Your Home Affects Your Health And Wellbeing
Understandably, your home is a sanctuary, where you spend most of your time, where you relax and feel safe. In addition, your home environment also affects your health and wellbeing. The minor aspects of your home can influence your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing either positively or negatively. For example, research showed that indoor colour affects mood and cognitive performance. Identifying which aspects of your home affects your health and wellbeing can be challenging. So, to help you out, here are:
12 Ways Your Home Affects Your Health And Wellbeing
Table of Contents
Colour
The impact of colour in your home cannot be understated and is high on the list of ways your home affects your health and wellbeing – emotional and mental wellbeing.
For example, painting your interior space red may create a feeling of stimulation, whereas violet helps promote thought.
Therefore, it would not be advisable to paint a room you want to get a good night’s sleep red. Instead, explore colours that will help bring about good mental and emotional health. For example, green or blue is ideal for enhancing mental and psychological wellbeing, making them good colour choices for your bedroom.
You can relish greater satisfaction, happiness, and productivity by strategically choosing and painting specific colours in rooms like your kitchen and bedroom. There is enough evidence to suggest that colour affects our daily behaviours, mood, and stress levels.
Screen Time
Everybody loves to kick back and catch up on their favourite TV show or the latest news on their phone after a long day. Screen time helps unwind and relax, yet it negatively affects your brain chemistry and vision.
Staring at your screens for an extended period can take a toll on your sight over time, making your world somewhat blurry. These “computer vision problems” come with other symptoms like dry eyes, strain, and headaches.
Further Reading: Social Media Hurting Your Health? Take Time Away With These 3 Tips
The blue lights from your screen can affect your sleeping pattern as it causes your body to stay awake for hours due to its daylight impression. A study has shown that this wouldn’t only cost you sleep hours but can also lead to obesity, back problems, anxiety, and other chronic problems in some body parts.
Bed and Mattress Choices
Experts have advised that it is essential to gain at least eight hours of sleep to recharge your body, heal, and get you prepared for the next day’s activities. This also means you should be spending at least eight hours in your bed every night.
Your bed can quickly become a breeding ground for bacteria and dust mites- turning your bed into an organism mishmash and affect your skin’s cells. To avoid choosing between good sleep and bad skin, it is advisable to wash your bedding every week to keep out the creepy crawlies.
Further Reading: Sleep Well? 5 Reasons You Need A Bigger Bed
Although you may clean your sheets regularly, your mattress may also be carrying these unwanted bed guests and more. Many professionals have regarded mattresses as one of the dirtiest objects in a home. Therefore, it wouldn’t do any good to wash your bedsheets only to return them to a dingy bed. Purchasing a new mattress may seem like a good option, but this wouldn’t be practical.
Fortunately, there are several home remedies you can use to freshen up your mattress. An effective treatment is mixing hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, lavender oil and lemon juice drops. Spray it on your mattress and leave it to dry. Your mattress would be healthily clean!
Faucets and Water
Your tap collects mineral deposits when left uncleaned. Although these deposited minerals are not harmful, they change the taste of your water. There isn’t much to worry about if you use the public groundwater. However, if you have a private well, it is beneficial to have tested regularly for contaminants.
Home Ventilation
Adequate ventilation will keep your air clean and regulate your room temperatures. While you need space to breathe, a humid and stuffy room will encourage mould growth, which comes with an entire pack of health concerns. Unclean air puts you at risk of contracting allergies and other respiratory problems.
Further Reading: Sustainable Saving with Energy-Efficient Windows And Doors
However, issues with poor ventilation and contaminated air become more of a problem when you cannot find the source of the problem. You should consider purchasing a home air purifier to regulate your room temperatures, keep clean air, and eliminate allergens issues. Increased relative humidity levels affect the volatile organic concentration in the home, and extended exposure can lead to severe damage to your nervous system.
Lighting
Your fluorescent lighting can be the reason for your poor sleep, eye strain and persistent migraine. While humans are designed to want natural lighting, working indoors seems to be the norm. And when it’s sundown, you can’t help but resort to artificial lighting.
Unfortunately, artificial lighting can negatively affect your health. You might want to pull back your curtains and allow some sunlight into your home. Opening your curtains won’t only offer you more bright light; doing this will also help provide you with your daily dose of Vitamin D and reduce your home’s electricity expenses. Natural sunlight can also help your mood and manage any incandescent lighting and fluorescent effects.
Cleaning Products
Most of today’s home cleaning products and solutions are made from chemicals that pose harm to your health – from chemicals that affect your skin to prolonged inhalation of fumes irritating your lungs or causing a significant headache. There are many reasons why you’ll do better without these chemical cleaning products, as they contain harmful ingredients such as bleach and ammonia.
Further Reading: Sustainable Living – 6 Essential Hacks for a Clean Healthy Home
Natural fragrances like citrus can react to produce harmful indoor pollutants. With numerous studies linking chemicals from cleaning products to asthma and other respiratory conditions, you might want to consider switching to homemade cleaning solutions or those made from natural ingredients.
Clutter and Organisation
Many homes experience the impact of clutter and disorganisation on a person’s mood. The astonishing number of guides and self-help books on getting rid of clutter shows its negative impact. The joy of getting something new can blind you to the clutter you are gradually building up. It could be stationary, clothes and other household items.
Further Reading: You Can Have A Beautiful Home With Kids, Here’s How
Clutter is a significant cause of stress in many homes. It helps to reduce clutter and design a system to organise those items you need. This offers you a big hand towards enjoying a good sense of stability and peace.
Housing Condition
Your housing conditions play a significant role in your general emotional health. A study into housing matters suggests a strong link between deprived rental housing and adverse mental health conditions such as depression. The research further showed that poor housing conditions could contribute to depression and create a hostile environment among residents.
Overcrowding is also noted to lead to a similar situation. While you will thrive in environments with more cohesion, stability and willingness to assist others, those characterised by dilapidated structures, rubbish, and vandalism can offer chaos and hostility.
Home Layout and Architecture
Floor plans, home layout designing, and architecture have evolved over the years. Homes were previously rigid and segmented with doors and walls setting the room apart from the rest of the house. Things are no longer the same today, especially in today’s health-conscious climate where many are remote working.
As homes are becoming multifunctional to serve for family and occupational purposes, it can benefit your health to be flexible and open to new concepts beneficial for your productivity and efficiency.
Professional home styling ensures that your home becomes elegant and outstanding. You can always witness the sparkle in your visitors’ eyes whenever they visit your professionally styled home. Professional property styling ensures that the colour themes blend in subtly, your furniture is the right type, and even your lighting complements everything else.
Your property value will also rise significantly after undertaking professional styling. It also ensures that your home suits your living needs. The ergonomics are ideally done on top of the aesthetics. For example, if you have a family member living with a disability, professional styling ensures that they have easy and comfortable access to everything they need.
Further Reading: When Your Space Feels Too Small – 4 Top Tips on What to Do
Even having designated spaces in your home for work can help you get the best from work each day. You can check out credible brands like Ergon Life for ergonomic features like adjustable desks to maximise your space. This creates multiple perspectives about your home environment to support your cognitive abilities.
Greenery
Greenery is fun, striking and excellent for improving your health. Your health can benefit from indoor plants by filtrating populated air to enhance its quality and oxygen release. Having greenery in your home – both inside and outside – can help manage your stress and reduce elements of depression to keep you calmer and improve your productivity.
Further Reading: Six House Plants that Clean the Air we Breathe in Our Home
In addition to adding some indoor plants to your home, you can take an extravagant approach by installing green roofing. Green roofs won’t only benefit your health but your home maintenance and repair costs as they can last three times longer than other conventional roofing materials. This means a long-lasting benefit on your home investment.
Safety and Security
When it comes to ways your home affects your health and wellbeing – the safety and security of your home are essential for your family’s well being and other people who access your property. It is vital to take measures to make your home free of hazards and equip it with tools to prevent common accidents like falls and fires.
Further Reading: 5 Top Tips for Child-Proofing Your Home
You may want to incorporate other healthy habits in the house to keep you and your family safe. You want to keep your children and pets from getting access to cleaning supplies, medications and other toxic substances in the home. It would be best to reassess your storage for these products to ensure they are effective and adequate.
From repair to maintenance, home design and décor, your home commands your most attention which is why you spend a lot of time thinking about it. Hopefully, you have found this article, ‘12 Ways Your Home Affects Your Health and Wellbeing‘, insightful and it helps you invest in the right home improvement to benefit your physical and mental health.
Photos by – Toa Heftiba – CCO Licence
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