What Is Biophilic Design, and How Can It Transform Your Home?

You may not have heard the term “biophilic design,” but you’ve felt its effect. When you walk into a space and feel uplifted by sunlight streaming through large windows, or relaxed by the sounds of an indoor water feature, your reaction isn’t incidental. It’s the result of careful design that strives to reconnect people with nature, even in their own homes.

Derived from the Greek words “bio (life)” and “philia (love),” biophilic design prioritizes natural light, building materials, colors, and even sounds. But its benefits go beyond aesthetics to promote enhanced physical and mental health, including lower stress and improved mood.

If you’re building, buying, or renovating a home, you can consider architectural details like:

• Large windows, ideally with views of nature

• Skylights to allow more sunlight in

• Natural building materials (like wood, bamboo, cork, stone, and ceramic) throughout the entire house

• Water features, like indoor fountains or ponds

But if you’re settled in a home that doesn’t have these features, you can still make some easy design choices to make your indoors feel more like outdoors.

• Plants. Plants are literal living things, so they are a key element of biophilic design. Low-maintenance, fast-growing plants, like parlor palms, philodendrons, and spider plants, allow you to enjoy your greenery stress-free, and that will encourage you to experiment with varieties and placement.

  
  

• Mirrors. Reflective surfaces enhance natural light and make small spaces feel bigger. And when positioned near plants, they multiply a few spots of greenery into an indoor forest!

  
  

• Colors. Emphasize earthy tones like rich browns, dark greens, or cool blues, and add colorful accents like terracotta, burnt orange, or warm yellow. These provide a soothing backdrop for plants, fabric accents, and décor.

  
  

• Furniture and decorative accents. Look for materials found in nature, like wood, stone, bamboo, jute, hemp, and cotton. When choosing window treatments, throw pillows, comforters, or wallpaper, opt for prints that depict or draw inspiration from the natural world, like animal patterns, leaves, seashells, etc.

  
  

• Water and air. Tabletop water fountains, aquariums, and open windows circulate the two most important elements for life and provide a sense of movement and change.

  
  

• Animals. These aren’t a requirement, but if you’ve been looking for an excuse to adopt a fur baby, here you go! Pets take us outside our heads, and if you get a fur baby that needs regular walks, he or she will take you out into actual nature. What could be better?