Welcoming the Earth element
Since the earliest times, human life has had a dynamic relationship with the earth. Spending most of our time outside and using whatever nature had to offer was something completely natural and deeply rooted into our daily lives. As a matter of fact, our connection with the natural world was so standard that most people didn’t even know how much it was precious until today.
As we feel increasingly inundated with technology, man-made societies and modern life, it seems many of us are slowly awakening to a new reality (or should we say to an old unconscious pattern that was cast away by modern progress). As hard it is to change our habits, just realizing how much our modern life is pulling us away from the things that matter the most is enough for us to desire a life simpler and in connection to the real world.
Perhaps, the likeliest of all the explanations is one, which we all discover for ourselves, that our lives become more satisfactory when we are rooted, down-to-earth, in touch with common sense and appreciation for the simple beauty of the world. The path towards this “feel good” state, of course, is personal and slow but it may be true that it is helped if we are connected to the earth.
A home that celebrates its connection to the land and encourages those who live there to focus on one another and the world around them is clearly fundamental, as we spend more time than ever in enclosed areas.
Have you ever felt the little jolt of inner calm and strength every time you escape to the outdoor wilderness? Would it be nice to design and decorate our home in accordance with our unconscious passion for the earth? We believe that a house connected with the earth expresses a sense of continuity, as if the earth itself becomes a part of your indoor living space. Forgetting for a moment your architectural style, any home can be connected to earth as long as it celebrates what is real and raw, your home will feel good.
Many of you would assume that the idea of reinterpreting our interior design for something closer to the natural world seems unrealistic and completely subjective for most of us. But in order to understand why it is possible to transform our home and feel the earth, we must begin by understanding perception version reality. You see, there’s been some research done by Donald Hoffman who explains how our brain perception of reality shapes the way we interpret and see things. Just like a desktop interface of a computer showing us files, colors and well-organized surface. We believe in our perception that everything is well organized in blue, rectangular files whereas in reality, it is a way more complex scenery that we prefer keeping behind the scene. The main purpose of connecting your home to the earth through perceptual symbols is to shape our brain and guide us to reconstruct in our head that what we see reminds us of the outdoor reality. You might be skeptical of course, but just like the interface of the computer, which we all see, each one of us, we can also use the same illusion technique into our home décor.
There are numerous ways to invite the spirit of earth into your home by choosing and placing materials, accessories and colors that are close to the earth or remind you of it.
The main purpose of using natural materials is not just about feeling the earth and the connection with its surroundings, but creating an environment, which will function just like the natural world does. Long lasting and easy to maintain for hundreds of years with an ecologically property: biodegradable and with a natural erosion process that actually allows it to age well, enhancing the era instead of degrading it. Stone, brick, wood are among the best, most comfortable and cherished materials we can find widely.
Earth accessories such as terra-cotta vase, shells, textiles made of natural fibers, leather, plants, copper… will add a nourishing and complementary feeling to your home, keeping the earth spirit all together. When it comes to choosing, the key here is to understand the nature of your place in its whole, the location, neighborhood and natural elements in your surrounding. Each place has an identity that will speak to you. The idea is to create a harmony between the outdoor and the indoor that feels natural.
What colors do you see on the outside? The simple act of looking around you, the area where you live, should guide you toward a right and harmonious color palette. The earth can provide a whole range of colors from beige, sandy, brown to red, taupe, blue, green, the choice is vast. This is why, by looking around for patterns will narrow the options and reveal the true colors to your own place.
And there is more, as we use colors for decoration to bring life into our home, there is something important to consider in order to achieve the ultimate interior earthy feeling, which is warm, welcoming and comfortable. And this thing is the light.
There is some superficial truth about warm and cold colors. It is true that warm colors such as red, orange, yellow, beige and brown help make rooms feel comfortable, but it is also possible for cold colors such as blue, green, white and grey to create a comfortable atmosphere too. After all, we all enjoy the blue sky and green forest. The explanation given by Christopher Alexander in his book “A pattern language” is simple. It is not the color of things that matter and make a room feel warm or cold, but the color of the light. What does it mean? We should always consider the total light effect in a room when choosing colors for a space. Together, the color of the natural light, reflected light and artificial lights will set the tone in your room. Yellows, reds, oranges and browns will always work either in warm or cold rooms. But blues, greens and whites will only shine if the light sources are helping or will need to be balanced with other colors to avoid being dull or cold. This means that we will pick more easily warm colors for accessories whereas blues, greens, grays and whites will be much harder to use, especially on the north side of your home when the light is cold and grey.
But you might be thinking what about our personal preferences? Would gray be such a bad idea in a cold room even though it is your favorite color? Birren Faber, one of the most prominent scholars in the field of color therapy, spent most of his academic career studying the influence of color on art, workplace and human psychology had a different understanding. One of Faber’s beliefs about color was that we use colors every day to express ourselves, communicate our thoughts and feelings and to help us with self-identification. He strongly believed that our perception and emotions about colors depends on our culture and past experiences. Of course, our preferences matter and we should absolutely choose what we like the most. But to create a harmonious and down-to-earth interior, it is fundamental to find the right balance in order to make the light inside alive and warm.
It might not seem obvious to everyone how much it is important to shape our outdoor in the same way we did for our indoor. After all, the outdoors are natural by nature. But the outdoor area plays a dear part in the continuous process of being down-to-earth, something we tend to downplay. This space of our homes has been eroded gradually, because people have begun to look at it with modern westerner eyes. Our instinct is to tidy, clean up, cut anything old or dead, overrunning the space with man-made materials and removing any signs of natural erosion.
A garden, which grows true to its own laws, is not wilderness, yet not entirely artificial either but a garden with a sense of studied naturalness. Most gardens these days are formal and artificial. The flower beds are trimmed like a Christmas tree garland. The lawns are clipped like a perfect plastic fur. The paths are cleaned like new polished roads. The furniture is often in industrial materials, fresh from the department store. These gardens have none of the quality, which bring a garden to life – the quality of a wilderness, tamed, still wild but cultivated enough to be in harmony with your home. This balance of wilderness and cultivation reached a high point in English gardens. Something we can admire today by looking at all the stunning natural landscapes created by Miranda Brooks.
In these gardens, things are planned and arranged so that the natural process of life will enhance the space rather than degrading it. In these gardens, plants are chosen and boundaries placed in a way, the growth of it regulates itself. Natural wild plants, for example, are planted among flowers and grass so that there is no room for weeds to fill the empty spaces. Natural stone edges from the boundaries of grass so that there is no need to chop the turf and clean the edge very often. Rocks and stones are placed where there are changes of level. And small rock plants placed in between rocks so that once again there is no headache with the weed.
These gardens are healthier, more capable of stable growth and create a sustaining habitat for plants, insects and small wild animals, increasing our chance to connect even more to the natural world. Watching and enjoying nature takes its course inside or outside is not only refreshing but good for our well-being.
Something else you can also do everyday to complement your down-to-earth connection is walking barefoot in your garden. Also called Earthing, it has been shown to improve memory, attention and concentration, help stimulate muscles that are used for balance and support, reduce inflammation and stress and improve blood flow, energy and sleep. Simply reconnecting our conductive human bodies to the earth’s natural surface electric charge is capable to producing greater well-being.
As our bodies build up on free radicals, we tend to suffer excessive inflammation damaging our cells and tissues. Scientists have reported intriguing evidences that direct contact with the earth is actually reversing those symptoms by permitting a huge number of free electrons to pass through our bodies where they are believed to neutralize free radicals. Sounds like a hippie ticki trend, try for a week, ten to fifteen minutes a day and you’ll see the difference.
To complete the down-to-earth look of your home, there is one more thing to achieve; a natural connection between your house and your outdoor area. The surface, which is still connected to the structure of the house, should feel as if it was part of the earth. Stepping out shouldn’t be like stepping into a field in your bare feet. Your house needs to be connected to the earth around it, by building a series of paths or terraces. Place them deliberately to make the boundaries ambiguous, so that it is impossible to say exactly where the building stops and the earth begins.
Look at simple paths for example, made by laying bricks, paving stones or simple soft baked tiles directly on the earth, with ample cracks between the stones. It is good to walk on, helps people feel the earth beneath their feet and good for the plants, mosses and small flowers can grow between the cracks.
Wishing you to feel superb Xx
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