Getting Better

Hello my fancy friends! Thank you so much for tuning in today. I am broadcasting to you from beautiful Brooklyn, New York; which is home to some of the most amazing interiors in the world, in my opinion. I get so much inspiration just from walking around my neighborhood or taking a trip to another borough. There’s always something new opening, whether it’s an art exhibit or a restaurant, there’s so much to see, and I think that is true for most places in the world. Although it might not be art galleries and hot night spots, but anytime you're out and about in your neck of the wood, you can always look for inspiration in the spaces you visit - whether it's being out in nature, a friend’s home, or even the inside a store that you love. One type of place that is also a gold mine of great design ideas, although it may not be the first place that comes to mind, is a newly built or renovated hospital.  I want to acknowledge even that word “hospital” can bring up different emotions, memories, and thoughts; all totally valid. But behind the scenes, designers, researchers and healthcare professionals are working tirelessly to improve these spaces and evolve them away from the sterile, unwelcoming reputation they’ve created for themselves, and steer them towards centers of healing and care. The broader area of New York City is home to many world class medical facilities. I have had the pleasure of working on a few of these healthcare focused projects, and let me tell you, they are heavily based in research and evaluation of different interior strategies to create a healthy environment. So, I wanted to share some of the big ideas to set up a healing space. Now this could be if you are supporting a loved one who is ill or even if you just want your home to feel like a good-for-you space. We could all use a little healing and there are a handful of tricks that help our homes make us feel at ease.

But first, let’s talk about the color of the week. In the northern hemisphere, we are right on the edge of spring,  going into summer. If you're a plant lover like me, you know that means to be on the lookout for a glorious display of rhododendrons all around us. There are over 1000 different species of rhododendrons and while most of them are shrub-sized plants, some grow to be towering trees - the record is over 100 feet tall. They are very prevalent in North America, even serving as the state flower of West Virginia due to their abundance in the Appalachian mountains. While these flowers can come in a wide variety of colors, from white to orange, and the most color common color is a medium pink-toned lavender. This shade is captured with our good old color matching system Pantone 2562. This beautifully vibrant hue can add a lot of zest to a room and you only need a little pinch. Just like in nature, it's important to use it sparingly. When the rhododendron plant blooms, the flowers are prominent and take up their fair share of visual space. However, we only see this poppy color for a very short period of time, which helps keep it fresh. It's a seasonal treat. To incorporate this color into your home, look for it in prints and patterns with other colors to balance it out. Whether that be a wallpaper pattern or a cool jacquard upholstery. You can also mix this into your space with accessories like pottery and artwork. This standout color needs to be supported with lots of very grounding earth tones from khaki to a deep hunter green, and even a few touches of sky blue. Exactly what you would see when catching this plant in the wild. Nature has already done the work for us in that department.

Before we dive in, please note that I am not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, this is not medical advise, this is simply an overview of common practices used by many interior designers to support health and healing, based on the research we have at this time. I’ve added several links in the show notes for sources and studies if you are further reading type of person.

One of the ways you can bring an element of healing into your home that has been studied multiple times, not just for a healthy environment, but for things like increasing productivity and overall reported levels of happiness; is bringing in sunlight. Now the amount of sunlight that your home gets is somewhat fixed, depending on the size and location of windows that you have. Unless of course you are renovating. But if you're setting up a space for someone to heal, let this be a factor in what room you choose. The most direct and dynamic sunlight comes from windows that face the direction of South, and softer ,more consistent sunlight comes from the North. While either direction can work, each has its own unique quality of light. Rooms with south facing light connect more directly to the sun as it moves through the sky during the day so you'll see sun beams that dance around the room at different hours. This is great for healing, because it brings in the brightest light, and naturally connects the person healing to their circadian rhythm, which can improve sleep and mood. Whereas northern light is more indirect and soft. If any of your windows face directly East or West, these will bring in a lot of light in the morning to the East and in the evening for the West, but they’ll have a more indirect light throughout the majority of the day. But any window will help, especially when it has a great view. Great views don't have to be million dollar panoramas, what you want to look for are things like open sky, plant life, and any other natural curiosity that you have available to you. That may be a body of water or even a little garden fountain. Trees in particular, are really great because not only are they themselves green life and pleasant to look at, but they also host animal life like birds and squirrels which can be very relaxing to watch, and a nice break from our phones.

There have been so many studies done on the importance of sunlight in our homes and interior spaces, plus there are even laws around it. Here in New York City, and many other places, it's actually illegal to label a space as a bedroom if it doesn't have a window to the outside. So if a home has a room that doesn't have windows, that is either an office, or a study or a storage room or a bonus room. But it can't be a bedroom. I lived in a very tiny bedroom once that did have a window but the window only looked out onto what is referred to as a lightwell. This is a space in between two tall buildings that lets sunlight down from the sky, however the view is just another building’s window, that's about four feet away. This was fine at first but after I had been there for about six months, I started to get a feeling of claustrophobia and I didn't feel very connected to the outside world. It was great for sleeping at night because it kept the room very quiet but if I ever spent time in my room during the day, it was not the most enjoyable experience. Having a view outside no matter how modest, is essential to our well-being as humans.

The second consideration is air. The quality of the air we breathe is important in every scenario, so it's especially important when someone is trying to heal in anyway. The most important factor in creating good indoor air quality is to create a space with proper ventilation. Refreshing the air in your home can help remove irritants like dust, dander, and odors. Now, when a design team is creating a space from scratch, this will include a robust ventilation and mechanical system, but in your home, it can be as simple as utilizing operable windows, where possible.  At the most lo-fi level, This may require adding screens to windows to prevent any unwanted creatures from sneaking inside, or any creatures from escaping your home. There's also the tried and true method of creating a cross-breeze. So rather then opening up a single window, utilize multiple windows in different rooms to allow air to flow through the entire space. This does not need to happen at all hours of the day, and shouldn’t work against the temperature control in your space, so you can open the windows during the more comfortable hours of the day.  Leveling up from there, consider adding a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter to your ventilation system or adding a freestanding air filter. These can be really great for reducing indoor dust allergies, and are also very helpful if you’ve got pets. 

Next, when you're thinking about adding things to the space, keep in mind it's very important to avoid adding volatile organic compounds into the air. These are otherwise known as VOC’s and you will find them in materials or items that have that plasticky ,new car smell, and regardless of whether or not you enjoy that smell, there have been significant studies that show these compounds are in fact not good for us to inhale. So avoiding anything that has vinyl in it and some plastics. This includes items like laminate flooring, peel and stick wallpaper, dyes in textiles, oil-based paints, certain adhesives and glues used for flooring or furniture. If you're not sure if an item that you want to add to your home will have VOCs, starting with a natural fiber or material is a good strategy - cotton, linen, jute, and hemp are often trusted fibers; but it’s worth speaking to the manufacturer about the product you have in mind, because there are all sorts of coatings and backings that can be added to these natural materials that do affect the air quality. When it comes to flooring, look for carpets labelled Low or No VOC like the ones from Interface Flor, natural materials like linoleum or bamboo, and stay away from heavy duty sealants. Most large paint companies have Low and No VOC formulas, for instance Sherwin Williams Eco Select. It’s  important to note that this is a base formula that is available in all of Sherwin Williams colors, you just have to make sure you are buying that specific base. A few brands to check out for non toxic bedding are Pact, Avocado, and Parachute. And of course for furniture, there are a lot of brands that have included a handful of low VOC and nontoxic items, but another great option is thrifted and vintage furniture. These pieces, in addition to being higher quality, have often already shed any VOC’s in a process called off-gassing, so as long as they haven’t been recently refreshed with a chemical sealant, they should be very safe to use. In the instances of upholstered items, sometimes older pieces have flame retardants and stain protectors that are not great for the air in your home. This is another great reason to have a vintage piece reupholstered in something like a cotton or linen. 

Another significant factor that you’ll want to be mindful about is noise control. There is a term referred to as noise pollution and this can happen in urban environments but it can also happen in busy homes. If possible you want to select a room that is away from any main roads, noisy neighbors, schools, and even active rooms in the home like the kitchen and dining room. And do invest, no matter what, in a noise canceling device. I've talked about this a lot on this podcast, and they really can be so incredibly helpful. I remember staying at a friend’s house out in the Hamptons one time, lucky me - and the house was right along the Long Island Railroad tracks. My friend was super considerate about the noise from the train, especially at nighttime. So they had these great noise cancelers that were really just a plugin puck. It's something you can have on a bedside table, or you can also install it on a ceiling, and it just creates a noise similar to the movement of air. This can be so helpful in blocking out unwanted sounds without necessarily adding sounds of your own on top, like music or nature sounds. Although those can be really enjoyable to depending on the mood.

There's a lot of discourse around the best color schemes to use in spaces for healing, and I do think that color plays a role in our serotonin production, but I don't think there's one catchall system that will be simple to implement for healing. I've worked with the hospital clients who swear by using green everywhere all the time, and then I've worked with hospital clients who refuse to use green because it reminds them of a certain type of human waste. That's really all dependent on your perspective and probably also on the exact shade of green, but the one thing I can say about color is that if you're dealing with someone who may be experiencing any level of disorientation, whether it's from being on a medication, or their condition will cause disorientation - using colors that have a large difference between them, or what we like to call contrast, is helpful in making a space easy to navigate, even with certain types of visual impairments. So what this looks like, is if you have a white wall you would have a darker floor so there's a really clear distinction between the brightness of the wall and the brightness of the floor. Additionally, when it comes to things like doors, if there is a single door that leads out of the room, this should have a distinct color difference from the wall, and also different from any closet doors or windows that might be mistaken for the door out. This is what interior designers referred to as “wayfinding”, where the design is intentional in aiding the navigation of the room, for someone who might not be familiar or disoriented in anyway, for any reason.

I wanted to end with a little mythbusting. One thing that I, as a designer, hear often about is anti-microbial surfaces. You will see this advertised on all kinds of products from furniture to countertops and it's implied, although carefully never actually stated, that an anti-microbial surface will disinfect itself, maybe even disinfect you when you touch it, and this is simply not true. The reality of any item that has an anti-microbial coating, is that the item itself is protected from potential discoloration and wear that happens when we interact with that item or surface. So even though an anti-microbial coating is not necessarily a bad thing, although they don't always have the best environmental impacts, it is not a healthy protection barrier for us as humans. The only material that has any evidence to actually disinfect itself is copper. So occasionally, you will see copper door knobs in hospitals, but the evidence on this is not convincing enough to cover the premium cost that comes with a copper door knob in most cases. But ultimately no one material or surface treatment is going to beat frequent cleanings and good hygiene.

I hope you're able to take some of these tips and implement them into your home, whether you're just having a sick day or your loved one is taking some more time to recover and get healthy. Until next time, take great care of yourself and I will talk to you in the next episode.