Home is where the heart is, the spirit rests, and a good home makes a good life, but what about the home decor that goes beyond the home and into the innermost sanctuary of your being?
Home decor can significantly affect people’s mental health, and therefore is increasingly popular among individuals for both personal and professional reasons. As a form of communication, it can create a feeling of comfort, safety, and familiarity, helping people to feel more at home in their own space. For example, a lack of light can make a room feel smaller and less pleasant to be in, as well as increase stress and cause a person to have a harder time sleeping. Another example is a home décor that contains too many bright colors, especially red, which can cause migraines or headaches.
It has been proposed that home decor affects mental health through different mechanisms, such as:
- Increased comfort
- Increased safety
- Affordability
- Familiarity
As well as the psychological mechanisms for how home decor affects mental health, many social and physical factors impact how home decor affects mental health.
Home decor and mental health
It has been well established that home décor, such as the color or size of a room, can have an impact on people’s mental health. As well as the colors, it has also been suggested that, like how they choose to paint their bedroom, people have control over other things in their home that they might not like, such as colours, smells, or types of furniture. For example, if someone is in an apartment that is small, they might want to paint their walls a more attractive colour, as it would seem more appealing to the eye.
An extensive study from 2009 examined the effect that colour had on mental health, in comparison to the effects that other properties had. This study reported that colours that are “warm and bright” in nature are more strongly related to positive mood states. It also found that “colour matching” or liking similar colours and colours with specific patterns are also related to positive mood states. This research provides evidence that certain colours impact mental health, and that there is a potential correlation between mental health and home décor.
It was also discovered that other aspects of home decor, such as the type of furnishings, can have an effect on people’s mental health and that home décor that provides people with a sense of affordability may help people cope with stress.
Home decor and mental health an area that has seen a considerable amount of growth over the past several years. There is a need to understand the effect that home décor can have on people’s mental health, in addition to the underlying mechanisms. There is also a need for people to be more mindful of the environment that they are in, and consider the impact of their home décor on their mental health.
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