What Is Holistic Interior Design?

“Where holistic design really shines is in the influence it has on your energy even when you’re not at home.

“I believe your home tells a story about who you are and who you aspire to be. We represent ourselves through the things we own. I don't believe in trends. I believe in collecting things that you connect with. We should surround ourselves with things we care about, that have meaning.” - Nate Berkus

WHAT MAKES IT HOLISTIC?

I’m going to let you in on a secret. Holistic design is just design + awareness. It doesn’t look any different than just regular old design, and I’ve quite literally never met a designer who doesn’t feel that a well designed home is essential to living our best lives. Most designers I’ve talked to would agree that our stuff isn’t just stuff, it’s a reflection of us, and as such, it’s important to choose what we have in our spaces wisely. So - if we’re all on the same page with this, why bother with the distinction then?

It’s the awareness. The heightened awareness of how every aspect of each item in a space affects the people inside it - that’s the secret sauce. The color, shape, material, and position of every last thing in our homes (and offices) has a very real effect on us. Even more so if that thing happens to be very personal or have a memory attached to it. A holistic stylist will likely have trained in various energetic modalities, (for me, that means Feng Shui, Reiki, Meditation, as well as spending years learning how to tap into intuition) have knowledge about how these physical aspects mesh with the intangible, and will incorporate that into the design plan. They will ask you a ton of questions at your first meeting, and don't be surprised if most of them seem to have nothing to do with design. If holistic design is to create a space where you can truly recharge, restore, and reconnect, then the holistic designer needs to be part aesthetic authority, part detective, part life coach, and part intuitive. Think of us as your favorite confidant who you can spill your deepest secrets to, with not just great skills and taste in design, but the ability to recognize alignment - and misalignment - when we see it.

A holistic designer is going to prioritize whatever it is that works best for you. We might love a trend, but what good is a trend if you don’t feel at home in your space? Imagine that you’re walking into a gorgeous new restaurant for the first time. The entry is stunning, and gives you a hint at what you’re about to see inside. The bar is like nothing you’ve ever seen before, the restaurant itself is magical, and you’ve heard that you just can’t leave without seeing how fabulous the bathroom is. You take this all in, embrace the eye candy all around you, but as spectacular as it all is, you can’t help thinking OMG, I could never, ever live here. That. That is the feeling of being out of alignment with your surroundings. And that’s where the intuitive part of holistic design comes in. While there are some “rules” that go along with practices like Feng Shui or color therapy, holistic design is all about combining the benefits of those practices with not only your personality and lifestyle, but your energy.

IT’S NOT AN AESTHETIC

I hear this a lot - “I love holistic design, I’m super into minimalism” or “I don’t want to not have color in my house - isn’t holistic design all about neutrals and natural materials?” So, a holistic design could be either of these, because it’s not about any aesthetic in particular. Your space can be neutral and minimal, or it can be like a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors, and they would both be considered a holistic design plan as long as they were considered from an energetic point of view, as well as visual, from the beginning. Color, especially, carries frequencies that affect us on a subconscious level. As long as the colors in our spaces have frequencies that work with, instead of against, our own, they’ll support us. Same goes for shapes, and to some extent, materials.

HERE’S WHERE IT REALLY GETS GOOD

OK, so we’re going to design a space from a holistic perspective. We’re going to consider the frequencies of the colors, materials, and shapes and we’re going to position everything so that the balance of the room, traffic flow, and compass direction are aligned with what works best for us, and we’re going to love being in our home. This is pretty much the objective of any designer, whether they use terms like “energy” and “aligned” or whether they speak about “having a connection to things” - it’s all saying the same thing really.  Where holistic design really shines is in the influence it has on your energy even when you’re not at home. Our energy travels with us, and is constantly either attracting or repelling. Like energy attracts like energy, so when we improve the energy of both our homes and ourselves (remember - holistic means “whole” - we are upleveling energy as a whole), we attract energy that matches ours when we go out into the world. When we’re “better” (or higher vibration), we attract “better” - better relationships, better experiences, better connections, better experiences at work, better health, better everything as a whole. Imagine that all of your efforts to improve your space actually have this brilliant side effect of actually improving your work, your friendships, your sex life, your health… ??!!

True story - it took me decades of working in a creative field paired with more than a couple of life altering situations to finally get this connection. For years I struggled to reconcile what seemed like opposing interests - design, aesthetics, and material objects, paired with energy, wellness, self care, and a commitment to self awareness. Then one day, it clicked. It happened during a very, very long renovation of my own home. My home had been a construction site for years, and I was literally starving to have even just a tiny part of my own space that felt good to be in. I began styling any tiny corner or surface that I could, even before the renovation was done. Often it’d be just a bookshelf, or a nightstand, or a little corner of our temporary living room - nothing that’d be noticeable to anyone else. I realized that even the smallest vignette that I’d designed with energetic awareness felt like this bright spot in the madness. This was around the same time that I was diving into studying meditation, and becoming aware of energetic resonance. These little bright spots felt calm and quiet, much in the way that meditation did. That realization sent me down a rabbit hole  - I needed to know not just why they felt like this, but how to re-create this in a bigger way. If a tiny shelf could bring peace and focus to my own personal war zone, how amazing would it be if I could replicate this in every room? And who wouldn’t want a space that was not only gorgeous, but restorative? Lucky for me, my rabbit hole led to studying the practices that would make this connection crystal clear, and now that I know, I wouldn’t dream of not incorporating energy alignment into any design or styling project.