7 Frugal Ways to Make Your House Feel More Homey According to Science

Improve your well-being by improving your living space with these seven frugal tips for making your home feel homey and inviting.

Your home is more than just a place to lay your head at night or to store your stuff while you’re at work.

It’s a place of comfort.

A place to retreat to, to nurture yourself and your family and provide hospitality to your friends. It’s a reflection of your tastes and your personality.

For these reasons, homemaking isn’t just an outdated pastime of prettying up your house.

One of my jobs is as a real estate copywriter (I know, don’t hate me; it pays the bills). There are always certain property features I highlight if applicable because they make a home more desirable.

These features? They are the same features that make a home more liveable and comfortable.

And these features don’t just make our homes more appealing, they affect our mood.

What designers, architects, and real estate agents have known for years, science is now confirming – a comfortable and ‘homely’ home affects your mood and mental well-being.

The Science of Home Comfort

Neuro-architecture – the hybrid child of neuroscience and architecture – studies the human response to the built environment and its design.

By observing people’s hormone levels and brain chemicals, scientists have found that certain design elements within a building can be either beneficial or detrimental to a person’s well-being. The application was originally for places like hospitals and prisons, but it also applies to homes as well.

Your home can affect your mood. By applying certain design elements, you can improve your mood and increase your happiness.

The great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was well aware of architecture’s power on the mind. His use of fireplaces, large windows and open areas was a subtle nod to our ancestors’ dwelling: the cave with a firepit overlooking the plains” [source].

While designing the architecture of your house according to cutting-edge neuroscience may be out of reach, there are a few easy and inexpensive things you can do to maximise the good mood you get from your home.

Here are seven ways to make your house feel more homey.

1. Let there be Light

Large windows that let in lots of light are better for your mood than dark houses with tiny windows.

Science has revealed that light exposure, particularly sunlight (which is full-spectrum light), improves mood. So, the more light you let in during the day, the better.

But not all houses have large windows to let in the light, so what do you do?

During winter, our home is mostly dark and dingy downstairs. It gets zero direct sunlight. But the bedrooms get a lot of light, so when I’m home, I spend as much time as practical in the sunny bedroom instead of the lounge room.

It helps to let the light in by opening curtains as wide as they will go during the day (particularly during winter) and using tiebacks to let in as much light as possible.

Another tip is to clean windows regularly –  it’s surprising what a difference this can make! If you can, open doors as well for extra light. 

This isn’t the most frugal suggestion, but if practical, consider installing skylights in key places, like over the kitchen, to increase the natural daylight in the house.

And, of course, one of the cheapest ways to increase light exposure is to spend time outdoors – in the yard, if you have one – to increase your light exposure.

Now let’s talk about night light.

While an ‘abundance of natural light’ during the day is good (that’s real estate copywriting talk right there), harsh artificial lighting at night is a mood-killer.

So instead of using the overhead light, consider lamps and soft lighting to create a cosy atmosphere.

And as well as being romantic, a low-wattage light will use less electricity and save you money.

You might also like 101 ideas for spending more time in nature.

2. Clear the Clutter…

Clutter is bad for your mood.

I know from personal experience that when I walk into my messy, cluttered home (which is pretty much every day), my mood takes a nose-dive, and the mental to-do list gets bossy and demanding.

Clutter bombards our senses, making it difficult to relax. It distracts us, tells us our work is never done, and can make us anxious, guilty, depressed, and frustrated [source].

So, giving your home a good declutter and tidy can improve your mood and make your home more inviting and comfortable.

It’s hard to tidy up when you’ve got too much stuff (again, speaking from experience). There’s no ‘everything in its place’ when you’ve got more stuff than a place.

So it’s important to declutter as well as tidy.

Once you reduce your clutter, it helps to place simple organizational systems that make tidying up quicker and easier in the future. 

Open baskets and boxes are ideal, especially for kids, because it’s so easy to just throw things in an open box.

The other essential clutter-cleaning tool is a good routine. Things get clean and stay clean when it’s an automatic part of your routine, and everyone in the household knows what jobs they need to do and when.

I recently watched a fantastic video on YouTube showing a genuine budget makeover (mostly a declutter!) of a rental that was a bit depressing. It’s a good example of what a difference decluttering, tidying, and adding some lighting and soft furnishings can make.

You can check out this super-budget makeover on YouTube.

3. Declutter But… Avoid Minimalism

While an uncluttered home is good for the mood, going too far can make your space stark and uninviting.

It’s the little personal touches that make a house a home.

A little bit of ‘mess’ is homely and inviting—the ideal amount actually depends on your personality.

Photos of family, friends or pets give us a sense of belonging, while original arts and crafts, a bookshelf of our favourite books, and a few select favourite nick-knacks display our individuality.

Here are some ideas for taking and displaying family photos and creating your own unique artwork:

• Turn your photos into canvas prints
• Photo wall art using inexpensive frames
• Gallery of photos
• Pinterest boards for DIY art for your walls (1, 2 & 3)

Other ways to reduce a home’s starkness are to add accent pillows, rugs, throws, plants, lamps, curtains and coffee or end tables.

4. Colour Your World

The décor you choose for your home can also affect your mood.

Curved and flowing lines are preferable to sharp corners for instance. Curved lines are easier on the eye, and they mimic nature, and nature is important for happiness.

Colour is also important.

Despite the fact that greige has been a dominant interior colour for years (thanks to the saleability of a ‘neutral colour palette’ – more real estate-speak), pops of colour are more appealing.

Warm tones like red and orange increase energy, while cool tones like blue and green are relaxing. Which mood do you want to create in which room? Judicious use of colour can help create that mood.

However, depending on your taste, too much colour can be overwhelming. A scattering of colourful decor items against – dare I say it – a neutral background can also be nice. And if you are renting, changing the colour of the walls isn’t often an option.

This way you can change the mood of a room by just changing the cushions, which is a lot cheaper than changing the entire decor.

One of the cheapest ways to get a new look is to rearrange your furniture. Rearranging the furniture prevents things from getting stale, and a fresh new look can give you a fresh new outlook, too, without spending any money at all.

5. The Green Green Grass of Home

Despite our increasing disassociation from nature, humans are hard-wired to be in the great outdoors. We are happier and healthier when we spend time in nature.

In regards to our home, natural surrounds can affect us in two ways. First, we can bring some nature indoors with the use of indoor plants and get a mood boost.

Secondly, if you have an outdoor space to look out on, maintaining it or adding some greenery will improve the overall feel of your home.

Bringing nature inside is beneficial. Studies have shown that even just looking at pictures of nature or including natural objects in your home has a positive effect on our nervous system!

So, to improve the livability of your home, grow some indoor pot plants and fill it with natural materials—wooden furniture, wicker baskets, woollen throws.

Even pictures of nature can enhance your mood, and you can get some second-hand ones cheaply from the thrift store – we picked a huge Ken Duncan out of our block’s communal garbage bin…ssshhh.

It isn’t surprising then that our garden is just as important for our happiness (if not more so) as anything we do inside the house. A view of a garden, courtyard, distant greenery or even just the sky so you can see the weather can improve your mood.

So, if your courtyard is a mess of weeds, your lawn is overgrown, your balcony looks like a concrete wasteland, or your yard needs some love, cleaning it up and planting some flowers or shrubs can improve both your outlook (literally, the outlook from your window) and well-being.

6. A Room to Gather

Nothing says home like the smells, sounds and bustle of the kitchen. The kitchen is the heart of the home and the perfect place for the family to gather.

Spending time together, especially while doing communal activities like cooking (and especially when all screens are out of sight and out of mind), is a great way to build and strengthen relationships and, therefore, increase happiness and well-being.

If you can, place a table and/or chairs in the kitchen so that it is a communal area as well as a functional one (unless, of course, you have an open-plan layout and breakfast bar or island).

The best place is one where you can see and talk to people while you share in the preparation, cooking, and clean-up of the family meals.

Of course, this isn’t always possible, so a frugal alternative is to bring in a chair or a stool so that you can talk with your partner or child while you (or they) cook.

And just like I used to shell peas with my grandmother on the back step, consider bringing the cooking out of the kitchen so you can be with your family while preparing food.

We have a tiny kitchen that is not the perfect place to gather, so I often chop the vegetables in the living room at the table while the kids eat afternoon tea and do their homework.

7. Room of One’s Own

While communal spaces are important, so too are private spaces where each family member can retreat, be alone, and just be themselves.

Alone time is essential for everyone, but it’s particularly important for introverts, who recharge their batteries by being alone.

Alone time can be time to practice mindfulness, read, and ponder life’s great mysteries – or at least our navels, which is what makes us human and what we all need to do from time to time. It’s important you have a private, safe, and comfortable space to do this.

A bedroom. A shed. A craft-room. A man-cave. A quiet corner. A special chair. A hidey-hole in a cupboard. A bathroom with a lock.

Everyone in a household should have a nook that they can get away to.

More Ideas for Creating an Inviting Home:

Our home affects our mood, so it’s important to make the most of what neuro-architecture has discovered so that our home influences our well-being in a positive manner. 

You don’t need an award winning architectural design, however, to get the most of what neuro-architecture has to offer. Some simple, inexpensive changes can make all the difference to the mood in your home.