6 Easy Ways to Use Biophilic Design to Create a Serene Home
Incorporating a connection to nature in your home can regenerate the mind, reduce stress and boost creativity
Biophilic design, which seeks to foster our desire to connect with the natural world, is an interior trend that complements sustainable and energy-saving architectural concepts.
The aim is to create homes that are environmentally friendly, yet are also capable of instilling physical and emotional wellbeing, reducing stress, and improving concentration and creativity. How? By creating spaces in harmony with our innate, and often subconscious, tendency to seek connections with nature.
Try these 6 simple ideas in your home.
The aim is to create homes that are environmentally friendly, yet are also capable of instilling physical and emotional wellbeing, reducing stress, and improving concentration and creativity. How? By creating spaces in harmony with our innate, and often subconscious, tendency to seek connections with nature.
Try these 6 simple ideas in your home.
Designing using biophilia means being conscious of what people perceive as pleasing, intriguing and reinvigorating in their natural surroundings, and systematically integrating the lines, colours, materials and solutions that make them feel good on both a physical and emotional level into their spaces.
But what kind of interior choices does this translate into specifically? Read on to find out.
Find renovation specialists in your area in the Houzz Professionals Directory.
But what kind of interior choices does this translate into specifically? Read on to find out.
Find renovation specialists in your area in the Houzz Professionals Directory.
1. Connect directly via plants and animals
The first and most intuitive way of furnishing any indoor living space in line with the principles of biophilia is by displaying plants (whether in vases, pots or terrariums). This gives you a direct visual connection to the natural world.
The first and most intuitive way of furnishing any indoor living space in line with the principles of biophilia is by displaying plants (whether in vases, pots or terrariums). This gives you a direct visual connection to the natural world.
Sharing our homes with furry friends can also help us to feel closer to nature.
A biophilic home will therefore have space for everything you need to respond to your pet’s needs, such as cat climbing walls and cosy dog beds, and even bird feeders or a butterfly garden.
A biophilic home will therefore have space for everything you need to respond to your pet’s needs, such as cat climbing walls and cosy dog beds, and even bird feeders or a butterfly garden.
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2. Enhance the visuals
Biophilic design can also encourage memories of being amid nature through sensory triggers. Upholstery, wallpaper and trompe-l’oeil surfaces with floral motifs or wild landscapes suit the brief.
Biophilic design can also encourage memories of being amid nature through sensory triggers. Upholstery, wallpaper and trompe-l’oeil surfaces with floral motifs or wild landscapes suit the brief.
If possible, a biophilic house should also enhance your visual connection to the nature directly surrounding it through large windows.
3. Pay attention to touch
Raw natural textures as well as stone and wood surfaces that have been left as untreated as possible help us to feel at one with nature through touch.
Raw natural textures as well as stone and wood surfaces that have been left as untreated as possible help us to feel at one with nature through touch.
4. Introduce scents and sounds
References to nature through smell and sound can be particularly rejuvenating and calming. Candles and diffusers, small indoor fountains, and natural sound simulators work well.
References to nature through smell and sound can be particularly rejuvenating and calming. Candles and diffusers, small indoor fountains, and natural sound simulators work well.
5. Echo natural forms
Another biophilic design strategy is to replicate the organic structures we find in nature by prioritising soft, rounded shapes.
Another biophilic design strategy is to replicate the organic structures we find in nature by prioritising soft, rounded shapes.
The use of repetitive biomorphic patterns, such as hexagons, has a similar effect and therefore also plays an interesting role in biophilic design.
6. Replicate the feeling of natural spaces
Nature is full of spaces that make us feel happy: from familiar places we go to when we want to seek refuge, to new places where we rediscover the joy of the unexplored.
A biophilic house is therefore designed with this in mind. It contains spaces you can retreat to, such as a cosy reading corner, and spaces where you seek adventure, such as a hanging chair or a view across an expansive landscape.
The key is to acknowledge your need for nature and simply allow yourself to be inspired by it.
Tell us…
Are you inspired by these biophilic design principles? Share your thoughts in the Comments.
Nature is full of spaces that make us feel happy: from familiar places we go to when we want to seek refuge, to new places where we rediscover the joy of the unexplored.
A biophilic house is therefore designed with this in mind. It contains spaces you can retreat to, such as a cosy reading corner, and spaces where you seek adventure, such as a hanging chair or a view across an expansive landscape.
The key is to acknowledge your need for nature and simply allow yourself to be inspired by it.
Tell us…
Are you inspired by these biophilic design principles? Share your thoughts in the Comments.
It was after this that practical models started to emerge, such as the paper, 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design – Improving Health and Well-Being in the Built Environment, published by Terrapin Bright Green in 2014, or the frameworks currently being trialled at the Laboratorio di Ecologia Affettiva at the Università della Valle d’Aosta in Italy.
Our goal now is to apply these biophilic theories to architecture and urban planning, because the idea that we need nature in design couldn’t be more relevant to modern living, as the experience of the pandemic showed.