Though furnishing your home seems like a simple chore that only involves filling up your space with functional items, it actually requires design choices that can significantly affect your overall wellness. After all, the home is your sanctuary. Over 90% of the respondents in a global Paramount Insights survey look at their humble abodes as places where they can leave their worries at the door, relax, recharge, and head out the next day ready to face life’s challenges. The type and quality of your furniture can significantly determine how good of a refuge your home is.
To reap these vital benefits for yourself, you thus need to carefully curate the pieces you use. Here’s how to furnish your living space to enhance your well-being.
Place items by the window
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If your place offers lots of natural light, take advantage of it by placing furniture near your windows. Infusing the parts of your home and the pieces you use the most with sunlight can lift entire rooms and is scientifically proven to boost your mood, improve your sleep quality, and strengthen your immune system. It can even enhance productivity—so if you work from home or have enough space for your kids to study in their bedrooms, place those desks beside a window!
Ensure your furniture brings people together
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Often, family is what makes your home worth going back to. Spending time with loved ones is paramount to your well-being, with family meals in particular promoting improved nutritional outcomes, enhanced cognitive skills, and more happiness and self-esteem. That’s why you’ll want to design your home around people—and not attention-consuming devices like your TV—by using furniture that brings everyone together. One great place to start is in the dining room, where the right pieces can facilitate a more social, interactive dining experience. A dining set with bench seating options, like the Titan and Kennedy models offered by Living Spaces, exemplifies this. Benches can accommodate more people and allow them to sit closer together, including kids who find it challenging to maneuver chairs when going to and from the dining table. They’re also space savers, so you can enjoy tight-knit family meals even in smaller houses and apartments. By carefully choosing pieces like this, you can spend your time at home with more people in the family and share the well-being benefits they have to offer.
Use pieces that help you declutter
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Your home is your resting place, so it needs to exude a relaxing vibe. That’s why we recommend decluttering it, especially when you’re spring cleaning. Doing so clears the energy in your living space, whether you’re discarding, donating, and selling unwanted items—or simply putting away anything that’s lying around. Eliminating clutter by storing things in the right place is probably the simplest way to enhance your well-being at home, and it’s something you can do year-round. Make it even easier for you to do so with furniture that pulls double-duty by holding your items, too. Arguably, the best spot to place such pieces is where you get the most rest: the bedroom. That’s especially true since you can get bedroom sets with side tables and dressers. Similar to dining sets, models like Vaughan-Bassett’s farmhouse, upholstered, and architectural bedroom furniture collections immediately provide additional features that make it easier to improve your well-being. The additional storage provided by their bedside tables and dressers give you the perfect spot to place everything from smartphones and tablets to any toys your kids leave on the floor. Functional furniture like this can help you create and maintain a relaxing and wellness-friendly energy in your home for longer.
Take advantage of relaxing decor
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When furnishing your home for enhanced well-being, don’t forget the power of relaxing accent pieces and decor! These can embellish your space and make it somewhere you’ll relish spending your free time. You don’t need to limit yourself to hanging a few photos and paintings on your walls, either. Indoor plants are a great way to breathe life into any room, especially if you live in a highly urbanized area and don’t have any green spaces nearby. What’s more, simply looking at them can relieve depression, stress, and anxiety, boost your productivity, and even sharpen your attention span. You can place them pretty much anywhere, too—but consider paying special attention to the living room, where you’re more likely to spend time on recreational activities.
by Andy Jacobs
