For practical and aesthetic reasons, not all of the furniture in your home should be placed against the walls. Putting all of the furniture against the walls restricts how you can use a space and can mean that people trying to talk to each other find themselves at uncomfortable distances. So put something solid behind seats that “float” in the middle of a room, because their backs are more than a couple of feet from walls. You have a range of options for that “protective” element, but the key is to keep any of those hypothetical rear-approaching evildoers about an arm’s length away—a credenza behind a couch does that. Try to place your furniture so that as few seated people as possible have their backs to hallways or walkways.
Being able to see a long way makes us feel comfortable in our homes.
In nature, if we feel safe, we can see far into the distance, and being able to see a long way makes us feel comfortable in our homes. Try to position some seats in your home so that people sitting in them can see from one room into the next, and, if possible, through a window to see outside by carefully positioning furniture and opportunistically looking for spaces in your homes with views. Having views through your home is possible, even if you’re not living in an open plan. Precisely placing some chairs enables people to have long views through a home even if there are plenty of walls. Some PlaceTypes are more comfortable when they have more audio and visual separation from others; if it turns out you’re in one of those groups, position screens or install doors so you have some control over others’ long views of you.
Things move in nature, but when something moves inside most of the places we design, generally, it’s on its way to crashing to the floor. A mobile, wall hanging, or window curtain that drifts in a gentle air-conditioning or heating current near the ceiling adds comforting motion to a space; it’s reminiscent of breezes moving through long-ago meadows on wonderful sunny days. If the air-conditioning or heating currents in your home make you think more of hurricanes than drifting butterflies, reposition mobiles or flex sculptures etc. so they move in a window draft or the current of air behind someone walking through an area instead. Daylight in a space will naturally create a sense of movement as shadows change position during the day.
Personality fine-tunes how we respond to seeing other people, but it’s generally true that seeing other humans revs us up. We needed to work together to survive long ago, and that early work was often physically demanding. Our nervous systems continue to respond accordingly, boosting our energy level when we see others, as if after their appearance we’ll soon be chasing prey or lifting boulders. If you’re creating a public sort of space that’ll be visited by people with all sorts of personality profiles, build in some screens—things that people cannot see through—to improve visitors’ experiences.
Sensory Experiences
Colors on Surfaces
Often, fears of making a mistake lead people to paint their walls white or beige and select “safe” colors for furniture, for example, browns that won’t show dirt or wear. Choosing colors without information about the psychological consequences of selections made can indeed be intimidating. Different PlaceTypes are supported particularly well by certain color schemes, as described in individual PlaceType write-ups; we will review some general information about color here.
Homeowners have the freedom to paint interior walls whatever colors they choose; all are free to pick the colors that appear on their furniture, rugs, carpets, etc.
The first thing to know about color is that it has three elements: hue, saturation, and brightness.
•A hue is a set of wavelengths we categorize into the same group. Red is a hue, and so are orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. There are multiple shades of red and orange, for example. Cultures assign meanings to hues, and those associations make some hues good choices for some spaces and not so good options in others.
•Saturation is how pure a color is. Emerald green is more saturated than sage green, and pumpkin oranges are more saturated than smoky shades of orange. Colors that are less saturated seem a little grayer than saturated ones.
•Brightness is how much white seems to be mixed into a color—you could think of brightness as roughly synonymous with lightness. Colors that are brighter have more white mixed into them, so baby blue is lighter than a sapphire blue.
In North America, some of the associations we have to hues are:
•Blue is linked to trustworthiness, competence, and dependability, so if you are a consultant who will participate in video conference calls from your at-home desk, paint the wall that will be seen as you speak blue. Blue is also linked more strongly with environmental responsibility than any other color.
•Yellow is simultaneously associated with the sun and with cowardice and treachery.
•Orange is linked to being a good value.
•Green is a shade we associate with nature, environmental responsibility, and rebirth (think: spring).
•White is a color that we generally link to being modern as well as to cleanliness, purity, and honesty.
•Purple is tied to sophistication.
•Black is linked to power, high cost, sophistication, formality, and death.
•Brown is associated with ruggedness.
Research has tied seeing certain hues to very particular psychological outcomes:
•When we look at the color green, we’re more likely to think creatively.
•Seeing even a small amount of red briefly degrades our ability to think analytically.
•Looking at the color red gives us a burst of brute physical strength, so it may be a good option for the wall behind the washing machine or the one you see while lifting weights. However, looking at red won’t help with physical tasks that require specialized skills, such as hitting a tennis ball, or with an activity that requires strength over an extended period of time, such as riding a stationary bicycle.
•Viewing red also raises how energized we feel, generally.
•Red color signals “danger” and that cautious behavior is in order.
•Heterosexual people who see someone of the opposite gender against a red background think that other person is more attractive and desirable than when the same person is viewed against a different colored background.
•Looking at pink, particularly the color of Pepto-Bismol, is very calming.
•Seeing the color pink makes women feel more optimistic, and people generally associate the color pink with optimism.
Colors can be warm or cold, and their “temperature” matters—a lot:
•Warm colors are ones that you’re likely to see in a roaring fire: reds, oranges, and yellows. Cool ones wouldn’t be out of place in an ice cave: blues and greens, for example. Neutral colors like beiges, grays, browns, and even whites can be warmer or cooler. If you’re trying to tell if a neutral color or a purple is warm or cool, hold it against a surface that you know to be warm or cool, such as a wall painted orange or a wall painted green—you’ll know immediately if the sample is in the same “temperature” as the known surface. Cool colors such as a blue can be relatively warmer or cooler just as an orange can be relatively warmer or cooler. For the purposes of the points that follow, however, all oranges, yellows, and reds can be thought of as warm colors and all blues and greens can be seen as cool ones.
•When we’re in a warm-colored space, we actually do feel warmer than we do when we’re in an otherwise identical cool-colored space. The difference in apparent temperature is slight but enough in many cases to drive us to feeling just right, or too hot or too cold. If you live in an area where cool winter weather is more of a concern than summer heat, paint the entryway to your home or office a warm color. Or do you make your home in Miami or Caracas or some other place where summer heat is more of an issue than winter cold? Do the reverse,