Safety and functionality are essential in architecture and interior design to ensure the health, safety, and welfare (HSW) of building occupants, but they’re not the only factors to consider. The space must also foster the kinds of behavior owners want occupants to exhibit—whether that’s relaxation, productivity, or social interaction. Interior design psychology is key to succeeding in this area.
An interior’s layout and aesthetics have a considerable, if subconscious, effect on people’s feelings. Once you understand the relationship between psychology and design, you can use it to your advantage.
Light and Color
The psychology of space is most evident in an area’s lighting and color. A larger amount of natural light tends to produce a positive impact on occupants’ well-being. One study found that windows covering more than 40% of the wall led to the biggest gains in perceived happiness and decreases in perceived sadness.
Relatedly, varying color schemes incite differing emotions. Warm hues like reds and yellows often foster excitement, whereas cooler blues and greens lend an air of calm. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, but they will encourage different behaviors.
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Bright, warm paint and furniture throughout a space could drive fast actions, such as quicker sales. By contrast, a cooler color palette could help workers settle into a flow state or help customers relax.
Spatial Arrangement and Geometry
The shape of a room and its furnishings can also influence occupant psychology. Harsh angles can feel imposing or grab people’s attention, while open space and curves make a space feel more relaxed.
These considerations show up in popular design trends. Urban housing increasingly features an industrial style because large windows and tall ceilings provide an open, relaxed feeling despite limits in physical space.
People will often do what their circumstances make easiest at a given moment. That’s true in many sectors—it’s a key principle in user experience (UX) design—and it should play a crucial role in architecture, too. An open floor plan makes communication easier, leading to increased talking and collaboration, while walls and doors encourage more private, individual-focused behaviors.
Incorporating Natural Elements
Greenery and other natural elements are another key part of the psychology of interior design. Research shows that nature connectedness correlates with improved well-being and a drop in mental distress—one of the many benefits of employing biophilic design principles in projects. This relationship can help achieve a wide range of goals in architecture.
Reduced stress and anxiety are key to a productive workplace, so offices can incorporate greenery to boost engagement. Similarly, natural elements could make customer-centric buildings or residential spaces feel more at ease. Bear in mind that plant life is not the only option here — exposed wood and stone can also create subtle ties to nature.
You can often serve psychological and physical needs simultaneously through the use of natural elements. Wooden surfaces may also offer improved grip. Stone, tile, and other hard surfaces are also an option for indoor floors as long as they have a dynamic friction coefficient of 0.42 or greater to meet slip resistance guidelines.
The Importance of Acoustics
Visual factors are not the only things to consider in interior design psychology. How a space sounds can also impact how occupants feel and act within it.
High levels of noise can cause stress reactions even when people are able to tune out the sounds around them. While not all noise is a product of an interior’s design, choices like insulation types, carpeting, acoustic baffles, and wall angles can impact it by absorbing or reflecting sound waves. Placing sitting areas further away from entrances can similarly improve acoustics.
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At the same time, too much quiet can also affect occupants. Silence can make people more alert, which may be positive or negative, depending on the purpose of an interior space. Alertness works well in an operating room but is unnecessary in a cafe.
Design Cohesion
How all these separate elements work together plays a role in the psychology of space, too. Spatial flow—the ability of an interior to produce a seamless, cohesive experience—is critical when considering how an environment can foster desired behavior.
Too many clashing shapes, colors, and design schemes may be distracting. As a result, occupants may have trouble relaxing, and employees could struggle to focus on their work. On the other side, a lack of defined zones within a larger area could limit privacy and segmentation, which some buildings need to encourage.
Cohesive design can also influence the direction of spatial flow. Similar colors, shapes, and other design cues can create pathways to make navigation easier or encourage people to follow a certain path. Alternatively, you can highlight areas of interest by incorporating elements that stand out from the rest.
How to Implement Interior Design Psychology
The way you should use these psychological principles depends on the kind of space you’re designing. Consequently, your first step should be to identify which mindsets and behaviors are most desirable for a given project. A residential building should be relaxing and private, while an office likely needs to encourage communication and movement between spaces.
All spaces benefit from nature and sunlight, so these should play a role in any interior design. However, plants and large windows are not always an option. Sun lamp therapies can improve depressive symptoms by 40% to 60%, suggesting sunlight-mimicking artificial light can produce some of the same mood-enhancing benefits of real sunlight. Diffusing warm light to reduce glare or harsh shadows may have similar effects.
Zoning is another key implementation consideration to keep in mind. Interior spaces often need multiple areas to serve varying purposes. Sectioning off zones through different colors and geometries or by placing walls or other barriers will aid this separation. Still, you should avoid harsh breaks in cohesive design to prevent visual confusion. Instead, find similar design cues to transition from one zone to another.
Finally, keep in mind that interior design psychology is not always a precise science. People’s individual experiences and preferences can impact how they perceive various elements. Similarly, it can be difficult to determine how a space makes one feel until you experience it firsthand. 3D models or augmented and virtual reality may provide a solution to this barrier.
Designers Should Keep the Psychology of Space in Mind
The psychology of space is an easy-to-miss but critical part of interior design. Regardless of what kind of building you’re designing, you must consider how the aesthetics help or hinder its purpose. Greater attention to these factors will result in a better working, living, or selling environment.
