Have you ever thought about how much time you spend in interior environments? According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average United States citizen spends 87 percent of his or her time indoors. Interior designers determine the sizes of indoor spaces and their arrangement, as well as the selection of all the things with which we fill spaces, such as surface materials, furnishings and accessories. These decisions directly impact human health and well-being, and here are several things to consider.  Interior designers can influence our emotional health and brain functioning. Certain colors can make us feel warm or cold or even chatty! Some colors have been linked to aggression. Different pattern scales for wall-covering and carpet have been shown to influence children's play behaviors, and the scale and enclosure of study spaces has been shown to influence the task performance of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There are many ways in which our interior environment contributes to our health and well-being, and interior designers make many of these critical decisions.

 

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The environment we are in affects us emotionally, and, if designed appropriately, has the power to promote wellness of both body and mind. But how do we harness it?  Through evidence-based design strategies, design professionals are finding inventive and efficient ways of applying the lessons of psychology to interior environments, with proven beneficial results in terms of emotional and behavioral responses. The quality of our interior environment — where we spend more than 90 percent of our time, according to the Environmental Protection Agency — can have a huge impact on our health and well-being.  "Experts know that indoor spaces can pose health risks," said Jeff McCubbin, dean of CSU's College of Health and Human Sciences. "Excessive noise, artificial light, poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyles can damage health or affect well-being." "It's important that communities understand the role interior design plays in the health and well-being of residents. 

 

The highest contributions to health, safety and welfare were found in the human environment needs, interior construction, and products and materials categories. Human environment needs contributes the highest to health and welfare, whereas interior construction contributes highest to safety. All categories contribute at the substantial level to health, safety and welfare. Overall, contributions to welfare are higher than to health and safety. According to A seminal industry research report issued by IIDA and five leading interior design organizations, including ASID, CIDA, IDC, IDEC and NCIDQ,

 

Behavioral Psychology is basically interested in how our behavior results from the stimuli both in the environment and within ourselves.  Often a grueling process, but results have helped us learn a great deal about our behaviors, the effect our environment has on us, how we learn new behaviors, and what motivates us to change or remain the same.