“My experience is what I attend to.”

William James

What is your experience when you are where you live?

What do you see, how do you react to such, and what done, do, or plan to do is your activity therefrom?

Our residential environment affects our physical comforts and functions as well as our psychology and aspects consciously and subconsciously.

During this holiday season what do you attend to that is different from the rest of the year and what is your experience thereof?

Each of us, as individuals, with what we do with our resources, including time and money, that we attend to determines our resulting experience.

Look around and analyze and think about where you live.

What is your direct observation? How do you feel about it?

Your choices are you.

Food for thought.

Have you noticed recently how much of the colors grey we see in our daily lives.

Most of the cars today are black, white, or grey.

How much grey do you see in the construction of commercial buildings and exposed concrete?

During this time of year much of foliage is very grey or dull.

looking outside these days even much of the sky is grey.

With the announcement of it’s 2023 color of the year, Pantone is giving us a short in the arm to help brighten things up.

The color they have chosen for 2023’s Color of the Year is viva magenta.

It is described as “about optimistic celebration, experimentation, and unrestrained self expression“.

All of which is a bright spot in view of the world situations today and for the past two to three years.

This color, according to their announcement, is “involking the focus of nature, it galvanizes our spirit, helping us to build our inner strength”.

All of which is well and good.

It has always been my position that colors should always be chosen for the best aesthetic results of the project situation regardless of other factors.

This position remains the same.

When I was in design school, the color then currently popular, chic, trending, and talked about was magenta. Although this one is a little different, the question is asked, “Does history repeat itself?”.

Food for thought.

The Thanksgiving Day experience is over and now it’s full blast ahead for the upcoming holidays season.

While commercial decorations are usually designed to increase holiday sales, why are residential decorations so popular and profusely manifest?

Regardless of the type of or original causing history of these holidays or their social-economic status, many people go all out, and sometime overboard, when it comes to holiday residential decorations.

Why?

A very basic human behavior behavior.

The emotional over rules the intellectual.

And for most people, the joy, appreciation, anticipation, and experience of the holiday season is an emotional high regardless of it’s religious significance, tradition, abundance, et cetera, and a commonly liked and approved time of the year to let go of the complex and trying and necessary activities of our normal every day lives and go forth and celebrate a feeling and indulgence of pure joy.

Such is a good thing and is to be encouraged.

When it comes to holiday decorations, of which the Christmas tree is probability the most popular, the guide lines of intelligent and quality aesthetics go out the window.

Sentimental, traditional, cute, fun, personal, lights, adorable, quantity, et cetera guide lines are what is most often used.

Have you ever noticed that on many extremely well known prominent widely viewed national Christmas trees the history of the tree is given and when finished being decorated it is no longer seeable. You literally cannot see the tree for the lights.

From an aesthetic design point of view it may be wise to ask why being “traditional” is always the best route to take.

The best designs, aesthetically and intellectually, are the ones that best represent the time and place and purpose of their creation.

So. Enjoy the holiday season to the fullest in your own personal way even if for no other reason than to bring joy and light more universally for a brief fleeting moment in our current world.

Happy holidays!

Food for thought.

What do you see when you look?

What do you see when you look as everyone does not react the same when viewing the same subject matter?

Out reaction to what we see in a reflection of who we are as a result of almost all aspects of our lives that goes into the sum total of our personality.

Such includes where we are in evolution as well as the shaping of our each individual personality from what we have experienced up through the present time.

Among these traits are our intelligence, education, finances, politics, physical locations, religion or lack there of, time in history, and cultures.

Two of the most important are our attitude toward life and what we like.

What we want to see is an important determining factor.

For example: If you want, or choose, to see the bad, negative, and ugly in life that is what you will see. If you choose to see the good, positive, and beauty in life that is what you will see.

We also have a strong tendency to see what we do, or do not, like.

What do you choose to see and how important is it in manifesting the life you want to experience?

Our mind, consciously and unconsciously, is the main factor in our visual experiences.

It is reality that we harvest what we sow.

During your interior residential living what do you see, how aware of it are you, how satisfied, content, and happy are you with it, and what, if anything, do you choose to do about it?

What is the sum total of your time and experience for your participation on this planet for your ” at home ” life?

We seek to eat food that taste good?

Is it of merit to reside in residential interior designs that are aesthetically pleasing?

Food for thought.

“My taste are very simple. I am satisfied with the best.”

This quotation is attributed to Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill.

How does it relate to the choices you make in the selections you experience within your residential interior environment?

What does the best for you mean?

Does it mean the best quality in workmanship and materials?

Does it mean the most functional choices for your life style?

Does it mean choosing what you like the best?

Does it mean the latest availability in performance and materials?

Does it mean the highest level of social and economic status?

Does it mean the latest style?

Does it mean the current trend and most popular?

Does it mean the most historical tradition or period?

Does it mean the most economically viable?

You have to decide what is best for you regardless of the influence of others.

What is the desired end result of the goal you wish to achieve when your residential interior space is completed?

What satisfies you best for the combinations that are available?

Have a list of priorities and work yourself down to least important and select from the options available that best suit you and not anyone else in the world.

You will probably end up with a combination of choices that will probable not include all of the choices listed in the above questions.

Go with it.

Making intelligent and quality decisions based on the laws of physics and principles of aesthetics will manifest in the best residential interior design for you.

And remember, your personal space is about you and not what the rest of the world wants, thinks, or critiques.

Food for thought.

Walking into the lobby of a city building last week and seeing a tall fully decorated Christmas tree did not go well with my positions which is that pushing that holiday merchandising and decorations that soon takes away from the anticipation and kills the joy by over saturation of the Christmas holidays.

Then reminded myself that with all that has been and is going on in this world today perhaps an early celebration would be good for our spirits.

Decorating a Christmas tree involves adding ornamental objects to it.

Decorating a Christmas tree synchronizes with what some people do with the interior of their residential spaces.

They decorate instead of designing.

Webster defines decoration as “to furnish something with ornamental”

While some decorating can enhance the aesthetic level of a residential interior, or any other physical object, designing such is a much more highly intellectual and aesthetic manifestation.

Webster defines designing “deliberate progressive planning.”

Instead of “adding to what is already there” the task is planned from beginning to end with each aspect executed according to the part it plays in the whole final composition.

While it is not always possible to take on every part of an interior space from the beginning, it is wise to make the best aesthetic use of what is there to achieve the highest level of desirable results in the end.

While there is overlap between designing and decoration in today’s world of residential interiors there is definitely a big difference in how each such is done and the results there of.

When you look at, react to, or analyze the interior residential interior environments you experience, think was it “added to” or “planned” for the seen results.

Food for thought.

Color is determined by the reflection of light on a surface and is experienced by our sense of sight although some people also have a sense where by they can hear color.

What we see is not as simple.

According to an article in a recent Mensa publication what color we see is much more complex and is not determined with the same degree of determining factors.

What color we see, how we describe it, and how we react to it is caused by “variations in individual and cultures”.

“Genetic variations in the biology of light determines in one’s eyes ” are the main factor in what color an individual physically sees so that all persons don’t see the same result when viewing the same color.

Levels of advancement in the culture in which we exist are the other factor by which we experience color.

“Your own subjective experience of color is so private.”

Just as people have different reactions to the sounds they hear people also have different reactions to the colors they see.

“It’s difficult to know if these differences are biological or cultural.”

The genetic make up with which we are born and the environment in which we are raised and live are the causes of our own individual life experience.

The deeper and more we learn about the universe in “which we live and move and have our being” the more we advance civilization and increase the quality of our life’s experience.

And is not making the most and best of what we experience what life is all about?

How much of what we experience seeing in life is color?

Food for thought.

What needs to be considered when choosing how to treat your windows to manifest a successful functional and beautiful result.

Windows in a room are the sources of outdoor natural light and thus are an important factor in determining what results are obtained for the entire interior space.

What direction the window faces determines the quality and quantity of light so that such is a big factor is what is the best treatment for windows.

The sun is ever present and will not be ignored.

What is the view seen from the window and is such to be enhanced or eliminated?

What is the function of the window treatment?

What is the best way to achieve that function in the most pleasing manner?

What is the flavor of the window treatment as related to the style and design of the space?

What do you like and what brings you joy when looking at your window treatment?

How does it reflect the time and place where it is?

How important is the “status” of the window treatment in reflecting the physical quality and the ambiance of it’s interior ambiance?

Is how the window treatment seen from the outside a factor that needs to be considered and, if such, how is that need fulfilled?

The best approach here, as in all design projects, is to intelligently apply the laws of physics and the principles of aesthetics as opposed to trends, rules, always, standardization, traditions, et cetera.

There is an old ism: “That you always get what you pay for.” which can be applied to window treatments, as well as other aspects of life, in that the level of results achieved reflects the mental resources, such as logic, intelligence, planning, knowledge, et cetera, put into the project.

What do you see when you look at the window treatments where you are, at home or any place else, and how do you react to such and how important is such to you?

Food for thought.

An interview about”This Is Your Brain on Architecture”, a book by Sarah Williams Goldhagen, came across my desk recently and is a very intelligent, researched, psychological, and emotional look at how what we see, consciously and subliminally, affects what we see and how we react to it.

There has been much information learned in recent years on the brain and how multisensory we react to our environment and how such is more important than thought before.

“Embodied cognition”, which is a paradigm for how we live and think in the world, is starting to emerge “dipping into psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience”.

Most buildings start with size to fit in building space starting with the outside and filling the interior to fill that space.

Finances most often determines what happens thereafter with the design, materials, aesthetics, scheduling, et cetera.

What often gets lost in this construction process is the subjective responses of people to and with said construction results.

Environment is a strong and causing factor in individual experience and behavior and is validated by scientific evidence.

Most of humanity does not live in an ideal world but those who have options of what can be done in building our environments, commercially and residentially, inside and outside, are a factor in determining the world in which we live and move and have our being.

So, after reading the above what do you see and think of your residential, interior and exterior, environment and how do you react to such?

Food for thought.

Have you ever noticed how quickly and unsolicitly some people are compelled to express themselves on a new exposure, of which many times they are not a factor in the situation, as to what are their personal preferences.

Frequently, these expressed opinions are of aesthetic or changes situations.

Some one once said that such is the biggest commodity in the history of human civilization.

Most of us live in a country where we are free to express such opinions but why is it done and is it of desired behavior?

What are we to make of it? What does it say about the sayer? How are we to react to it intelligently and knowledgeably?

Some people say it as a way, consciously or unconsciously, to validate their existence, needs, knowledge, et cetera which may or may not be merited.

While we have the freedom to make such a statement, does doing such enhance, or deter, our personality as experienced by others?

It is wise and of merit to know and understand well of what we speak before speaking it and evaluating whether such speaking is a contribution to the situation or just a personal tick of which no one else really cares?

Food for thought.