A home is many things to many different people. For one thing, it’s generally agreed upon that a home should be a comfortable place — somewhere we can feel at ease, and lay our heads to rest, following a long and exhausting day in the office. To that end, we frequently fill our homes with plush sofas, warm, furry carpets, and invest in the latest comfort-giving appliances and additions, such as underfloor heating, large TVs, and all the rest.
For the entrepreneur who gets his work done from a home office, home is, well, the workplace, and the layout of the home will tend to be adjusted accordingly. In these cases, there’ll typically be a clear divide between “office space” and “home space”, with the office featuring a desk, chair, filing cabinets, and whatever else may be necessary for the work to get done properly.
So we hear about making a home more comfortable, or making a home more work-friendly, on a fairly regular basis. What we don’t tend to hear about so often, however, is making a home a cooler place to be.
So, for the sake of providing a bit of balance, here are some tips for making your home a cooler place to be, and keep in mind, “cooler” in this context has nothing to do with temperature.
Add more (interesting) photos to your decor
Photos are often an underutilised resource when it comes to making out homes as interesting, cool, and pleasurable to be in as possible.
The rise of camera phones, and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram — not to mention the development of digital photography in general — has resulted in photography becoming a bigger and more important part of the lives of ordinary people than at any other point in history.
But for most of us, this newfound passion for amateur photography stays firmly rooted in the internet, as our online profiles and photo albums expand to hold thousands of photos collected over the years, but our homes still feature no more than the occasional family picture on the mantelpiece.
Suffice to say; photography is a pretty underused resource in home decor. Buck that trend, buy yourself some stylish photo frames, and hang your most exciting action shots up on the walls. Why not?
And why stop there? You could consider taking a leaf out of the book of University students all over the world and setting up photo-collages on pinboards on the doors of walls of your home, featuring some of your most memorable moments over the last year, or longer, of your life
Photos are a deeply evocative form of media; they allow you to anchor yourself to a particular memory and to set off those memories on replay whenever you see the photo in question. Putting a bunch of your coolest photos up in your home can help to set the associations you have with your home to “full power” at all times, and may radically change the mood of the home overall.
Boost your energy with some new appliance and furniture health trends
One reason why people sometimes have “bad chemistry” with their homes as a whole, is that they’re caught in a loop of having chronically low energy, which in turn contributes to chronically low mood, and makes it difficult to enjoy the home as much as it should be enjoyed.
There are some lifestyle hacks which can have a tremendously positive impact here, ranging from getting more sleep, to getting more natural light exposure, and low-level exercise throughout the day. Improving your nutritional habits — while ensuring that you’re getting enough food to feel your best — is also a winning strategy.
There are, however, also various items you can buy for your home — appliances and pieces of furniture — that can have quite a dramatic impact on your energy levels and mood, from day to day. In fact, an entire industry — or set of related industries — has grown up around the idea of improving your health and vitality as a result of restructuring your personal environment.
One of the big recent innovations in this regard has been the standing desk. Following research which showed that sitting all day might have terrible health consequences, including earlier death from all causes, poorer circulation, a greater likelihood of experiencing type 2 diabetes, as well as an increased risk of atherosclerosis, the standing desk trend took off with a passion.
Today, many hip office environments offer the use of adjustable standing desks to their workers, meaning they can alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day, as the mood grabs them.
Other items that can help boost your vitality and make your home a more exciting place to be, include HEPA filters (to purify the air) and SAD, full spectrum light lamps, to combat winter blues.
Clear out the clutter and go for a particular interior design aesthetic
No one is ever impressed when they walk into a heavily cluttered home and are quickly forced to come to the conclusion that the person who lives there is a serial hoarder. It’s not a cool look, and it’s not a cool environment to live in, either.
Cluttered homes tend to be more filled with pollutants, such as mould spores and dust mites, which negatively impact health, and the mere fact of living in a cluttered home can cause negative psychological consequences, including chronic stress and anxiety.
By making a serious effort to declutter your home, and instead introduce a particular and intention interior design aesthetic, you move your home from being in the same subconscious category as a rubbish dump, to the same category as a work of art, or the interior of a sexy sports car.
Decide what kind of style would really make your home come alive for you, and then take the necessary steps to make your style dreams a reality, bit by bit. Maybe a futuristic, noir look, full of polished metal and overhead lighting is your thing. Or maybe a rustic look is what inspires you.
In any event, all cool homes have a particular vibe, that isn’t “pile of junk”.