We move around the world using our 5 senses to optimize our experience in it. So when you create your home, make sure that you also think about how you can get the maximum advantage and impact by appealing to the 5 senses of sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste.

Sight

Create a Home That Appeals to the 5 Senses | MyBoysen

When people are buying a home, sight is the sense that they use the most first. From the exteriors where curb appeal of the home is being assessed, to the interiors where a neutral palette is preferred by most buyers.

Majority want to have a clean home that looks orderly and not cluttered. Homes can be painted white, light neutrals, dark neutrals, vibrant colors, or pastels. It all depends on your taste, and Boysen has thousands of colors for you to choose from. But more than colors, there are also the interior design principles that you can learn to make your home look beautiful. The 7 principles and the 7 elements of interior design are very useful reads:

The Seven Principles of Interior Design

The 7 Elements of Interior Design

Check out the available colors in a Boysen Mix and Match Station closest to you.

Smell

Create a Home That Appeals to the 5 Senses | MyBoysen

Adding to the sense of sight is smell. Olfaction, the technical term for the sense of smell, is very powerful because we associate smell with emotional memories. Most of our smell-driven memories are from childhood so if you have children, you can weave wonderful memories for them by having a home that smells wonderful. Go beyond the home fragrances, from candles to oils that are now so common. Fill your home with the aromas of home life like the smell of cake baking in the oven, or the scent of freshly laundered clothes that were dried under the sun, or the scent of the earth rising from the garden after a bout of rain.

Warning: just make sure that the home scents that you buy are made from organic materials so that you keep your home a healthy zone.

Sound

Create a Home That Appeals to the 5 Senses | MyBoysen

In the first few months of the strictest lockdowns in 2020, Manila’s decibels came down to almost a soothing hum. Then it was possible to hear other things from inside our homes aside from the usual city noise. We could hear the birds chirping, the rustle of the leaves on the trees, the sound of children playing, someone’s music blaring tinnily from the neighbor’s house.

Sound is equally important in the home and it is possible to curate it. We can stream music as much as we can stream videos. There are also the sounds that the people who live in a home make—the swishing of a walis tingting being used to clean the grounds, the hum of the washing machine, the patter of little feet, the tinkling of wind chimes, the splash of running water when someone is having a shower—all these homey sounds are comforting to hear.

But there are also sounds that we want to keep out, like the sound of traffic or noisy neighbors. In that case, there are things you can do like having double-glazed windows or heavier curtains. But if you really want the organic sound of nature, then you may have to move out of the city. You can have those apps that mimic nature sounds but it will never be the same as the real thing.  Maybe the pandemic has changed you so perhaps it is time to think of another living arrangement like slow living and rural escapism.

Touch

Create a Home That Appeals to the 5 Senses | MyBoysen

One of the 7 elements in interior design is texture, which can either be physical texture or visual texture. Physical texture involves tactility, meaning that when you touch an object, you get the feel of it, whether it’s rough or smooth, cold or warm, soft or hard, and so on. It is about the variations and feel of a surface. On the other hand, visual texture is the illusion of the texture of a surface. For example, your floor made of laminate may look like wood (which is warm), but in reality it is made of a synthetic material like melamine resin (which is cool).

Texture adds interest in your home so even if your interiors have a monochromatic palette or just one color, the textures that are found in the things you have in the home can change the feel of your home. A marble floor differs from a wooden floor; the first is cool, the second warm. A leather sofa is different from one that is upholstered by natural fabric like wool or cotton.  As a guide, rough textures generally make the space feel intimate, while smooth and sleek textures may give the space a cooler vibe. The trick is to have contrasting textures in the space to get a balance.

Taste

Create a Home That Appeals to the 5 Senses | MyBoysen

The taste of home refer to the food you associate with your home, like those flavors of your childhood that bring you much comfort. But taste also refers to having colors that you associate with certain food or drink that you favor. Even paint colors also sometimes have food as the reference, like champagne, mustard, mint, lemon, butter, cream, orange, ube… If your favorite dish is karekare, maybe it would be better to change the menu, otherwise you might end up with karekare walls and  I can’t imagine that that would look so inviting.

In summary, when you are creating your home, decorate your space in ways that would appeal to your 5 senses so that you have a place that is uniquely yours, and that works at so many levels for you.

Get more color inspirations from these posts.

Author

Annie is the Managing Editor of Let it B | MyBoysen Blog. An unrepentant workaholic, she runs this blog and her own company Talking Lions (https://talkinglions.com). She thrives on collaborating with people who are good at what they do, and working together with them to create something special. Annie learned interior styling while managing her own wholesale business in the Netherlands, importing high-end, handmade home furnishings to stock four outlets and a showroom in the country.

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