How your Home is Stifling your Creativity
We’ve always had a hunch that what an environment LOOKS like can have a huge impact on how we FEEL inside that environment. As Interior Designers we’ve been fighting the good-feeling-spaces-only fight for decades, if not centuries.
Recently though there have been actual studies done to back up our hunches. I mean like real science and psychology here people.
The findings are clear, where we are, the things, colors, lighting, textures, around us definitely affect our inner selves. There is even a whole subcategory of Environmental Psychology emerging, unsurprisingly tagged as the Psychology of Interior Design.
I’ll leave it to you to do the research on this if you don’t believe me. But really, there is a simple test.
Just walk from room to room in your home and notice, like really NOTICE (channel your inner Yogi), how each space makes you FEEL.
Does your sunflower yellow kitchen, with its cluttered countertops, dirty coffee maker, random mail scattered about, and old curtains, hanging stained with spaghetti sauce and Cheeto dust, make you feel anxious?
What about your office? Does the grey wall color make you cringe, even after you tried 12 samples and cried yourself to sleep in a heap of paint swatches before settling on one? The piles of old forms, broken pens and miscellaneous snack trash mock you as you sit down to the computer. And that hand-me-down desk feels like a mirror, you see yourself as old, worn out, a little broken, and too tired to continue functioning as planned.
Imagine your home suddenly morphed into a PERSON. Like the villain in a Marvel film who has been abused and neglected and finds himself suddenly transformed into a physical representation of that abuse and neglect.
Let’s call him “Homer”. Homer hates when you succeed. He hates when you get to relax. He can’t stand when you suddenly get a brilliant idea and creativity strikes. Homer comes barreling in, fists flailing, and grabs your creativity by the throat and strangles it.
Homer is an asshole.
No one wants to live with a Homer. So how does one vanquish this villain? This anxiety inducing, creativity strangling, red and yellow, putrid grey, tattered, angry, in-your-face, bully?
We treat him WELL.
Even the worst villains soften and change when they are shown love, concern and care. There is hope for Homer. And there is hope to revive your creativity and flourish inside your most important environment.
Walk around your home again. See your space as a person. See it as your FRIEND. Clean your friend up. Get your friend a haircut, a new color, something less manic than the frizzy bleached multi-colored mess they have had for years. Get them a mani-pedi, hell, get them a Brazilian. Dress them up in something comfortable that reflects their lifestyle and personality. Take them to dinner. You want them to feel as good as new so that you can stand to be around them, so that you WANT to be near them and so that they send that love and support back to you.
Ok, enough of that hypothetical. What I’m saying here people is that when we neglect our environment, our homes, our workspaces, we can’t help but feel that neglect circling back to our subconscious minds. When the colors, light and stuff in our homes is overwhelming or chaotic or just a little “off”, we will feel overwhelmed, chaotic, and “off”.
Creativity cannot flourish inside of an overwhelmed, anxious space.
So, make your space a place where you can clear your mind, feel at peace, and let the creativity flow. You'll be amazed at what some simple home decor changes can do for your psyche.
When you're ready to get started, contact us at Nest Refresh. We can help you design a home that INSPIRES you every day.
