Slow Home Design Explained

No matter where you are financially, quality time is always available and with just a bit of love and creativity you can easily create a home.

Kendell Fox

Welcome to part seven of The Slow Living Guide, where I give you the A to Z on slow living, and hopefully provide a pocket of calm in your day. In last week’s post we chatted about slow fashion, so if that’s of interest to you, do make sure to go check it out!

Slow Home design is essentially intentional home design, which involves thoughtful planning of architecture and interior design to create a home that is both functional and beautiful. Similar to the slow food movement’s retaliation against fast food, slow home design seeks to push back against a culture of “fast homes” in which size is often prioritized over practicality and not enough time and care is put into the home design planning process.

Perhaps you have a desire to create a beautiful, curated home, but are on a budget. I would say that Slow Home Design will be particularly helpful for you, as the focus is more on intentionality and planning than it is on spending a lot of money.  Having lived in at least 20 homes in my lifetime, I’ve had a wide range of home design experiences as well as many opportunities to re-do my living space. Here are some slow home design strategies that I’ve picked up along the way.

Choose Appropriate Lighting

Appropriate lighting can transform a space. For a bright, sunlit atmosphere, choose a home that has large windows and make sure to keep them clean. If large windows aren’t an option for you, you can give the illusion of bigger windows and let more light in by using sheer curtains and placing them a little higher and wider than usual. It is also ideal for windows of living areas to face out to the front or back of your home, to provide a more pleasant view than the side of your neighbor’s house. For a cozy atmosphere, opt for several smaller lamps that cast a warmer glow, rather than relying on bright overhead lighting.

Utilize Your Space

Poorly arranged furniture in a disorganized space is the opposite of what we’re going for with slow home design. We want a space that is easy to move around in and storage that gives convenient access to what you need.

I would say the first step before going out and buying new storage or re-arranging your furniture however, is to do a big declutter. Minimizing clutter in your home is a really simple way to open up the space and show you what furniture you actually need. Once that’s done, you can start thinking about furniture arrangement.

Ideally, you want to arrange your furniture in such a way that there is plenty of space by doorways and cupboards to ensure ease of access. Essentially, you want to minimize potential obstructions as much as possible. In terms of storage - try to think about ways that you can utilize “dead space”. The main example of this is to go up rather than out with storage, by using taller wardrobes or fitting extra shelves in high ceilinged rooms. Whenever I move into a new home, I’ll usually re-arrange my furniture multiple times in the first month, trying out different arrangements until I hit on the perfect combination.

Be Intentional with Colour

Colour has a direct impact on mood, so it’s important to be aware of the atmosphere you wish to create when you’re choosing colour tones for a space. For example, I personally gravitate towards light blues and more neutral tones for the bedroom as I find that it calms me and helps me unwind in the evening. However, if you’re aiming for a cozy atmosphere, then you may prefer warmer tones such as oranges and reds.

Express Personality

The final ingredient for a slow home is to get creative and express your personality through your interior design. Think of a few key words that encapsulate what you need in a home, and curate your design around them. If you want to go the extra mile, you can repeat this process for each room. I find that this intentionality makes it so much easier to choose and arrange furniture and art in a way that for one, I know will be cohesive, and for another that I won’t regret.

These tips are really just scratching the surface of slow home design, so I may make future posts on this topic – if that’s something you’d be interested in, do let me know in the comments below. If you’ve found this topic interesting, make sure to share the post with a friend who you think might benefit from it. Until next time, it was lovely to have you here.