7 Ways to Create a Calm and Cozy Home

We’ve been enjoying having friends over to see our new home now that the pandemic situation is improving. It’s been such a joy to hear how calm and cozy our home feels to our friends, so I wanted to share my process for how I created a calm and cozy home with you, because you can totally do this, too!

Form your vision

One of the best ways to tackle a big project is to get organized. When I think back some of the most stressful moments in my life, a lot of them came from not being able to envision what comes next. It is so unsettling to me when I don’t have a frame of reference for what will happen in terms of the big picture. One example that comes to mind is before I left for Navy boot camp. I had Googled and read a lot of people’s stories and descriptions of boot camp, but I did not have a visual for what it would look like, and that led to me hardly sleeping the week before I left! This also showed up in grad school- it’s really hard to write a paper when you lack a unifying idea to get started. Based on this, one of the most important components for designing an inviting, calm and cozy home is having a vision. Start with the big picture and all the little details will fall into place. Envision the experience you want to create by being in this space, this room. Ask yourself:

What’s the sensory experience I want to have in this space?
How do I envision it in terms of what it feels like, what I see, what I hear, and what I smell?
What colors and themes complement that?
What flow suits that?

Create an experience

After you’ve got a vision for what a calm and cozy home means for you, it’s time to put that into action. Thinking of it in terms of the sensory experience was helpful to me in decorating our current home. It was easier to know what I was looking for when I knew how I wanted the space to feel.

Our sensory processing system is the way our bodies receive information from our environment, process that information, and then respond with our nervous system. The experience I wanted to create with our home was one of serenity, calm, and warmth to soothe the nervous system. For me, that means lots of natural light, simple greenery, neutral colors, and meaningful decor. The coziness comes from plush textures on the soft surfaces in the room, and candles that create a warm glow and gentle smell of mint, lemon, eucalyptus, or seasonal scents.

Choose a color palette

Colors are so important in a space, especially when you’re seeking to cultivate a calm and cozy home. The best example I can think of is in terms of advertising in fast food restaurants. Brighter colors are more upregulating, and apparently encourage people to eat more. I wonder if it’s an association with a bright color that connects to a positive experience, encouraging an individual to want to eat more food. Several fast food restaurants have red and yellow color schemes, like McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, Hardee’s, Sonic, and In & Out Burger.

I went through a brief phase where I tried to like bright, bold colors in home decor. The spaces I tried it in never felt balanced or serene to me, though. I painted an accent wall yellow in my first apartment with my husband looking for warmth, but ended up feeling overstimulated at the holidays by too many bright colors. I’ve found that I really love the calming effects of neutrals and how easy it is to decorate for each of the seasons around a neutral color palette as the backdrop year-round. Figure out a few grounding colors that feel fitting for your calm and cozy home, and build around them. If you’re feeling like you need some direction to get started, explore color palettes for the home on Pinterest to get inspired.

Foster cohesion with a theme

Cultivate a calm and cozy home by grounding your home decor and furnishing with a theme. When we moved into our new home, I knew I wanted to keep it neutral while warming up the sterile whites and cool grays used by the renovators. I’ve used a lot of beige and ivory, textured pieces, wood decor, and greenery to bring warmth, depth, and coziness to our space. I’m not too big on labels, but I would classify our home as a compilation of transitional and modern farmhouse home decor if I had to. In terms of furniture, however, I am drawn to mid-century modern pieces because there is space between the ground and the bottom of the sofa. Both my family room and living room are narrow and furniture that drops all the way to the ground looks too bulky for my vision of how I want the space to look.

Themes offer lots of space for personalization in home decor with how much space there is for creativity and individuality. Even if several people decorated their homes with the same theme in mind, how we each chose to decorate within that theme would be different. One of my favorite ways I personalized my home was with a gallery wall of our engagement and wedding photos. I knew I wanted to keep the frames simple and neutral and let the colors of our photos add some depth to the room. It also feels like an engaging way to tell our love story with decor. One of my dearest friends told me that she was instantly drawn to the gallery wall when she entered our home for the first time. I can’t tell you how much delight that brought to my heart.

Here are some themes to explore and see what best fits your version of a calm and cozy home:

Transitional– Think Studio McGee (and check out their Dream Home Makeover show on Netflix. Loooove this show!)
Modern farmhouse– Think Chip and Joanna Gaines
Coastal
Mid-century modern
Rustic
Bohemian
Industrial
French Country

Consider the flow

Especially in a metropolitan area, the likelihood of living in a smaller space is high for many people. Considering the flow is so important, especially in small spaces. Think of it like visiting a city that’s not designed on a grid, so when you’re driving around for the first few times, it can feel pretty tough to access the places you want to go because it’s not intuitive. When crafting your plans for a calm and cozy home, think about the most natural way to move through a space and how you want to connect one space to another.

When planning the flow, think in terms of furniture placement and in terms of continuity of the theme. It can be challenging to determine where to place furniture hypothetically. I am definitely a hands-on person and get the clearest idea of where things should go when I have all the pieces in the space physically. If you just moved and you’re on a strict budget (moving can be quite expensive!), this can be further complicated by having to make do with furniture that doesn’t necessarily fit your new space. Another factor in some areas is that renovated or older homes might not have the most intuitive design for flowing from space to space.

To navigate within these potential limits, create pathways with furniture to show the flow from room to room. It’s important to have a clear, intuitive entrance and exit to each space. Something I love about our current house is that the floor plan is so intuitive. First-time guests can easily find their way around without directions or a tour. Our last house was less organized, however, and while I liked its quirkiness initially, a predictable structure is certainly more calming.

For decorative items, having a theme throughout the whole house helps with how the space flows because some decor can be interchangeable from room to room depending on the circumstances. This makes it easy to keep things feeling fresh without purchasing something new all the time. Having complementary decor from room to room also helps to connect the rooms in terms of the overall sensory experience of being in your space. I like to think of the house as one big puzzle and each room is a piece of the puzzle. When you put the whole puzzle together, you want it to feels complete and have an understanding of how each piece connects to the whole.

Simplify, simplify, simplify

Avoid clutter at all costs when seeking to craft a calm and cozy home. Clutter is the antithesis of a calm and cozy home. I grew up in a home with a significant amount of clutter and never felt settled or comfortable as a child. My childhood home felt chaotic and overwhelming, and I never wanted to have friends over to play or stay for sleepovers. I choose to live much differently than the way I grew up and love that everything has an intentional place in my home. So, clear your countertops in the kitchen, get those coats in the closet, find a place to neatly organize or tuck shoes out of sight, and organize those bookshelves.

Keep your decor simple, too. Choose only meaningful objects to make space for in your home. I’m not a fan of trinkets or tchotchkes, although I was when I was younger. I’ve found, though, that the most important moments can be preserved in our hearts more so than in an item and feel like my wedding day exemplifies this. My husband and I exchanged simple and meaningful gifts before our first look, and while I treasure those gifts dearly, our photos are what really take me back to that most cherished day.

Balance function and aesthetics

It’s important to me to have decor that has a purpose- that’s meaningful- but I also want it to look appealing. Calm and cozy home vibes naturally lend themselves to simple, meaningful decor options.

Be patient when searching for new items to add to your home so that you’re able to find a balance between the appeal of the item and it’s ability to serve whatever purpose you’re needing. Searching for kitchen canisters took nearly 8 months until I found the look and functionality I was wanting. I wanted canisters that sealed well to keep food fresh and free of moisture. I also knew that I wanted them to be white or ivory with wooden lids so they would bring warmth to the cool gray backsplash behind them. Thankfully, I found these canisters at my beloved Hobby Lobby!

There are times, however, when one quality outweighs the other. One example is our Berkey water filter. It’s a big shiny silver canister sitting on our countertop that sticks out like a sore thumb! I am constantly brainstorming alternative solutions for it’s placement, but the function of the filter far outweighs the desired aesthetic for our kitchen. The Berkey ensures that we’re drinking well-filtered water by removing more than 200 contaminants in tap water. That is so worth the investment and deviation from the theme of our home.