I’m a renter. I love my large apartment with big windows, interior arches and white walls. But I don’t love the kitchen. Not only do I not love the kitchen, I actually have a psychological aversion to the kitchen — which means breakfast dishes pile up and I frequently order in. Why? The building owners decided to keep the original counter tiles which are red, mustard yellow and forest green. They then decided to match the linoleum squares to the tiles (yes, the floor is a paler version of each color). And then they decided to paint the cabinet frames yellow and the cabinet doors pink. The colors are disharmonious and the cacophony of color makes me uncomfortable and motivates me to want to avoid the room.

Architects and interior designers agree that space has a very real impact on how we feel. Neuroscientists and psychologists are not far behind with new research that discusses the way aesthetics affect our decisions, emotional responses and the way we feel about ourselves. New fields such as embodied cognition, which looks specifically at the role the environment plays in developing cognitive capacity, and neuroaesthetics, which examines the biological role of aesthetic experiences, have found homes in research institutes around the world. We now know that the way light enters a room, the colors we choose for our floors and walls, and even the shape and texture of our furniture and home accessories all work together to influence how we feel and how we perform, both consciously and subconsciously.

Alain de Botton offers a comparison most of us can relate to in The Architecture of Happiness. De Botton contrasts the Westminster Cathedral in London to a McDonalds right up the street. He observes that walking into the McDonalds you immediately feel “anxious” and hurried—the harsh lighting; the colors; the hard, plastic furniture—compared to walking into the cathedral where you immediately feel solemn and reverent. In the cathedral you whisper, there is no jostling of friends. You walk slowly. Even for secularists, like myself, these feelings are unavoidable. However, de Botton reminds us that both spaces contain the same core architectural elements: doors, windows, ceilings, and furniture on which to sit.

To read the full article, click here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-kendall/how-to-be-happy_b_650578.html