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A few years ago, life circumstances served as an invitation, so to speak, to create more peace, relaxation, self-compassion and love, and to generally reduce the intensity of my increasingly stressful lifestyle. I experienced a convergence of events that left me with a question: was I being called to change? Then, as the pandemic became a reality, I was moved to a further life review when a combination of health issues grew and quickly moved to the forefront of my awareness, driving me to slow my life down to a halt.
In this slowdown, a question and with it a desire, began to emerge – how can I take what I love doing - creating beautiful spaces - and use it as an opportunity to generate even deeper, long-lasting connections to my clients? How can I be of the ultimate service to them? With this simple question swirling around in my head, I began to have interesting experiences flow into my life - a podcast talking about design that connects people with nature and one of my daughter’s growing passion for sustainability - the combination of which led me to books, articles and research I have been devouring, since. At this point, I was introduced to the concept of biophilic design. This emerging field of interior design began to move to the forefront of my mind and heart.
Much research is coming out on the myriad of health benefits that bringing nature into our indoor environments gives. It is well known and studied now, for example, that surgical patients who have a window looking out to trees from their hospital room require less medication for pain and anxiety and spend fewer nights in the hospital, healing faster, than patients who do not have access to landscape views from their rooms. I was astounded by these findings when first learning about them and still am today! They draw a direct connection between healing and exposure to nature.
More and more research is proving that direct and indirect exposure to nature can positively improve our health on physiological, mental and emotional levels. So why have we not made it an absolute priority to design our living environments around these findings when we spend most of our lives in our homes? That is exactly what Dayhouse Studio intends to do! Our aim is to create sustainable interior design and products using natural materials, elements and processes that have been proven to enhance one’s physical and mental health using the latest in scientific-peer-reviewed-research.
What exactly is biophilic design?
Biophilic design is achieved when a positive and mutually beneficial exchange is made between a person and the natural environment. Specifically, biophilic design brings natural materials and design elements into indoor spaces that simulate processes and systems found in nature. Simply bringing living plants into your home environment – an easily achievable element of biophilic design - has been proven to reduce a person’s heart rate and blood pressure, alone.
The intent is to elicit, through direct and indirect associations with natural elements, a comparable physical and emotional response as one receives from a firsthand experience with nature – a walk in the park or a swim in the ocean. The benefits produced from both the outdoors and a biophilically designed space include increasing relaxation and stress-relief, lessening chronic pain and depression, improving cognitive functioning and creativity, expediting healing, increasing positive emotions, and reducing fatigue, anger, and sadness (e.g. Health Prom Int, vol.30, 2014).
Here at Dayhouse Studio we like to call our health-focused design process - Dwell Well – and are now helping clients bring that connection to nature into their home, enhancing an innate tendency towards harmony, balance and healing. Dayhouse Dwell Well is so excited to begin this new journey with you. We look forward to providing products and services that will merge award-winning design aesthetic with elements proven to enhance health and happiness!
Dwell Well, with Dayhouse Studio.