Seeing clutter really does make humans tense, so adding opaque built-ins to corral the clothes, papers, and odds and ends we’ve accumulated as we’ve lived life was a high priority. My husband built a window seat in our bedroom that has so much storage space that he doesn’t need a separate dresser. We’ve made sure not to pack everything away—a stark, impersonal space would amp up our stress levels. A carefully curated set of tchotchkes populates every room in our home.
All the time we were adding windows and refinishing wood, I’d also been customizing the spaces in our home to support our personalities. I’m an Adventurer, and my husband’s an Investigator (you’ll learn more about PlaceTypes in coming chapters). We compromise on the design of our shared spaces, as described in Chapter 9. My husband is the cook, and the kitchen supports his PlaceType. Each of our PlaceTypes is fully expressed in our workspaces.
Molding our home to fit our psychological and physical needs, as well as keeping it from collapsing in a cloud of dust, will keep my husband and I busy for the foreseeable future. Each bit of progress we make inside and outside helps us restock our energy for DIY-ing—and makes my husband and me happier and more comfortable. We’re finding out exactly how much we like living in a place that makes us feel good, even if it takes some planning and effort to get there. We are living the science that is discussed in the pages of this book.
Your PlaceType
We’ll define PlaceType more fully in a few pages. The brief explanation: it’s how
you respond emotionally and cognitively to the physical environment based on
your personality.
It’s easy to get caught up in what other people are doing and stop designing your home to support you and your life. When television programs and magazine ads are encouraging you to fill your home with bright colors, or modernist furniture, or whatever else is the “décor of the day,” it can be difficult to design based on who you are as a person, what’s important to you, and what will support your daily life. Designing for PlaceTypes helps you keep yourself and the people with whom you share your home on track toward your goals.
Lots of homes in North America today are built with, or redeveloped with, an open plan, for example. The people whose PlaceTypes are supported by open-plan type layouts are generally pretty vocal, so many architects and contractors have decided that there’s no reason to build anything but open plan. However, many PlaceTypes are much, much happier in the sort of “closed-plan” home where specific people and processes (such as cooking) have their own spaces, generally separated from each other with floor-to-ceiling walls and firmly closing doors. The solution for people who own open plan but need closed is rehabbing to support their PlaceType.
Why Think about Design?
Being in appropriately designed places makes it much more likely we’ll be happy—along with healthy, wealthy (at least in spirit), and wise. The design of the space we’re in has a direct and powerful influence on our mood—literally. When we’re in a good mood we think more broadly—which means, for example, that we get along better with other people and are more clever at solving problems and effective at making decisions. We’re more creative when we’re in a good mood. Basically, when we’re in a good mood, positive things are more likely to happen. The design options we’ll discuss will make it more likely that when you’re in a particular area, you’ll be in a better mood.
Stress degrades our physical, emotional, and cognitive well-being, so it’s something we’ll also often talk about eliminating whenever we can via design.
The influence that design has on your psychological state is the reason that design matters.
Understanding the Basics of Environmental Psychology
Environmental psychology has identified ways that aspects of the environment
around us consistently influence how we experience the physical world.
Applying what environmental psychologists have learned about design makes certain types of experiences, thoughts, etc., more probable, but does not definitively determine mental states or actions. Also, the implications of what’s going on around us do add up to make a particular mood more likely, but there are other nonphysical influences on what we ultimately think and do. For example, a calming bedroom design won’t relax you if you’ve just heard the exciting news that you’re about to become a parent, but it makes it likely that you’ll be cooler and more collected when you hear that news than you’d be otherwise.
This book is geared toward interested general readers, so references for the scientifically-derived information that follows aren’t included in the text; if you’d like more information about topics covered and the sources of findings presented, please take a look at the Recommended Readings noted at the end of the book.
Designing for Our Ancient Selves
Our sensory apparatus—our eyes, skin, nose, ears, and taste buds—developed eons ago, and the same sorts of sensory experiences that were positive during our early days as a species continue to calm us and boost our mood.
Being in certain sorts of spaces helped us survive long ago, and looking at the same types of places today is good for us mentally.
Seeing nature scenes through windows or in realistic images helps us restock our levels of mental energy after we’ve depleted them by concentrating for a while, whether on writing code, deciphering the directions for a complicated handicraft project, or something else. They also help us feel less stressed. Nature views help us feel calmer, boost our cognitive performance, and make us more likely to get along better with others, for example. Psychology-wise, the “best” scenes look as if we could step into them and seem to extend far into the distance. We enjoy seeing rolling hills, for example, and clumps of trees that we might, if we are nimble and quick enough, scamper up to escape trouble. Green is key; arid landscapes are not desirable, at least psychologically, and neither are jungles. If you are building a home or office or landscaping one, you can create these sorts of views through your windows. If you’re not going to be building or landscaping, add some art or photographs of nature, as they’ll also work well.
Green is key.
Looking at water is particularly good for de-stressing and restocking our mental resources and energy levels. “Manmade” water, say a fountain with gently moving water, works as well as a stream. The effort of adding a fountain to an enclosed courtyard without plants, or to a desktop, is quickly earned back via pleasant feelings.
All the views we have in a space aren’t outdoors, and all interior views are definitely not created equal. The best ones are those in which we have our backs against something that seems to protect us (such as a wall, a high-backed chair, or a sturdy plant) and where we have a view out over the world around us. People in a conversation niche with a built-in bench tucked into a workplace hallway have this sort of view. Someone perched on a window seat does, too. The first seats taken in seat-yourself restaurants are in booths and have a view of the restaurant’s entry. This fondness for protected seats with a view seems tied to our evolutionary past—at one time when our species was young,