Our living space has a huge influence on how we perform within it. Our houses have the potential to foster creativity or stifle productivity. And recent events, triggering mass remote working, have really brought this home (excuse the pun). So, how do you make your interior into the kind of environment that nurtures your innate creativity and gets your mind working at peak performance.
Zone your home
We associate different spaces with different activities, so if you’re looking to be more creative at home, think about designing a space to suit. This might be refreshing a tired home office to give it a new lease of life or converting part of a well-lit extension to be dedicated creative space.
Stimulate all your senses
Create exciting environments with colour and statement objects to stimulate your imagination, then consider adding the sounds and smells of the fresh air outside to give you the optimal environment to be focused and relaxed, the ideal state for creativity.
Add a light boost
Daylight has been proven to boost productivity and will help you feel sharp and focused as you do your most creative work. Looking up through a rooflight to see the sun and clouds move across the sky should be enough to inspire you any day of the week.
Create unexpected outdoor oases
Fresh air and fresh thinking go hand in hand, so get carve out a special space for you to work creatively outdoors. This might be taking a forgotten flat roof and turning it into a gorgeous terrace with the application of a walk on rooflight and a few bits of furniture and plants.
Decluttered by design
Cluttered space leads to cluttered thinking so ensure your creative spaces are stripped of all unnecessary stuff and that anything that can’t be gotten rid of is stylishly stored out of sight.
Changing rooms
Just rearranging a room with your existing furniture and decor can be enough to stimulate your imagination and open up new possibilities.
Display differently
Take your carefully curated collections of objects and art and think of new and inventive ways to display them. A novel arrangement of precious items can often spark new thoughts and creative impulses.
Use your walls
Display art and objects that inspire you, choose colours that stimulate your senses or wallpaper that fires your imagination. And don’t forget the fifth wall above you. You might not want to hang a painting there but a rooflight to the sky above or creating an airy opening between floors can be transformative.
Design a killer kitchen
Cramped, dark or poorly designed kitchens can turn what should be a creative hotspot into a place of mundane routine and chore based working. Your kitchen should excite you to invent new culinary possibilities and be somewhere you want to spend time creating.
Small is mighty
You don’t need acres of space to be creative in. Try identifying an under utilised nook and go to town with striking wallpaper or bold paint, a round rooflight pooling in sunshine onto a simple seat and table arrangement. Finish the look with a few tastefully curated objects to make your own creative corner.
