Your home is your safe space and your sanctuary. Regardless of whether your work at home or in the office, at the end of the long and busy workday, you’ll want to be able to relax and your home should offer you that pleasure. If your home promotes relaxation, the process of unwinding after your day or on the weekend will happen without you even trying. Here are a few ways you can make your home more relaxing without having to spend a fortune.
A Lounge You Can Lounge In
The lounge area or living room should be the most comfortable place in the house. It’s designed to be a comfortable and welcoming space that you can escape to after a long day and the furniture and design should reflect this. A well-chosen sofa with soft and plush cushions that you can sink into to watch your favorite TV show or read a good book is essential. Consider adding one or two large bean bag chairs into the room too because almost nothing beats the warm embrace of collapsing onto a good quality bean bag chair.
Colour Me Neutral
While we might be drawn toward adding color and exciting patterns into our home décor, for those spaces that you want to feel the most relaxed in, interior decorators often recommend that you opt for a more neutral palette instead. Making use of white and taupe colors with small flashes of color can make a space feel calm and promote an air of sanctuary. You don’t want it to look like a sterile hospital room, so white walls should be offset with a pale sofa or throws to bring some life into it.
Light a Candle
Candles serve two purposes when it comes to a calming and relaxing space. They provide soft, dancing ambient light to a room and they also smell great if you choose the right scents. They don’t even need to be the expensive designer candles either and the ones you can find at the grocery store can work just as well. Just avoid the harshly scented ones and look instead for something that’s going to rather be a background scent, like chamomile or geranium. You could also look at an essential oil diffuser if you’d prefer your candles unscented.
Plant it Inside
House plants quite literally breathe new life and fresh air into any space. While fresh-cut flowers might add a pleasing aroma and color to an area, it won’t be long before they start to wilt and droop and have the opposite of the intended effect. Living house plants last for as long as you can keep them alive and paired with a nice pot can be a centerpiece in their own right. If you’re not much of a green thumb, there are plant options for you that are particularly hardy.
Focus on small changes that promote things that help you relax, and are associated with calm, like good scents and lavish comfort. And you’ll be dreaming about collapsing onto that bean bag at the end of your day.