A Home Should Reduce Friction

Home's are about character and utility. A home should feel lived in, should reflect the owners taste and passions. And most importantly should reduce friction and help people do the right things, easily.

This is easier said than done, homes are easily one of the places where we spend time the most. So its important homes are tastefully done.

This is my take on how to curate a good home.

Lighting & Ventilation

First, the most important and fundamental piece of this puzzle. The house looks as good as the light and air in it. If you are choosing your home, make sure its one with a great amount of light in the morning and there is comfortable ventilation. Getting ample sunlight and natural air into the home makes a massive amount of difference.

Now in the times when sunlight does not suffice, we need artificial lighting. All artificial lighting is not created the same. There are broadly four types of lighting

1. General lights: Tubelights, the most common ones in Indian households. We default to this for a good reason, but this is not it.
2. Decorative / Mood lighting: This is the lights you see in restaurants etc.. Lights at different temperatures to account for the occasion.
3. Accent lighting: Lights to emphasize something, usually a painting or a sculpture etc..
4. Task lighting: Reading lamps and such. Made for the task at hand.

I know it sounds bonkers, but it is said that a room should have around five light sources. But the thing is it works really well if you do. Here's an example, let's consider a hypothetical living room

1. A general light, white tube light. The default.
2. A floor lamp on a corner of the room next to the sofa
3. An accent light for a painting in the hall
4. One reading light for reading at the sofa
5. Warm lights for actual daily living

Seems like a lot at first, but its pretty practical and will make a lot of difference. While watching a movie, its feels much better to have mood lighting rather than a general white light. Also during night, accent lights double up as beautiful night time lights.

Movement

It is said that atleast 2-3 feet of walkway is required for people to comfortably walk. When this simple condition is not met, the house starts feeling cramped. Its worthwhile to note where the choke points of the house are and start freeing them up to help movement.

Make sure there is lighting in the night setup and the spaces are without obstructions to make sure that navigating the house in the night is easy.

Furniture that invites the right behavior

Chairs invite sitting and conversation, wide chairs with good hand rests make people feel comfortable. Sofas which structurally prohibit sleeping in them invite very different behavior compared to sofas which are flat and allow that. Its really fascinating how much people behave differently just on the basis of the furniture they are in. So choose furniture wisely.

Compact and foldable furniture often ages better than large pieces. Furniture with legs where you can see the floor makes the room feel larger. An added bonus is that it also makes cleaning easier.

Automation

This is something I'm a big fan of, usually in homes you don't do just one isolated action. You do chains of actions.

For instance, if you want to bath. You just don't switch on the geyser, you also switch it off after say 15 minutes. Now this is a two step chain. Say for example you want to watch a movie with your partner, this involves switching off the general lighting, switching on the mood lighting & switching on the TV and the sound system. This is a three step chain. Another example, if you are going out for a dinner, you will check and make sure all the lights, geysers, fans etc.. are all off, all other doors are closed and only then lock the door. This is more than a six step process usually. If you keenly observe, there are a lot of chains of actions you do at home.

Automation just makes them one shot so that friction is reduced. Some things which will greatly help simplify your day to day are

1. Smart switches (which have hardware overrides) for everything. Now everything can be easily controlled from one place. Also, scenes can be setup so that if you activate a movie night scene, general lights are turned off, mood lighting kicks in and TV and sound system are switched on.
2. Robot vaccum cleaner, a massive help so that when you are back home the house is clean.

This is a living document, I'm yet to go through making interiors from scratch. So I'll keep updating this as I go.

But this is what I have for now, hope you found something useful in this. Thanks for the read!