Home improvement

Because psychologists relate true happiness to joyous occurrences happening frequently, decorating your home to promote everyday pleasure make sense. If you’re planning a home makeover, provide for the cumulative total of all the little pleasure moments.

When people rate their happiness, it is the ratio of pleasant to unpleasant emotions and experiences that count. These happy experiences may be simple pleasurable, everyday happenings, not always grand events.

Design Psychology, a new method for residential interior and exterior design starts with planning spaces to support emotional well-being. Homes decorated to support desired emotions create happy spaces for joyful living.

Design Psychology Ideas for Pleasure

1. Tea table in Main Bedroom provides intimate space for conversation or individual reflection

2. Reading nook provides quiet space for escape

3. Game table provides place for playing together

4. Meandering pathway in garden provides enticing stroll

5. Garden bed provides place for relaxing and leisurely afternoon naps

I mean a real bed, not a flower bed, although you need flowers too!

Let your imagination flow freely, enjoy the process, and focus o­n your goal of providing pleasurable daily moments in your home.

Joy to you!

Remember the old Calgon commercial—”Take me away Calgon!” There’s o­nly o­ne thing that can take you away faster than a Calgon bath, and that’s a scented candle. Whether you want a breath of fresh spring air, or you want to transport yourself to a South Sea paradise minus the hassle of airport security, crowded, delayed flights and lost baggage, grab a scented candle, and travel wherever your imagination leads. Smell is a powerful sense, and you can use it to alter your mood within seconds with the flicker of a candle. In fact, why not keep a supply of scented candles in the bathroom when you don’t have time to luxuriate in the bathtub. Envelope yourself in fragrance while you shower, dry and blow-dry.

Close your eyes and think of each season: winter, spring, summer and fall each evoke special “scentual” memories. If it’s the dead of winter and you’ve already suffered through 73 days of snow cover, light a piña colada candle or a seaside candle and pop in your favorite Beach Boys CD. Inhale the scents of summer and forget about the cold for a few divine moments. Select a delicate floral candle or maybe a rain forest scent to remind you that April showers are right around the corner. If it’s 102° F in the shade, there’s nothing like a pine-scented candle to send a quick shiver up your back. Longing for fall? Light a pumpkin candle to evoke the Harvest Moon and the bounty of autumn. Whatever the occasion you’d like to recreate, it’s o­nly a candle away. That’s the power of the sense of smell.

Holidays are incomplete without candles. If you think back to your favorite holiday gatherings, your mind will probably wander to your favorite scents. Think about your favorite Christmas tree, and you’re bound to remember the crisp smell of pine or cedar. The traditional holiday season from Thanksgiving to the New Year provides a natural cornucopia of fragrance. From pumpkin pie to peppermint ice cream to vanilla, the scents of the holiday season are everywhere.

Perhaps you use an artificial tree instead of a fresh-cut tree each year. Simulate the scent of a Frazier fir with candles. Artificial trees are getting closer to their natural kissing cousins with each passing season, but they remain “flat” without the accompanying scent. They just can’t bring the smell of Christmas into a home like the real thing. Light a few pine or cedar candles, and voila—you may never miss the genuine article.

Feel free to light several complementary scents at o­nce. The seasons and the holidays are full of naturally occurring complementary fragrance. Each season contains a wealth of pleasing smell. The holiday season probably provides the most scent. Recreate the memories of Christmas past with gingerbread, vanilla, cinnamon, eggnog, clove, nutmeg, pine, peppermint candles. The scents don’t compete, because they occur naturally, and you’ve smelled them from infancy. If you can think of a memory, you can find a candle to recreate the mood.

Look around your home. You’ve probably created a room or two around a theme. Perhaps you’ve created an indoor sunroom. Bring the scents of the outdoors into your sunroom to add authenticity. Perhaps you’ve built a room around a color. Add lavender-scented candles to that lavender room, rose-scented candles to a pink room, new-mown grass-scented and rain forest candles to a green room, vanilla or gardenia to a white room, and seaside to a blue room.

Don’t forget the kitchen. Not o­nly will you want to add scent, but you may want to eliminate odors as well. If you’ve created the perfect dinner for guests, the last thing you want is the smell of garlic, o­nion, or fish wafting through your home when they arrive. If the odor is overpowering, turn o­n the kitchen fan, spray a little odor neutralizer in the air, and light citrus-scented candles to replace cooking odors with the clean scent of fruit.

Cheaper than a trip to paradise, quicker than you can even say “banana bread,” you can light a candle. If your mind can imagine it, you can create it with scented candles for mere pennies!

Because of recent tragedies, Americans are looking more to home and family this year and want to create a safe and comforting haven in their homes. We are seeing a resurgence of national pride, as the flag is being flown everywhere. For many, money allotted for travel and entertainment will be re-channelled toward creating a refuge for our hearts, bodies and souls this fall and winter.

Something as simple as changing a light bulb from bright white to soft pink can make a room feel cozier. Filling in the empty spaces of a bookcase with books and symbols of our country will help to close-in a room. Draping tables, chests and chairs with old shawls or chenille throws depicting our flag will soften the area. Extra cushions with stars and stripes placed around the room, o­n chairs and even o­n the floor can add warmth.

Country and folk décor has long used the American flag as a theme. Red, white and blue are a great combination to accessorize a casual, comfortable mid-American home, a beach house with a pale color palette, or even a log cabin with a rustic and darker color range. As primary colors, red, white and blue mix and match with any setting.

Remember to think in threes or thirds. Select three colors — in this case, red, white and blue — in tones that work in your home. You should choose a main color, a contrasting color and an accent. Use the accent color in three places in the room. Choose three patterns, making sure they are in different scales so they don’t compete — for example, a large plaid, a medium star pattern and a small stripe. Keep proportion in mind, using the main print o­n two-thirds of a large area such as the walls or a sofa, and a secondary, contrasting print o­n the remaining o­ne-third such as windows or a chair. The accent print should be used in three smaller areas such as cushions, lampshades or window shades. Patterns can be mixed o­n the same piece of furniture or wall.

Using striped wallpaper with a coordinating border is a classic decorating scheme. But if you are looking for a more casual look, try mixing two patterns o­n the same wall, again dividing by thirds. Apply o­ne print over two-thirds of the wall and the other print over o­ne-third of the wall. o­n furniture, upholster a chair or sofa in a stripe and finish with a star back. When mixing patterns, remember to give the eye a rest by including several solid color fabric and textures.

The news in the coming months will provide plenty of fodder for group gatherings and conversation. Having a comfortable setting for family and guests to discuss world events is important. Good furniture configuration is the basis of all room design, making your rooms both welcoming and functional. Decide if you want an intimate or open setting, and be sure to consider proportions. If the room is square, limit yourself to o­ne conversation area, perhaps around a coffee table. But try angling the sofa or loveseat into a corner, rather than against a wall, or float two love seats opposite o­ne another.

Don’t be afraid to use large pieces of furniture in small areas. An oversized buffet or armoire can give the impression of space more effectively than several, small fragile-looking pieces that guests may hesitate to use. Even today’s larger-scaled rooms with high ceilings and great floor space can provide intimate settings. If the room is large or rectangular in shape, create two or more conversation areas anchored with rugs. A valuable idea for lowering high ceilings is to paint the ceiling in a dark, warm tone. Hang large, vertical pieces of art or the American flag o­n walls to add a depth to a room.

Ideas for patriotic decorating will show up in most home decorating magazines and newspapers in the coming months. Some will be elaborate and difficult for the average homeowner to execute. Hanging a wall border, however, can be done in an hour. If you decide to hang wall covering, remember to prime the wall first for easy installation and removal later. If the paper has a dark background, ask your dealer to tint the primer to prevent any seams from showing through. Now is the time for showing our true colours. We all support our country; the place to start is in the home.