“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.”
- Flora Whittemore

Your front door welcomes all to your home. This declarative statement of your house — the exclamation point of your home — needs to sing out your welcoming note.

First impressions are not just for guests. Generally, we do not receive as much company as we think we do. We lead such busy lives and simply do not entertain or visit friends often enough.

Decorating your home to impress others is not as important as decorating your home for your own pleasure. Create a welcoming and warm retreat in which you feel great joy just to arrive. Do you feel happy when you see your home in the distance? Does your first glimpse of home bring a smile to your face?

A problem with many new homes is that developers do not provide a separate walkway to your front door. To make yourself and your guests feel more welcome than a car, provide a separate front walkway from the street to the front door. Don’t make guests walk around cars and trip on driveway edges to navigate to the entrance.

Feeling Welcome

Flowers lining the walkway provide a warm reception. Cheerful flowers in loud colors near the entry tell the world that you care about your home. Extras like water fountains, fishponds, cooing peace doves, and scented vegetation make all feel gladly received.

Sing Out the Address

Proud address numbers are bold and beautiful. Avoid tacky peel and stick numbers. Brass numbers need to have screw holes in them, not pronged ends that eventually work loose. As in the past, gold-gilded numbers look elegant on glass doors. Gold-gilded vinyl transfer numbers look especially exquisite in transom windows.

Welcoming Accessories:

Wind chimes add pleasure to our sense of hearing.

Potted plants such as soft ferns (shun unfriendly spiked plants and thorns near the doorway).

Floral baskets with bright yellow and white flowers show up better at night.

A pair of rocking chairs, a double glider, or a porch swing invites neighbors to stop and chat.

A doormat that not only saves your floors but also looks welcoming!

What Color Should I Paint My Front Door?

Unless your front door is a beautiful wood, paint it a joyful color. Your entry door should be a different color than the rest of your house. Warm happy colors include the shades of red and yellow: burgundy, claret, rust, terra cotta, deep amber, and sunny yellow. Cool happy colors of green include apple, sage, and forest green.

After spending time and effort creating a wonderful entryway into your home, use it! Why enter from the garage or back door? Treat yourself as well as you treat your guests. Come home through your welcoming front door!

(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm

Tags: decorating home, design psychology, front door design, Jeanette Fisherdecorating home, design psychology, front door design, Jeanette Fisher

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In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the most basic aspects of Design Psychology, first asking a question, and then addressing the various concepts, in abbreviated form.

“I wish I had learned all this before we bought our first house 25 years ago, and before we had our children. Not only would our homes be more harmonious, but so would our lives together. It’s amazing to learn how colors, lighting, sounds, and patterns affect us so deeply.”
-Angela Pederson, Palm Desert, California

What are the basic fundamentals of Design Psychology?

• Lighting & our psychological responses to light
  Color & psychology
  Patterns & reactions
  Textures & the sense of touch
  Scale & human response
  Styles, themes & desirable effects
  Ethnic traditions & the importance of heritage
  Furniture & arrangement for human comfort
  Sounds & repercussions
  Scents & sentiments
  Embellishments & emotional undercurrents

How can Design Psychology help me?

It can help you:

Select from the mass confusion of home furnishings.
Decorate your home right the FIRST time.
Save time, effort, and money.
Find out which colors, patterns, furniture, and accessories support happy feelings.
Learn about lighting and color psychology, and the underlying emotional effects of your home’s design details.

Discover how Mother Nature can guide your home decorating, to create an environment that’s perfect for your emotional needs.

What Design Psychology ideas could I use to best create an environment that would support my emotions?

Lighting is the crucial design element for happiness.

Using Color Psychology without fear supports joyful living.

Happy warm colors need cooling balance, in order to maintain harmony.

Color, when used as a background, needs to flatter individuals.

All of your senses should be considered when creating your Overall Design Plan.

There you have it; Design Psychology in a nutshell. The concepts are unique and powerful, and can help you create a home that’s perfect for joyful living.

(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

Professor Jeanette Fisher, author of Doghouse to Dollhouse for Dollars, Joy to the Home, and other books teaches Real Estate Investing and Design Psychology. For more articles, tips, reports, newsletters, and sales flyer template, see http://www.doghousetodollhousefordollars.com/pages/5/index.htm

Tags: article, design psychology, interior design, Jeanette Fisher, Joy homearticle, design psychology, interior design, Jeanette Fisher, Joy home

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“Dr. Carl Sagan once wrote, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Although Dr. Sagan was commenting on the wonders to be found in the vastness of outer space, there are also incredible design possibilities just waiting to be discovered right in your own home. In fact, your home’s overall design represents a symphony, and the individual design details are the musical notes you use to compose the melody and harmony for the symphony of your living space.

Your home should always bolster feelings of happiness, serenity, and comfort, and once you’re aware of a few simple rules, composing a home symphony that supports positive emotions and encourages joyful living is easy.

Begin composing your symphony by choosing the color of your walls. All of your home’s colors should harmonize, both inside and out. Once you’ve chosen your exterior colors, bring subtle shades of those same colors inside, using them as accents throughout your home. Harmonize your colors with ones you see in the natural world surrounding your house. Use colors that blend with the lighting from the natural environment and support a feeling of serenity and cheerfulness.

Next, add carefully-crafted lighting, which is an important factor in all residential design. Well-designed lighting is both a science and an art, and when used in conjunction with color, sets the emotional atmosphere for the home. Too little light in a room can cause people to feel depressed, while rooms that are too bright can cause uneasy feelings.

Like the color of your walls, your lighting choices should also harmonize with the natural light that surrounds your home. The amount of light should vary, just as it does in nature, to give rooms a more natural feel and to evoke a note of harmony and peace.

The next movement in your symphony involves the textures you choose to employ throughout your home. Studies have shown that emotionally pleasing patterns based on nature encourage feelings of happiness and contentment. Undulating patterns, combined with gentle swags, lend an upbeat, natural feeling to a room, while rooms with no patterns feel boring because people are accustomed to the multitude of patterns displayed by Mother Nature.

Many other design details in your home also come into play when creating your home symphony, such as sounds, furnishings, and furniture arrangement. But regardless of which movement of your symphony you’re working on, always keep in mind that balance is the key. And just like the combined elements of a symphony, your home must have some sections that promote quiet and rest–remember, it’s the vacant spaces between the notes that make the music.

If you look at decorating your home as if you were creating a symphony, in all of its complexity and harmony, you’ll be able to make design decisions that are always in concert with your overall concept. If you continue to bear the complete work in mind, you’ll choose design elements that resonate in harmony with each other, and your home will make joyful music for all who enter.

(c) Copyright 2004, Jeanette J. Fisher. All rights reserved.

For more information about Jeanette’s “Joy to the Home” eNewsletter, see http://www.joytothehome.com/

For information on Design Psychology, visit http://www.designpsych.com/

Tags: home lighting, interior design psychology, Jeanette Fisherhome lighting, interior design psychology, Jeanette Fisher

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