If you’ve ever felt flat – or even worse, discouraged – when you’ve walked into your home, you know it’s time for an interior makeover.

Your interior décor choices influence your mood. In fact, there’s even a new professional field for this idea. It’s called neuroarchitecture and it looks at the impact light, space, and room layouts have on our physical and psychological wellbeing.

So what can you do to your home to help boost your mood, as well as those of your guests? Colour schemes, feng shui, lighting and décor all play their role. We’ll look at each in turn below.

1. The power of colour psychology

It seems strange to think the colour palette in your room could have any effect on your mood. Yet colour can actually contribute to your peace, happiness and comfort.

Blue is one of the most beneficial colours you could include in your interior design. It evokes the ocean and the sky, inducing a feeling of freshness and calm.

But take care: different shades of blue will encourage radically different moods. Pale blue can introduce tranquillity and airiness into a space but a darker shade such as navy arouses drama.

Green reminds us of nature, growth and renewal, such as long grass, tropical rainforests, budding leaves, and plenty of fresh air. So it naturally imbues the room with a calming atmosphere, especially if it is blended with wooden tones.

Yellow is the most obvious colour associated with happiness, probably because it reminds us of sunny, carefree days by the beach!

This optimistic colour adds warmth, peace and cosiness to any room. In fact, it’s even been found to jog the memory, stimulate the nervous system, foster creativity, and encourage communication.

Finally, you may not think it, but brown is a well-known relaxant. As with green, it invokes nature and organic materials with its earthy hue. It encourages you to slow down but can also give your room a welcoming feel.

Speaking from a design perspective, softer browns are also a great neutral colour used to highlight more vivid colours such as green or orange.

2. The art of feng shui

The ancient Chinese art of feng shui has long used design elements to foster happiness (it has been around a 3,000 years).

Feng shui uses your surrounding environment to improve your mood, health, wellbeing and finances to attain an ideal life balance. It harnesses positive energy, or good chi, through the careful arrangement of objects in your home, among other things.

The principles of feng shui recommend you keep house plants in your home to promote harmony. According to the old practice, the oxygen the plants will release promotes good energy.

But make sure they’re harmonious plants! Nothing with thorns or sharp leaves will do. Neither will dying plants. Make sure they’re healthy and happy.

In fact this isn’t just a feng shui principle. Plants have been linked to plenty of physical and psychological benefits, including reduced anxiety and stress, elevated moods, and less fatigue.

Feng shui also recommends bright or earthy colour schemes (depending on your personal preference), uncluttered rooms, and pictures of your childhood on display as sure-fire ways of promoting happiness in the home.

3. Enhance Your Lighting

Doctors have always encouraged us to get out into the fresh air and sunlight. And there’s good reason why. Sunlight increases our bodies’ production of endorphins and serotonin – the same chemicals that make us feel happy.

Actually, receiving sunshine in the morning also helps your body stop creating sleep-inducing melatonin. That means you’ll wake up feeling more alert. So it’s a good idea to place your bed near a window with the curtains partially open so you can enjoy natural light when it’s time to rise.

In fact, it’s beneficial to place any furniture in positions receptive to natural light. It means you’ll absorb a lot more natural light in your day and is an instant way to keep you energised.

Of course, it’s not always easy to expose all your rooms to natural sunlight. But you can use dimming lights or lamps with warmer colours in its place – just take care; artificial lights are also known to make you drowsy.

4. Curvy décor

Your décor is one of the easier interior design changes you can make to help boost morale in the home. You can chop and change your furniture and decorations without too many expenses and a more permanent change.  Indeed, reorganising your room is a great way to keep things fresh and interesting in the home.

Mood-boosting décor ideas rest on the concept of soft geometry. Soft geometry essentially means you adopt curves and soft edges to your furniture instead of harsher ones. Thankfully, curvy furniture is one of the latest interior design trends, so it should be easy to incorporate into your home.

The idea around soft geometry is that your brain responds better to curvy lines. Hard lines are threatening, whereas curves encourage relaxation. The reasoning is simple, as kitchen designer Johnny Grey explains in this O article:

“The reason has to do with your peripheral vision and is linked to a primitive part of the brain called the amygdala. If you were to walk down a dark, narrow tunnel lined with sharp rocks, you wouldn’t be able to think about anything except avoiding getting hurt. But if the same tunnel were lined with linen upholstery, you’d feel safe to daydream.”

5. The personal touch

At the end of the day, the best interior design elements you’ll introduce into your home should be those things which make you most happy.

It’s important you personalise home with family photographs, your favourite art prints, souvenirs from your holidays, and the colour and décor designs you like the most.

That way, every which way you look you’ll be reminded of the things that make you the most content. After all, happiness is ultimately about doing the things that make you most happy – and that should include decorating your home with your favourite things.

Here at Brosa, we want you to feel comfortable in your home. Check out some of our other interior design ideas on our Skapa Blog or browse our online catalogue for the full range of our curvaceous designer furniture.