Have you ever thought of the inside of your house as an environment? It is such.

Behavioral professionals say that our environment affects our mental and emotional state of being as well as our physical daily activities. We are probably not aware of this influence. Have you every looked at your home’s interior and thought about how it affects you?

What is where you live to you? Is it a home or a residence? Is it your base of warmth, security, and love or just a place to fulfill the physical necessities of existence? Is it a sanctuary to let loose and be free from the demands and requirements of the outside world or just a place when there is no where else to go?

The financial advantages of home ownership is often listed as one of the reasons for it. Do you feel that you get non-financial advantages in your place of living?

Pride is often listed as an emotional reward for a house. Are you proud of the place you live and always look forward to going there and being there? Are you happy with what they see when people come to visit you?

Businesses, institutions, places of worship, stores, places of entertainment, restaurants, et cetera all put a lot of resources in their surroundings to make the experience there fulfilling. Is it not worth the same expenditure of resources to make our home environment the same?

As an extreme, some people treat their residence much like a service station only for people instead of cars. They use it as a place to eat (fill up with gas), a place for bodily functions and hygiene (rest room), sleep (rest area), et cetera. Other people go to the other extreme where their residence is the major factor in their non-business life. It is a palace or expression of economic-social status to be protected and preserved and only secondarily for their use (You can’t sit in that chair! It’s an antique!). Where do you put your self on this scale?

It is wise for every one to evaluate the effect their residential environment has on their physical and non-physical behavior and to expend the necessary resources to make that environment the best it can be? Be those resources physical, financial, mental, or emotional resources. Where are you on the matter?

Food for thought.

The dictionary  defines furniture as articles used to make a room usable. Which sort of says it all in a nut shell. Basically, there are two things to consider in the selection of furniture.

The first and foremost is function. What is the purpose of the pieces of furniture and what is it to do to make this room usable for the people using it? What are the activities that will take place in this interior space? What type of people will be using this space? What sizes are the occupants? Are they tall and slender or short and big? What are their ages? What kind of clothes will they be wearing? Will they be all of one type or many types? What are their ages? What physical characteristics should the furniture have to accommodate the occupants? Should seating be soft and comfortable or firm and rigid? What should be the angle of the back and arms and and how high should they be? How high and deep should the seats be? What are the storage requirements of the room and how is that need best achieved? How practical should the furniture be for daily use, longevity, cleaning, maintenance, et cetera? And what is the financial value of the furniture taking into consideration it’s initial costs and how long it will be used?

Almost all furniture in general is made to accommodate many different types, sizes, functions, and ages of people and is mass produced for a mass consumer market.  A small portion is made for more specific uses and characteristics. The biggest deciding factor for furniture factories is financial – costs of materials, labor, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, selling, taxes, et cetera – with little thought given to the questions in the previous paragraph. The smaller and more specialized the maker and the higher the price, the more likely a higher quality to the piece and thought to the many other details.

The second thing to consider is the flavor, personality, ambiance, looks, et cetera of the furniture and how such  fulfills it’s role in the room. What are the colors, types of fabrics, patterns, materials, finishes, sizes, and styles selected? Is everything to be new, antique, previously owned, what you have, or a mixture of many kinds? If you think of furniture as food, these choices are what would give the food it’s flavor and make it taste good and satisfying.

If you plan and execute well these two things, your furniture should be pleasing, lasting, comfortable, and functional for many years. It should not grow dull and routine, but become more pleasant and enjoyable with the years.

It is an interesting observation that in the design and construction of residential spaces, there is a very general name given to a room and construction is based and executed by size of lot, total square footage of structure (most often determined by price per square foot), plumbing, HVAC, windows, doors, shape of house, style, most economical placement of rooms, et cetera. In other words, instead of planning what activities will take place in a room and what furniture sizes, shapes, and placements will best fit those needs and designing a room as such, the room is built and the furniture has to fit into it which is to me a sort of backward approach. Instead of form determined by function, function has to fit predetermined form. Such is why most rooms don’t look put together. The furnishing have to fit the room and the room doesn’t have to fit the activities and furniture. The biggest mistake most people make in this area is size. They put too many pieces of big furniture in too small spaces. It looks out of balance and is  uncomfortable to move around in such a space. The other bad thing many people do is putting too many pieces of furniture together. How many times have you sat at a crowded dining table where you were jammed close to the people on either side of you and hit the table and chair legs getting in and out or had to maneuver around pieces of furniture to move about?

Have you ever been to someone’s house and there was a piece of furnishings which was totally inappropriate and out of place and upon commenting about it you were told that they have to have it because: We got that when we first got married or that it belonged to my grandmother or some other such reason?

As a financial and intellectual exercise make a column of all the monies spend in a life time on home furnishings and how long they last vs a column of all the monies spent in a life time on cars and how long they last.

As in many of life’s decisions, emotional is used over intellectual.

Food for thought.

One sees in various media, paint stores, hardware stores, and other places information about colors which are advertised as new colors, colors of the year, et cetera. Due to the chemical composition of the elements that make up the materials of which the reflection makes the color, new colors are are constantly being discovered. Such is the situation since mankind started using colors. It is always good to have more colors available which gives us more choices in the situations where we use colors. The question to be asked is – what is the best color to use for the design? Is the new color the best for the design or is it more fashionable? Do you even like the new colors? Will the new colors become dated and out of fashion? New colors are an important factor in clothing, cosmetics, fabrics, et cetera. We don’t change our residential interiors as often as we change the clothes, cosmetics, and fabrics we use. Our residential interiors should be designed to last for decades and not to be changed seasonally or yearly as are things like clothes and cosmetics. Well designed interiors become classics and not dated. How important is it to you to be fashionable in the choice of colors for your residential interiors? Because something is new does not necessarily make it good design. It merely means it is new. You have to decide what is most important to you and what reflects your personality and lifestyle.

Selecting a color is more often an emotional than intellectual choice.

Food for thought.

As I drive around residential areas in St. Louis and observe internet news from around the nation about residential construction, finances, marketing, new home developments, et cetera, One thing stands out. Many of the new family residences look the same regardless of their geographical location. They have only one outstanding design element for the street view- a double garage door. What does it say when the front door is back around a corner?

It is my general way of thought that the front people entry should be the welcoming and focal point on the front of a residence. Double garage doors don’t cut it. I have no doubt that such is done for construction, costs, space, and other business reasons. But what is the result? We are getting a cookie cutter result where they all look the same. Do you feel good and comfortable living in such a house? What else do you do that is just like everyone else? Where is the beauty and individual personality of double garage doors? Are we becoming a nation of clones?

Food for thought.

We did it!