Biophilic Design

What is biophilic design and how can you incorporate it in your home?

Biophilic design is a huge trend in both interior and exterior design. Stemming from nature, the trend is about forging a connection to natural environments from within the home. Using natural elements, biophilic interior design schemes can benefit from a huge number of benefits including boosted moods, productivity and wellbeing.

Following a biophilic design is proven to help general wellbeing, with statistics showing a 15% increase in the wellbeing of employees in offices that incorporate biophilia. But it doesn’t stop at work, wellbeing in the home has become an essential consideration, particularly during 2020 when we have all spent more time in our homes.

There are 5 key elements to consider when striving to achieve a biophilic design, these are views, natural light, plants, natural materials and fake elements. This article will give insight into all these elements and explore how best to implement them.

Starting with views – if you are lucky enough to be living in a rural location or have a home with garden views, using minimally framed or frameless glazing systems forges a stronger connection with the outdoor environment. Oversized glazing brings with it an abundance of benefits, including strengthening the connection to garden spaces. Using slim framed sliding doors from IQ Glass gives you a flush threshold, for seamless travel between the two environments.

Highly glazed homes create brightly lit spaces and boast uninterrupted views that are perfect for productivity. If dedicated wellness spaces are created within a home, these will always be highly glazed areas, often with floor to ceiling glass, for an indoor-outdoor style of living.

Natural light is already an extremely desirable factor when buying or building a home, making any property more desirable. It is arguably the most crucial part of biophilic design, being the number one factor that merges indoor and outdoor spaces. Using slim framed systems and large elevations of glass ensures the maximum amount of natural light can be gained throughout internal living spaces.

A rising trend for the last few years is house plants. Proven to enhance the quality of life as well as the air quality. House plants are little responsibility with big reward, perfect for creating biophilic environments and bringing nature inside. In residential developments, wintergardens are often used as amenity space. This popular design means you can have your own garden without being outside. There are plenty of modern ways to incorporate a wintergarden, including a retractable glass roof, for optional outside space in the warmer months and a flexible approach.

Another element that goes into biophilic design is materials. Although we may not consider this at first glance, building materials and furniture choices can have a huge impact on how connected to nature we feel. In some cases, people like to mimic outdoor environments with subtle design choices. This could take the form of wall panelling in the style of a beehive – mimicking a naturally occurring design.

Using natural wood or stone on the exterior as well as throughout makes us feel better connected to nature. When considering the views from highly glazed window or door systems, wooden cladding can be incorporated to offer a form of solar shading in keeping with biophilia. Technowood offer natural materials for exterior cladding, using up to 98% less timber in production to offer sustainable materials. Given that sustainability is key in the design process, natural materials that are also sustainable are highly desirable.

Last of the 5 key elements is fake elements. By this, we don’t mean fake plants. Instead, as most of us aren’t lucky enough to live on the coast, consider framing a picture of a sea view. Alternatively, incorporate a feature wall using wallpaper with natural elements on the design. Although these are not strictly real elements, they will still enhance the connection to outdoors and increase positivity within a biophilic design. art choices and furniture can be selected to reflect outdoor environments, even in the heart of the home. Opting for wood interior features can make your inside space feel more outdoorsy and faux fur touches can be used to add textures you would find outdoors.

When merging exterior and interior spaces, often privacy is a large consideration. Thanks to Grants Blinds, you can create large elevations of glazing with completely concealed blind systems. Designed to offer flexible blind solutions for any shape or size of glass, the blinds can even be fully automated or integrated within your smart home system.

When natural light is not possible in the evenings or during winter, artificial lighting has evolved to become the next best thing. Intelligent lighting systems from IndigoZest can mimic natural patterns of light to align with our biological systems. The experts at IndigoZest understand the body clock takes the majority of its cues from the visible light and tap into that to create human centric lighting, never forgetting the importance of light quality itself.

If you’re thinking about incorporating biophilic design in your next project or want to hear how our tenants can offer advice and guidance to achieve this, simply get in touch with us. We are always on hand to discuss ideas and offer design advice.