Space Psychology & Design Elements

Psychology of Space

The psychology of space provides insight into how the proper environment makes a person feel and perform. Design elements like lines, space distribution, materials, color, textures, lighting, and installations all play a crucial role.

Lines in Design

Different types of lines can make spaces easier or more difficult to navigate, create dynamism or stability, unity or confusion within an environment. A predominance of vertical lines in a room makes the ceiling seem higher. Upholstered chairs with vertical stripes also produce a sensation of added height, while horizontal stripes make it seem lower. Parallel lines are always harmonious and characteristic, conveying a sense of pleasure and repetitive tranquility. Curved lines can be fun or impose an artificial character on the ensemble. Highly repeated short horizontal and vertical lines produce excessive dynamism and mobility.

Distribution of Spaces

When designing any public or private space, one must take into account human measurements. This includes the dimensions by which people must move and inhabit these environments. It is necessary to know the dimensions of the static human body (standing, sitting, or lying), but also those derived from movements for various activities.

Basic Design Notions

To put a decoration project into practice, one must take into account the composition of color. It is essential in every decorative scheme, influencing the colors of floors, walls, ceilings, furniture, curtains, and auxiliary elements. Materials should be chosen carefully, both for their color and for their texture or appearance. Installations must also be considered when planning the decorative project. Sometimes, the placement of contrasting elements is allowed.

The Role of Color

Given its unique expressive character in addition to its decorative possibilities, color is considered a particularly important factor in the creation of harmonious environments. Total integration exists when producing a unity of colors pleasing to the eye, creating a serene, balanced contrast. A kind of shock that sets up a more vital and dynamic color scheme occurs when different colors are united.

The Impact of Lighting

Lighting is a factor that intervenes decisively in the aesthetic ambiance, along with formal composition and stylistic ornamentation. Light has plastic, decorative, and environmental values regardless of its functional ones. Natural light is determined by the location of the room, its orientation, and different exterior openings. Artificial light helps us to create more comfortable spaces and enhance them through its various applications, amount, and type. The light that any environmental space receives responds to two basic techniques:

• Direct light: Projected directly from the source, sending light in a determined direction.
• Indirect light: Light that goes to the ceiling to create a diffuse light, often channeled from a source hidden by moldings, wood, or glass.

Reflectors provide highly targeted direct light and are useful to enhance a decorative element. Screens are floor lamps that act as a complement to the environmental light. The distribution of luminosity helps define the orientation and composition of objects in the space. Light produces a number of effects: it creates feelings of subdivision or fusion, makes elements in the space striking or go unnoticed, spaces can be transformed, proportions change, and it can optically lighten weight or mass, or produce the opposite effect.