If you’ve been following us for a while you may know how passionate we are about prioritizing wellness in the home and incorporating these holistic elements into our designs. Our goal is to not only make your home beautiful and functional but also aim to create and cultivate a place that improves your overall well-being. To honor this we decided to create a new blog series entitled “Live-Well” to go further in-depth on this important topic and bring as much knowledge and education to you as possible. To kick things off we want to discuss why you need to prioritize wellness in the home.
If you think about how much time you are spending in your home and how much living and breathing is happening in this space it only makes sense to prioritize wellness and try to create the healthiest environment you can. Sometimes it can be hard to wrap your head around the fact that your home is truly an extension of your mental, emotional and physical well-being.
If you truly think about it, buildings, specifically our homes and the surrounding environment shape us, our health, and our happiness. We are a product of our environments and because of that, it’s important to be aware of your environment, what you bring inside your home and how your home supports your health and wellness.
Related Post: The Effects of our Built Environment on our Health
There are many aspects to wellness design, some of which we will be diving into deeper in the upcoming blog posts, but a few main areas to be able to prioritize wellness in the home include the following:
Lighting
It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about wellness design but lighting can have an impact on what’s known as your circadian rhythm within your body. It’s a physiological process that regulates and synchronizes your body with the light and dark cycles of the day. There is special circadian lighting that we will dive deeper into but the most important thing to consider within your home is access to as much natural light as possible.
Air Quality
The quality of the air in your home plays an important role in your overall health but can sometimes be a trickier thing to tackle since it’s not really visible. A healthy home will have ample ventilation and systems that allow for fresh air to flow into the home while removing the unhealthy air. We have seen such an improvement in the systems that your home can be outfitted with to ensure you are circulating fresh air throughout your entire home.
Healthy Materials & Cleaning Products
The materials and products we use within our home can contribute greatly to the air we breathe, hitting home our point above about the importance of air quality. The systems can only do so much so it is up to us to consider the materials we are bringing into the home in the first place. Some of the worst offenders can be flooring materials and cabinetry (think stains, sealants, carpets with fire retardant applications etc.) as well as the cleaning products or candles that contain harmful contaminants or artificial fragrances that ultimately get released into the air you breathe on a daily basis.
Sustainability & Environmental Design
Sustainable design is becoming a bit of a buzzword these days, but it goes beyond selecting sustainably designed products. Especially when it comes to renovations and remodels we need to think about what we are ripping out and the number of materials we are in turn adding into landfills. Can things be repurposed, used somewhere else, donated etc.?
The idea of starting from scratch and ripping everything out may sound appealing, but from a sustainability standpoint and taking into account our environmental responsibility we need to consider how we can avoid the number of items being disposed of and try our best to keep useful items out of landfills.
All in all, when it comes to prioritizing wellness in the home it is not only to be healthy, but we want them to feel good as well so that your home is a place that contributes to your overall well-being both physically and mentally. We hope you join us in our live-well series to dive deeper and learn more about wellness design.
