If you’re in a new place, especially a rented place where you can’t make irreversible decorative changes, it can be hard to feel right at home. That welcoming and warm feeling you were expecting from a home that is yours, might be lacking amongst the white walls, but there are ways you can change that. Read on for our tips on making your home more welcoming.
Take advantage of natural light
There are real scientific reasons we get seasonal depression, and a lot of them have to do with light. If you are spending all day inside working during short winter days, you’ll not be getting a lot of natural light.
Not only will natural light make your home feel more warm and welcoming by illuminating the colours of your room, but a boost of vitamin D will improve your circadian rhythms, making for a better sleeping pattern. In turn it will reduce health risks from fluorescent lighting like eye strain and migraines from stress.
If you’re having trouble getting as much natural light in as possible, you might want to invest in a mirror. You will make the space seem a lot bigger whilst reflecting natural light around the room.
Plus, all that natural light will be great for your plants…
Plants, plants, plants!
Plants offer a lot of benefits to any room, but they are especially welcoming to a homey environment. You will instinctively relax around plants, as their dispersing of oxygen will lower your blood rates and keep you calm. In turn, this means your mood will improve and your stress and anxiety will go down.
Plus, they give you a low-effort thing to look after. If you were to get your own bonsai tree kit, for example, you can raise it literally from the ground up, add a pop of colour to the room and raise your own little tree as something to give a little love.
Other benefits of keeping plants like bonsai trees include their ability to lower fatigue and help you focus, as well as less headaches due to plants cleaning the air in the room.
Use colours and textures of nature
This has been a very nature-heavy article so far, but that is for good reason: there is simply something about nature that is far more welcoming than man-made. It might be an association with styles rich in colour and metal being found in mansions and skyscraper office buildings, or it might be all the scientific research into the effects of light and plants listed above making for a positive reaction.
If you want a more homey environment at home, it’s good to keep this in mind. When you’re looking at colours for your walls, consider colours that evoke nature, whether they’re pastel yellows or beige for a calmer effect, or deep browns, forest greens and burnt oranges for a bold statement.
Extend that to your textiles too. Add some fluffy throws and rugs to your home to load on the warmth, look for patterns that evoke nature, and make your couch as squashy as possible with an abundance of cushions.
Warmth
In the colder months, nothing says welcome like a warm open fire. Of course, not all houses are able to have real flames, but there are plenty of wall hanging modern electric fires available that can give the effect and run just of a standard power supply.
