Rearranging your living space is one of the most beneficial things we can do in our home – for our own well-being as well as for practical reasons.
Psychologists have often been surprised by how often people report that rearranging their rooms makes them feel happier, but it’s not actually that strange. As humans, we instinctually get pleasure from leaving our mark on our environment, and when we don’t renew and refresh that environment we can feel depressed and stagnant.
Rearranging can also reveal fascinating new things about the spaces we live in and the furniture and ornaments we fill them with. Some rearrangements don’t work, of course but others will make you wonder why you never thought of them earlier.
The most refreshing thing about rearranging your home is the way that it manages to give a brand new aspect to your interior while retaining the old comfortable familiarity that you love. It’s like seeing an old friend in a stunning new outfit, or even looking at your new haircut in a mirror and realising that you love it.
The interesting thing is that, in many cases, you’ll never discover how good or bad a change is until you actually try it out. In that way, we’re trying to live better – more comfortably, more practically and more beautifully – every day.
Delight of the New
If you’re investing in a new ornament, artwork or item of furniture; then it’s a great idea to rearrange your room before installing it.
That way you’ll get the full feeling of exciting, fresh newness, with the additional oomph provided by your new item. It’s far more effective than just plonking that centrepiece time in your old layout and expecting it to transform everything on its own.
Shift It Round
Every room rearrangement starts with an idea. It may not be a plan exactly, but once we’ve decided to put something in another place, we seem to want to carry on.
If you have a fairly lightly furnished room, with items that are light and portable, then you can experiment however you like. Other rooms will need a bit more work to rearrange, and in some cases rearranging is a serious project – kitchens, for example.
In fact, it’s worth thinking about kitchens when you rearrange any other room, because they represent many of the factors you’ll need to take into account.
Every room needs to allow you to do what you do with the minimum of fuss, and efficiency is important in that. It applies to the distance between furniture items; the “paths” that people take when walking through the room; the light in the room and the amount of stuff that you actually have in the first place.
But just as importantly you need to think of aesthetic aspects such as balance, flow, harmony and colour. These are what will shape your psychological response to the room.
For example, you may want to balance a minimal style room with elements of feng shui, or integrate old, much-loved ornaments into a new colour scheme. It’ll take time, it’ll take planning but most of all it’ll take the nerve to try, fail and try again.
