Make your Home Happy

Your home should be one big deep breath followed by one relaxing, calming exhale. It should bring you happiness as you walk through the front door.

Design experts say you can make your home happy in how you use color, texture, nature, lighting and by de-cluttering it.

COLOR Choose colors that make you feel more cheerful and energized, such as yellow. Even purple and lilac have been shown to create a positive feeling. You might want to start with pillows, throws or pieces of furniture when considering happier colors for your home.

Consider these shades:

• Neutrals such as a clean, crisp white help make smaller spaces larger, while gray evokes feelings of relaxation and tranquility, especially soothing for bedrooms and bathrooms.

• Cools such as a blue are perfect in kitchens and bathrooms to promote calm; purple is sublime in bedrooms to evoke feelings of sophistication and luxury; brown suits hallways and dining rooms; and green is a soothing and fresh color for living spaces and kitchens.

• Bright yellow cheers up a kitchen or home office (orange also works well here); bright pink, the calmer alternative to red, is great for bedrooms and living areas; red, which symbolizes passion and can be angry, should be used sparingly.

TEXTURE Sprinkled throughout your home, soft things translate to tranquility — plush pillows, fuzzy blankets, thick fluffy rugs.

NATURE We know that being outside helps lower stress, improve our moods and help us perform better, so bring the outside in. Even fake plants lend themselves to a sense of well-being.

Keep blinds and curtains open to allow natural light to shower your inside living. Increase your productivity by re-designing your home office in a room with a view of nature, whether a strip of grass or full-fledged garden.

And, spread the house plants throughout.

LIGHTING Foremost, keep your windows unobstructed — daylight is a natural mood lifter. Strategically hang mirrors to bring more light into rooms.

Beyond enhancing all options to bring natural light into your home, consider illuminating every corner of a room with table lamps or floor lamps, use decorative ceiling lights, but avoid cold LED lights as they contain harsh blue light.

Your goal is warm white in dining and living areas and natural white in kitchens and bathrooms.

DE-CLUTTERING De-cluttering is probably the most loathsome thing you’ll need to do to get the big payoff of a happy home. But there are tricks:

• De-clutter in stages — one room, one space, even on zone such as kitchen cabinets at a time.

• Use five bins or baskets to sort — put away, recycle, fix/mend, trash, donate.

• In the living room, decide on a permanent storage space for such things as remote controls, magazines and books. Store chargers, gadgets, and gaming equipment where you find them.

• Before you even buy something, ask yourself: “Do I like this, or do I love it?” (Even if it’s a type of vacuum cleaner).

• Make tidying up a daily routine — even if it’s just making your bed.