Healing Spaces: How Art and Home Decor Can Improve Mental Health

Home is more than a house. It's where you feel that what is around you shapes the intensity, depth, peacefulness, and freedom with which you feel it.

Different spaces make you feel differently, and that goes for your home space, too.

Go into an area with a lot of clutter and low lighting, and see how your body responds. Your shoulders tighten. Your thoughts are crowded. A slight uneasiness comes over you.

On the other hand, step into a room with soft natural light, a soothing piece on the wall, and a well-curated corner featuring a chair and a plant. Something releases. You exhale differently.

This is by no means a coincidence. It is neuroscience.

One of the largest unexplored and most potent connections in our daily well-being is between our environments and mental health. Therapy, medicine, and lifestyle practices are rightly discussed when talking about mental health, but so too do the environments we live in have a powerful impact—albeit quieter—on our emotions. Art for mental health and home decor for mental health are far from trends and luxuries. They are tools, and learning to use them can be a big help in your day-to-day life.

The Science Behind Your Surroundings

The science of environmental psychology, a study of how the physical environment influences human behavior and emotion, has repeatedly been demonstrated to have been proven many times that our environment is not just a setting for our lives. They impact our mood, thinking, stress, and even our immune system.

Numerous studies, including one performed at the University of Exeter and another at Harvard Medical School, show that people who feel more in control over how their environments look say they feel happier and more productive. Enriched environments with more visual stimulation decrease depression and anxiety in clinical and home environments, according to one study published in the British Journal of Occupational Therapy.

To sum up: Your space speaks to your nervous system at all times. The question is 'What is it saying?'.

What color are your walls, and what is the emotional effect they have on you?

Color is one of the most direct and powerful tools in the home decor toolbox that can positively affect your mental health, and one of the least understood. Colors don't just look different—they feel different, eliciting distinct emotional and physiological reactions.

Colors that calm:

Aqua and soft blue tones always go with a lowered heart rate and cortisol. They remind people of water, the sky, and open space, where people feel safe and free.

The calming green and sage tones bring us back to nature, which eventually makes us feel like we are at home, and the feeling of being at home is safety, which relaxes us. Indeed, the research on biophilic design suggests that green colors are calming and can help to create a sense of renewal.

Off-white and soft cream colors create an uncluttered visual space, which allows the mind to relax, rather than work.

Calming colors like lavender and dusty mauve are perfect for bedrooms, reading corners, and more to feel calm.

Colors that stimulate (use wisely):

Red and orange tend to be stimulating and raise energy levels, so they are good in creative studios and social spaces, but not in bedrooms or meditation corners.

Often, vibrant saturated yellows will add some cheer and produce visual fatigue in a significant portion.

Deep charcoals or blacks add sophistication and grounding, but can overpower a space if used too heavily, and give a space a low mood if used too often.

The applicational lesson to be learned from the mental health home design is to use brighter and lighter colors in your ‘high energy' rooms, like your kitchen, home office, or exercise area, and more muted and subdued colors in your ‘sanctuary' rooms, like your bedroom, reading spot, or bathroom. Just one accent wall in the right hue can change the mood in an entire room.

Read More: Color: How it changes the mood in art

Wall Art and Mood: How Art Affects Mood

Scientists, psychologists, and artists have long explored the power of art to affect mood in a uniform and convincing manner. The brain's emotional processing areas that are triggered by real-life experiences are triggered when viewing visual art. A peaceful scene in the painting truly engages the brain, and so we have a relaxation response. The images that are chaotic or violent do activate the stress hormones.

Art for mental health basically implies that the art you have on the wall is not decoration. It is an emotional input every day of the year.

Here are some calming wall art ideas that truly promote mental health:

Nature scenes: Landscapes, forests, seascapes, and botanical prints are ‘soft fascination,' a gentle and easy draw in on attention, where the mind can relax and recover from cognitive fatigue. This is why nature pictures are mounted in hospitals and health centers.

Abstract art with toned-down colors: Abstract art that uses less bright and more grayish hues and natural forms invites the mind to gently wander without being too analytical. This is a gentle, soothing walk, which is a type of mental rest.

Simple line art: Gorgeous clean lines, simple forms, one horizon line, a gentle curve, and some simple botanical sketches provide space for the eye to breathe. In today’s day and age, when there is too much information everywhere, simplicity through visuals is a gift to the mind.

The reward system in the brain is stimulated more by personal and meaningful art than by commercially attractive art, including a picture of where you love to be, artwork created by the person you love, or art that means something to you.

Meaning is an emotion balancer.

What NOT to include: Art that brings "noise" to the mind, or is just too intense or too upsetting—no matter how well made—will be low-grade stress on your daily walls. Utilize the challenging confrontational art in gallery settings where attention can be directed to it.

Featuring a Mental Reset Corner: Your Mental Oasis at Home

One of the most interesting, most accessible, and most effective home decor for mental health ideas ever conceived is that of a mental reset corner, which is a “special place” in your home that you put aside with just one purpose: to help you decompress, recenter, and recover.

This is not about having to build an extra room or spend money on renovating. You can do this very stylishly in a corner of a bedroom, on a window seat, or on a small side table at a specific armchair. It is not a matter of doing something; it's a matter of doing something for a purpose!

The elements of effective mental reset corners are:

A plush chair, floor cushion, or small sofa piece can remind your body, "This is a resting place." This is not comfort for comfort's sake but for the only reason that it's the only way to feel relaxed.

Art improves emotional processing. Here are some ideas for your art for the mental health corner:

• Known artwork (1 or 2 pieces of artwork at eye level – from sitting position). Choose prints from nature, abstract prints that are soft, or self-portraits.

• Do not expose to bright, hot light, especially overhead fluorescents. A small lamp with a warm bulb (color temperature 2700-3000K) can provide just the right level of soft light to help your nervous system relax.

• A plant, a small bowl of stones, and a dried flower vase. The more natural the person is to something, the closer the house is to being more stress-reducing. It's the most fundamental and simplest implementation of biophilic design.

• An item that is used in a small ritual—a journal, a candle, a favorite cup, etc. You can also go with crystals, aromatherapy, or sound. RITUAL is a means of psychological safety. Over time, your mind will associate your reset area in your room with being regulated and calm, and you'll get calmer quicker every time.

Remove the cell phone, or at least flip it over so the screen is down. A reset corner is a place where there are no screens.

Discover more: Transformative Power of Art - How Creativity Changes the World!

Design for your mind: Putting it all together

It's not necessary to refit a whole house to experience the mental health advantages of a more deliberate setting. Start small. Select one room (usually your bedroom or the most restful room in your house) and use only two or three of the above principles.

Paint an accent wall in a neutral sage or light-blue color. Switch out one of the wall art patterns that's full of chaos with a soothing nature scene. Choose a corner and place a comfortable chair, a warm lamp, and a plant in it. These are not big gestures, but rather, they are important gestures to your nervous system.

The foundation of Art for Mental Health and Mental Health Home Design is so simple yet so profound—we are not separate from our environments. We are always in silent dialogue with the environment that we live in. The spaces are designed with the intention of improving emotional life, intentionally with color, art, light, and quiet corners to retreat to—in the most practical sense of the word.

You can't fix everything with your home. But your home can, however, keep you calm for a longer duration with art on its side. It can make all the difference in the world at times.

Modifications to your house can make an excellent difference in your everyday psychological health. If mental health problems are severe, please also reach out to an appropriately trained mental health worker.