Month: February 2022

Create a Zen Space for the Home and Office

Prioritising wellness can enhance your physical and mental well-being, which is why it’s well worth incorporating a zen space into your home and office. By practising healthy habits on a daily basis, you can optimise every area of your life, manage stress more effectively and enjoy your surroundings more.

With the right environment, incorporating these healthy habits into your day-to-day routine becomes second nature and makes it much easier to integrate wellness into your lifestyle. To get started, take a look at these six tips for creating a zen space and maximising wellness:

1. Choose a Designated Space

If you want to create a wellness area at home, the first step is to choose a designated space. Perhaps you have a spare room that you want to transform into a zen space or maybe you’re converting a basement into a wellbeing zone. If so, you’ll have free rein to design a wellness room that meets your needs perfectly.

However, don’t be discouraged if you’re limited on space. With savvy interior design, you can integrate a zen space into an existing room. If you have an open plan living area, for example, you can add a wellness zone into the space or even safeguard a zen space in your home office or bedroom.

2. Consider the Purpose of the Space

Firstly, consider what you want to achieve and gain from your zen space. If you’re a yoga aficionado, having enough space to practise your asanas might be a top priority. For fans of mindfulness or meditation, a quiet space that allows you to embrace the present moment may be advantageous.

There are many ways to promote wellness, so avoid being too rigid when identifying the purpose of your zen space. Instead, make sure the space offers flexibility so that you can incorporate different wellness strategies into your routine.

If you’re adding a zen space into an existing room, you’ll need to consider the multi-purpose functionality of the space too. Trying to incorporate a wellness zone into an entertainment area could be tricky if you’re sharing your home with kids or teens, for example. Instead, choose an existing space that lends itself to quiet reflection, rather than bustling family life. A dining room or bedroom may be easier to align with a zen space than a busy kitchen or den, for example.

3. Choose a Calming Colour Palette

Colour psychology is a helpful way to plan a colour palette, particularly when you want a particular space to aid in relaxation and stress management. While many people assume that painting a zen space stark white is the way to go, this isn’t always the case. White can be cold and uninviting, so if you do want to embrace simple white décor, choose a shade that adds some warmth to the space.

Alternatively, use colour to emphasise the tranquil nature of the space. Green represents nature, for example, and can help you to reconnect with the great outdoors, while earth tones, like brown, tan, and terracotta can be fantastic for relaxation and grounding. For calming and anxiety release, cool blues are an excellent choice, while yellows will elevate your mood and add a sense of optimism to the space.

4. Design Flexible Lighting

Lighting is an important element in any space but it’s particularly relevant when you’re creating a zen space. Ideally, a wellness zone should benefit from as much natural light as possible. Not only does natural light boost your mood, but it can also enhance your physical health, improve circadian rhythms, and promote relaxation. If possible, choose to create your zen space in a location that will allow you to embrace natural light or use natural light simulators to create the same effect.

When it comes to lighting, flexibility really is key to successful interior design. You won’t always want to be bathed in sunlight; sometimes you’ll feel more relaxed when you’re ensconced in soft, warm lighting. If you do have plenty of windows or trifold doors in your zen space, add blackout blinds to give yourself maximum control over the environment. Similarly, adding lamps and wall lights to the space will allow you to create bespoke lighting arrangements and set the tone depending on your mood.

5. Add Comfortable Flooring

Many wellness habits involving sitting or lying on the floor, so it’s vital that you choose comfortable flooring for your wellness zone! If you’re practising yoga, for example, a supportive but comfortable flow will aid your posture, reduce the risk of injuries, and prevent discomfort. If you’ve integrated a wellness zone into an exercise space, then rubber floor tiles could be the ideal option. Alternatively, meditation and relaxation spaces can be enhanced with area rugs, which will add warmth to the room and complement your colour palette.

6. Choose Natural Materials

Where possible, use natural materials to create and adorn your zen space. From VOC-free paints and sustainable wallpaper to hand-made decorative accessories and organic fabrics; surrounding yourself with natural materials can have a remarkable effect on your mind and your mood.

When you use natural materials, you can ensure that everything in your zen space is non-toxic, which obviously has a positive impact on your physical well-being. However, many people maintain that natural materials have a profound effect on your emotional health too. Giving you another opportunity to re-connect with nature and surround yourself with items that represent the earth, using natural materials helps to create a zen space that nurtures and revitalises you.

Designing a Bespoke Wellness Zone

We live in a busy world that’s filled with stress and anxiety, which is why it’s essential to have a space that’s dedicated to tranquillity, calm, and revitalisation. When you design a bespoke wellness zone, you’re giving yourself permission to embrace a lifestyle that will elevate your well-being and give you the grounding you need to achieve a greater sense of happiness. And, with these six top tips, you’ve got everything you need to start designing your very own wellness zone and zen space.

by Shalini Misra

How to Use Living Walls in Interior Design

Incorporating nature into your interior design can elevate any space and add a sense of wellness to any environment. While many people choose to add plants and natural materials to their interiors in a bid to embrace nature, a living wall really is the ultimate way to ‘bring the outside in’ and inject nature into your surroundings.

What Is a Living Wall?

Sometimes known as ‘green walls’ or ‘eco walls’, a living wall is a wall that is literally made up of plants. You might be familiar with green-covered walls, such as exterior walls that are coated with ivy or climbing plants, but living walls are something different entirely. These green walls are made up of plants, which grow vertically and obtain nutrients from the structure of the wall itself.

Growth is often facilitated by a hydroponic system, which allows plants to access water and nutrients without the need for soil. This carefully cultivated arrangement can then be grown with precision to ensure the living wall remains easy to maintain and pleasing to the eye.

What Are the Benefits of Living Walls?

Eco walls have a variety of practical and aesthetic benefits, including:

Biophilic Design

This type of interior design relies on the direct and indirect use of nature to connect occupants to the natural world. Biophilic design may include living walls for greenery, skylights to maximise natural light and interior fountains to add the presence of water, for example.

As you can imagine, any type of interior design that values nature will celebrate living walls and everything they offer. If you want to use biophilic design to enhance your surroundings, a living wall is one of the best ways to achieve your goals.

Mood Enhancing

One of the reasons biophilic design is so popular is because of the positive impact it can have on emotional health. Many people maintain that reconnecting with nature boosts your mood and promotes happiness. Of course, modern life doesn’t always permit us to spend as much time outdoors as we might like, so finding ways to incorporate nature into interior design is essential.

With an expanse of greenery incorporated into your interior via living, green walls, you can create a space that mimics the outdoors and allows you to embrace nature and the life affirming impact it has.

Reduce Noise Levels

Plants naturally dampen noise, which means they are an excellent way of minimising noise leakage in interior space. While soundproofing is an artificial way of dampening and restricting noise, a living wall can enable you to achieve the same goal while using natural materials.

Whether you’re looking for ways to retain noise in a residential home or workplace, a living wall can enable you to do this without relying on industrial or artificial features.

Improve Air Quality

The air we breathe has a tremendous impact on our health but, unfortunately, we spend a significant amount of time indoors or surrounded by pollution. Whether you’re fed up of breathing stale air in an office environment or you dream of getting away from the smog in towns and cities, a living wall can give you the air quality you deserve.

Plants remove carbon dioxide and pollutants from the environment, replacing them with healthy, oxygen-rich air. In indoor environments, where building materials can increase the amount of toxins in the air, a living wall can help to mitigate the damage this does and provide you with access to better air quality.

Design Aesthetic

Living walls can feature as much texture and colour as you like, which makes them a fantastic choice for interior design. From solid greens to blooms bursting with primary colours, an eco-wall can be as bright or as subtle as you choose.

However, it isn’t only the range of colour that makes living walls an outstanding design choice. The numerous textures that are present in living walls add visual interest to the space and elevate your interior design.

Energy Saving

Many people are surprised to learn that living walls can actually reduce energy consumption and make buildings more sustainable. The surfaces of plants don’t store up energy from the sun in the same way that other materials do, such as concreate or brick. Furthermore, the process of evapotranspiration uses transpiration from the plants’ surfaces and returns the moisture to the atmosphere, effectively cooling the environment, but in colder temperatures, a living wall has an insulating effect and helps to retain heat within the building.

As a result, you can reduce the energy consumption of a building (and associated energy costs) simply by integrating living walls into its design.

Where to Use Living Walls

Living walls can be a fantastic addition to both home and work environments. From boosting staff morale in an office environment to creating an indoor courtyard within your home, there are endless possibilities when it comes to using green walls to elevate a space.

Like any design concept, you will want to think carefully about which parts of the building can benefit most from a living wall and what size an eco-wall should be.

In larger spaces, like open plan living areas or reception areas, a vast expanse of greenery can be an eye-catching feature, while smaller rooms, such as entertainment zones or wellness spaces, may benefit from a more compact eco-wall.

With the flexibility to accommodate virtually any space, a living wall can be added to almost any room or environment, which makes it a great way to enhance your interior design.

How Important Are Walls in Interior Design?

Many people assume that paint or wallpaper are the only options when it comes to decorating walls, but this isn’t the case. As a core feature of any interior room, the walls have a considerable impact on the overall design, so don’t restrict your choices. From living walls to textured concrete, gypsum plaster, glass mosaic and mirror finishes, there are endless ways to style and design walls that will elevate your interior.

by Shalini Misra