Whether you're living with roommates or family, it's not always easy to make everyone feel at home in a shared place. – Photo: Zacharie Scheurer/dpa
A home should be cosy and inviting. But if you live with family or friends, it can sometimes be tricky to reconcile everyone's preferences. How do you create surroundings where everyone feels at home?
Netflix star and organising consultant Marie Kondo, known for the hit series Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, and psychologist Uwe Linke, who advises couples moving in together for a series on German television channel Sat-1, share some tips.
Even if some household members say it doesn't matter to them which sofa you get or where precisely the large indoor plant is placed, make sure everyone is on the same page.
"Furnishing a home should be a joint project so that everyone is happy," Linke says. This means that all members of the household get a say in how to decorate common areas. "You should agree as to what purpose the room should have," the psychologist says. Furnishing a home is just as much a question of function as of emotion - in other words, how household members want to feel while in a room.
People with greatly differing preferences tend to look for compromise. But, Linke argues, this is not a solution: "They agree on a setup that everyone can just about live with." Instead, he recommends that a space should reflect individual interests.
To make sure that everyone feels at home, all members of a household should get a say in how to decorate common areas. – Photo: Andrea Warnecke/dpa
The entrance area of a house or flat is the first space that people step into from the outside. It's where the first impression is made. Make sure that the room looks inviting and set up a place to put shoes and a bench or chair so people can sit down while removing their shoes, Kondo advises.
If there is enough space, the Los Angeles-based interior consultant recommends setting up a table with flowers or candles on it. Inviting scents can change the atmosphere of every room and lend it greater cosiness, she says.
Most people still tend to paint their walls white, "even though warm colours are a lot more cosy," Linke says. He recommends to use colours, but also materials, decorations and plants to create surroundings which stir the emotions.
Curtains, carpets and natural wooden surfaces help to make a room feel cosy, as does setting up several sources of light. Don't place different pieces of furniture too close together. Chairs, sofas and armchairs should be placed in a way that they offer a nice view of the room.
Order helps you to find peace, concentrate on what's important and live contentedly. Cluttered rooms, by contrast can distract you more quickly and be confusing, potentially triggering stress.
Organising consultant Kondo has been urging people to tidy up for years. Asking yourself whether an item "sparks joy" before deciding to discard it is one of the cornerstones of her KonMari Method designed to help you declutter. For those items that you want to keep, she recommends assigning them a specific place in the home.
"Tidiness is a daily process," Linke says. But he warns against overdoing it. "Most people are turned off by perfectly tidy rooms that look like a museum. They signal to us that we are disrupting the creation."
A couple of "untidy" trifles are enough to create a sense of cosiness, such as a book or newspaper left lying around or a blanket on the sofa that has not been properly folded, the psychologist says.
Furnishing a room isn't easy. Depending on the style or the way that furniture is arranged, a room can look "untidy" even though you just tidied up. For this reason every room should have a theme, Linke recommends.
An interior theme often depends on the available furnishings, like wooden floors or a coloured radiator. "Match the rest of the furnishings to what you already have to achieve a calm design," Linke says. Another possibility is to set the theme yourself, such as with a colourful wall, and choose the furniture and accessories accordingly.
You can bring calm to the decoration by arranging it in a structured way. "Group vases and plants in a corner or hang pictures on a wall in the same frames and at the same height," Linke says.
It's important not to clutter your rooms with too much furniture to leave enough space for you and your guests to actually inhabit them, Linke says.
Additionally, more space means more flexibility for arranging things. "A flexible living room does not consist merely of a couch and TV set but also of a work area or a free surface where you can do yoga or exercise." – dpa
