Soothing decorating ideas for a peaceful home

Wellbeing is a hot topic at the moment. With many of us leading increasingly stressful lives, it has never been more important to optimise our health and happiness.

Adequate exercise, sleep and nutrition are all key factors in determining how we feel mentally and physically, but did you know that your home can also play its part? Here, we explore ways in which the home environment can become a vital component in your journey towards improved health and contentment.

Turning any room into a calming space

Our home should be the place in which we feel cocooned and comfortable, safely tucked away from the worries and stresses of the outside world. The interiors we create can reflect our own individual style and allow us to feel truly ‘ourselves’ within the safety of our own private sanctuary.

But we can go further than this when it comes to achieving optimal wellbeing. Making the right choices for our homes in terms of colour and texture has been shown to minimise anxiety and reduce feelings of overwhelm. Eco-friendly materials can also up the feel good factor, allowing you to sleep easy at night knowing you’re being kind to the planet while creating a warm and welcoming haven.

Calming paint colours can make your home a relaxing haven

Colours have a remarkable ability to affect our mood, enabling us to feel calmed or energised, depending on the particular hue. Grounding, earthy colours are a great choice if you’re looking to create a safe, soothing space.

Shades inspired by nature such as chocolate brown, burnt orange or forest green will subtly bring to mind natural phenomena such as a freshly ploughed field or a dazzling sunset. This implicit connection with the natural world serves to comfort and reassure.

“Colours have the ability to boost our mood, reduce stress levels and generate feelings of belonging. For example, blue shades have the potential to make us calmer and more confident, while yellow boosts our creativity and generates a sense of cheerfulness.” – Lee Chambers, Psychologist & Wellbeing Specialist

Calm and soothing colors are a great way to create a relaxing atmosphere. The right colors can take the edge off your hectic day, so you can relax and unwind. Here are some of our favorite calming color schemes that will help you relax:

• Blue-green: This beautiful shade is perfect for creating a tranquil space. It’s also great if you like to infuse nature into your home décor.
• Mint green: Not only does this color look good on its own but it also goes well with other colors like navy blue or grey.
• Grey: Grey is another great color for relaxing rooms because it can be soft and soothing or bold and dramatic depending on how it is used in the room.
• Warm neutrals: These colors evoke feelings of homeyness and comfort, which makes them perfect for creating an inviting atmosphere in any room in your house.

Reduce stress with comforting fabric textures

Our sense of touch is a powerful tool. It's the first sense that develops in the womb, and it's responsible for helping us feel secure and safe. Whether you're stressed out or trying to relax, the touch of soft fabric can be very soothing. It's a great way to reduce stress and calm your mind.

The feeling of soft fabric against your skin has been shown to reduce stress levels and even lower blood pressure. It's almost like taking a deep breath: when you're relaxed, your body releases endorphins that make you feel good.

What textures do we find calming?

• Bouclé upholstery is a fabric woven from yarns with a loopy, coiled-up quality. It has a lovely enveloping cuddly texture. We have a feeling you love these cuddly textures too, because our FibreGuard bouclé fabrics have been more in demand than ever before.
• Velvet upholstery really is the height of decadent comfort. Its plush pile is captivating, and that luxurious deep nap will always be in demand. Fun fact! Unlike all other velvet upholstery and drapery fabrics on the market, FibreGuard’s easy clean velvet fabrics are unmistakably low maintenance. Like all of our fabric qualities, accidental stains are easily cleaned from our velvet fabrics.
• Upholstery with cotton blends. Cotton lends our easy clean fabrics such a lovely tactile quality that spans from a micro-emerised brushed cotton touch all the way to a dry, matte, linen look and feel.

Bringing contrasting textures into your home is a vital part of any successful interior scheme. But it turns out different textures can also have a significant impact on our emotions.

Swedish company Zilenzio brings a light touch to the world of partitions with its gently curving Focus Floor collection. Focus Floor is marketed as providing 'textile privacy', with a 'feather light' design to adapt to the needs of every interior space. Read more: From Korea to the work floor: the rise of privacy as wellness >

One recent study, Emotions associated with different textures during touch, showed that soft or smooth textures tend to generate pleasant emotional responses, while rough or hard textures are associated with a negative reaction. Applying this knowledge to the home environment, you may well want to choose comforting fabrics such as velvet or silk, and avoid hard textures such as marble or concrete.

Create a relaxing oasis at home with plants

Another factor to consider when it comes to creating a relaxing home is the concept of Biophilic Design, the practice of bringing the natural world to bear on design.

This trend relies on incorporating nature-inspired elements such as plants, florals and natural materials. This visceral connection with nature has been shown to boost wellbeing by improving mood and reducing stress levels.

‘Bringing the outside in’, as it is known, can easily be done via the introduction of natural textures such as rattan, bamboo or wicker.

Floral patterns and botanically-inspired motifs are another great way to reference the natural world. And one of the simplest way to embrace nature is to bring in lots of greenery.

Plants in pots – the bigger the better – can add a reassuring vitality to a space and if you’re not green fingered it’s fine to go faux.

For more idecor deas head over to our Calming Decor Inspiration Pinterest board

We love decorating our home for the holidays, but we also love creating a peaceful and relaxing space year-round. Our Calming Decor Inspiration board is full of ideas that will help you create the perfect room for unwinding after a long day.

From soothing colors to natural materials, we've got everything you need to create your own calming space. From a comfy reading nook to a sun-drenched kitchen island, we've got plenty of inspiration to help you design your dream space.

Creating a calming home with FibreGuard's high performance fabrics

At FibreGuard we lean into the fundamental search for comfort in our easy-to-clean fabric collections, empowering interior architects and designers to create a huge variety of relaxing spaces. Our advice to designers is to choose natural colours, as well as organic textures such as raw wood and wool-like fabrics.

FibreGuard fabrics are engineered from the inside out to perform, so no wonder they’re easy on the hands (and eyes). Find out what our dedication to technical excellence can do for your project by getting in touch with us today.