six tertiary colors (comprised of combinations of primary and secondary colors) form the remainder of the color wheel: yellow-orange, red-orange, violet, blue-green, and yellow-green. Black is the total absence of color and white is the reflection of all colors.
Value or Lightness
This denotes the degree of lightness or darkness of a hue, in relation to pure white or black.
