How wallpapers can make you feel content, safe, and relaxed
You can avoid looking at particular furniture in a room, but you can never avoid looking at the wallpaper – it's everywhere! The wallpaper makes up the largest part of any room and, as such, is a powerful tool in tapping into the psyche. The ordinary person would choose wallpaper based on their favorite color, design, or matching color palette of a room, but an interior designer will have different criteria.
A great interior designer calculates wallpaper designs and colors based on factors equally as important as making indoor spaces beautiful, such as the room's purpose. They know how powerful wallpapers can be; how they can heavily contribute to your mood and the entire atmosphere of a room. More than being a means to express yourself, wallpapers have an emotional and mental connection to their audience.
Wallpapers can make you feel content, safe, and relaxed – the kinds of emotions that a bedroom or living space should give. Coming home to four corners that reduce stress, anxiety, and worries can happen with the right wallpaper selection.
Believe it or not, feeling content, safe, and relaxed are all intertwined. While they can be felt independently, the feeling of one influences the feeling of another.
Feeling Contented
Heritage Design Interiors believes contentment through wallpaper comes from personal associations stemming from childhood. Whether it's a color, design, or artwork, seeing the same later on in life can bring a feeling of contentment as an adult.
If your parents' bedroom had stripped wallpaper, the same design might make you feel protected and represent the feeling of being cared for. Similarly, if your childhood playroom was painted yellow, the color may always represent happiness and stimulate your energy.
The small details in experiences you had in the past create the associations you have today. Whichever associations they may be, choose one that will make your four corners feel like a comfortable home.
Feeling Safe
Interestingly, colors also have the ability to make people gravitate towards a particular emotion and jumpstart their brain activity. In choosing a wallpaper that makes you feel safe, brown is often the color that helps. Because of its earth-like tone, brown is associated with safety, security, and resilience.
Brown wallpapers are often best paired with other neutral colors, including shades of green and blue, to give a sophisticated touch. The cooler accents contrast nicely with the warm tone of brown, bringing a matched synergy into the room.
White furniture and accents also go well with the color brown, as it does with any color. The combination of crisp white and any brown shade will make the room look clean and comfortable.
Feeling Relaxed
When the goal is to make you feel relaxed, wallpapers with such effect include light and pale tones, such that there is a substantial amount of white in the color. These are shades of colors that are calmer and less saturated.
Similarly, yellow is also associated with feeling relaxed. The color stimulates the nerves and usually makes people feel happy, warm, and light. Yellow walls are best paired with muted tones, such as neutrals.
Blue is also soothing to the soul, representing peace and calmness. It gives the same feeling of relaxation as sitting by the sea and looking at the blue hues of the water and the sky.
While wallpaper undoubtedly psychologically affects its audience, some are immune to its associated emotion. Often, this depends on past experiences that left a lasting impression on a person. The same color that brings sunshine and happiness to one may be the very same that triggers another's trauma, anger, fear, or despair.
At the end of the day, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the wallpaper effect. The best outcome happens when wallpaper designs and colors are chosen based on the primary audience's preference.