A home should be a personal sanctuary, a place of positiveness, and a place where we can retreat back to after a long day of work. Home should also be a place where we can charge all your creative juices (or whatever it is that makes you feel whole, be it cooking, writing, reading, exercising or unwinding). This means that unnecessary clutter and unnecessary furnishing should be kept at a minimum so you can focus more on what you enjoy.
Here are 10 tips to help you have a relaxing and zen home that is truly yours, so you do not need a staycation, ever again!
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Mood lighting
Lighting should not be placed as an afterthought as it can play a huge role in the whole ambience of your home. Mood lighting is the ability to create an atmosphere within an area using lighting. It is often softer lighting that enhances that space and is often used to complement the requirement of a room.There are various ways you can incorporate mood lighting into your home to enhance the cosy vibe. Some examples of how you can incorporate mood lighting are Cove lighting, led strip lights placed under shelves, dimmed lighting, etc.
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Place grounding elements around the house
A way that you can connect with nature from the comfort of your home is to incorporate elements of nature such as stones, wood, marble, granite, the list goes on. To prevent unnecessary stuff in your home, you can add functional items that have some natural or grounding element incorporated in their design. Here are some of my favourite items that have some elements of nature in them:
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Clean design throughout the home
Loose pieces of furniture and household items here and there may look insta-worthy but they can be quite a hassle to clean. I personally would very much prefer my home to be a place that is mainly for relaxation. Hence, I do not want to keep cleaning and dusting my home every other hour when I’m home. Therefore, if you are like me, you will want to minimise the amount of stuff (baskets, rugs, souvenirs, little trinkets, books, the list goes on) lying around, so you can spend less time cleaning and more time relaxing.
With many of us continuing to work from home, things can also get cluttered fast. Not only does maintaining a clutter-free environment minimise dust and dirt built-up, it can also help to declutter our mind, as our minds are also able to reflect the clear state of our environment.-
Always declutter your table tops
It can get really easy to pile up things onto your table top, especially if you are a naturally messy person (like me). Remove all the clutter from your table tops to instantly feel much neater. If you are a naturally messy person, minimise the amount of papers you own, including books. Only keep those books you really really love! This will help to minimise the amount of loose items you have lying around.
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Reduce amount of loose items
To add on to point 4, every item in your home should have its own little home. This helps to minimise the amount of stuff you have lying around. You should also strive to only keep items you absolutely love and get rid of things you do not like, yes, including gifts from others. As for items that have sentimental value attached to them, you can either keep them in a box or just take a photo of them and keep the photos in a digital album (e.g. a private instagram page or a private photo album).
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Design with intention
There is a certain satisfying feeling I get when I know that ample thought has been put into elements in my home, be it the furniture, the flooring, the electronics, the storage boxes et cetera. When choosing your furniture (or really any item in your home), go for items that have some thought put into them. A well designed home need not be expensive too. An intricate design can mean floor tiles that have been carefully matched with the skirting tiles, or chairs that are of a comfortable sitting height when matched with their respective table, Even seemingly minor things like having the same type of metal tone used for all the metal elements throughout your home can help bring the design to the next level.
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Place in items that pull the whole place together
A home looks complete when everything in it looks really put together. A way to do this (in addition to having the same type of metal throughout the whole house (as mentioned in point 5) is to incorporate the same texture or colour into different items. E.g. your fan and your coffee table can be of the same colour/texture, whereas your sofa and perhaps 1 or 2 vases can be of another colour tone. Using the same colours or textures in various parts of your home can bring a sense of unity and calmness to your whole space.
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Use Earthy tones
Use earthy-tone colours such as grey, cream, woods, browns, greens for your walls and furniture to create a luxurious yet zen base palette for your home. A plus point about earthy-tones is that they tend to be quite neutral and hence, can act as a great base palette for your home. You can enhance the colour scheme by adding accents for pieces like pillows or rugs, to add some extra personality to your home. You can also easily change up the look of your home, simply by changing the cushion covers or rug designs.
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Textured finishes
There’s something about textures that really make a place feel much more comforting. I personally LOVE textures in my home. Textures add warmth and give a home more character, and can also give a more lived-in look to the home. Textures can come in the form of wood grain patterns, linens, velvet, textured paint, brass, leather, marble. I enjoy mixing and matching various types of textures in my home and I highly recommend that you do so too!
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Have Dedicated spaces for work and play
Nowadays, working from home is increasingly becoming the norm. To be as productive as possible for work, you will need a space at home to attend to work matters. At home, it can be easy to get distracted and if you are not careful, eventually you may not be able to differentiate between work and play. To reduce the chances of not being able to differentiate between work and play time, it is helpful to have a dedicated area, preferably a proper desk, that is just for work.
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Reduce items that attract dust
Do you sometimes wake up sneezing non-stop or you constantly find layers of dust on your skirting, ledge, shelves etc, even though you just cleaned these areas last weekend? There may be some factors in your home that are making your home even more dusty than it should be.
Good news is that you can take steps to reduce the dust in your home, so you do not need to constantly spend all your time and energy getting rid of the dust in your house. Find out more about how you can take steps to reduce the dust in your home.
I hope that this article has been useful in helping you with having a more zen and relaxing home. If you have anything else that you would like to add on to this list, feel free to comment below!
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