Design Anatomy
Welcome to Design Anatomy, where we examine the world of interiors and design. With a shared passion for joyful, colour-filled, and lived-in spaces, Bree Banfield and Lauren Li are excited to share their insights and inspiration with you.
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Design Anatomy
Hygge at Home: Colour, Light, and Comfort Matters
The Danish concept of "hygge" (pronounced hoo-ga) has captivated the world for good reason—it's the secret to creating spaces that nurture wellbeing rather than just looking pretty. Lauren and Bree dive deep into what makes a home truly feel good, challenging the sterile white aesthetic that has dominated Australian interiors for too long.
Drawing from their design expertise and personal experiences, they explore how our spaces profoundly shape our behaviour, mental state, and capacity for connection. While Australia boasts the largest homes in the world, a surprising 15% of Australians report feeling lonely—suggesting our cavernous houses might be doing more harm than good.
The conversation reveals four essential elements that create that coveted hygge feeling: thoughtful colour choices beyond stark white, layered lighting that creates intimate pools rather than harsh overhead illumination, genuine comfort (both perceived and actual), and appropriate scale that fosters coziness rather than isolation. Lauren shares a transformative experience at Stockholm's Ett Hem hotel designed by Ilse Crawford that perfectly embodies these principles.
What makes this discussion particularly valuable is the practical advice woven throughout. You don't need a complete renovation to bring hygge into your home—sometimes it's as simple as adding soft textiles, introducing varied lighting sources, or creating dedicated gathering spaces where family naturally comes together.
Whether you're building, renovating, or simply wanting to enhance your current space, this episode offers a fresh perspective on how thoughtful design directly contributes to health and happiness. Because ultimately, your home should make you feel good, not just look good.
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Welcome to Design Anatomy, the interior design podcast hosted by friends and fellow designers, me, brie Banfield and me, lauren Lee, with some amazing guest appearances along the way. We're here to break down everything from current trends to timeless style, with a shared passion for joyful, colour-filled and lived-in spaces. We're excited to share our insights and inspiration with you. And what are we going to talk about today, lauren? Well, actually on the weekend I went to Adelaide, radelaide. You mean, yeah, I love it, I love it. I just love the fact that it's so traffic friendly compared to Melbourne oh my God, most places are at the moment. It's such a novelty, but I was there for the KBDI conference. So every year it's the Kitchen and Bathroom Association, Kitchen and Bathroom Design Association or something like that. I don't know exactly what it stands for, but I was pretty yeah, I was pretty honoured actually to be invited to speak at their conference and what we talked about was wellbeing and touched on the concept of hygge as well. So I was like you know what? I really think that we haven't even talked about that in our podcast yet and it might be a fun topic to dive into and I love trying to say the word I think that's how you say it, I'm pretty sure, but please correct us if we're saying it wrong.
Speaker 1:I remember when that first started to be sort of thrown around that word, and everyone's like what, hagi, higi, hug, and then what? And then we find out it's hugo and we're like, ah, none of us worked that out. No, was way off. Yeah, so I guess the thing with that concept of hygge, it was like, I don't know, maybe 10 or so years ago there was like a book that came out and it was just sold in every bookshop. Yeah, yeah, and I think it was literally just called that, wasn't it? Or something with the tagline, but I feel like that was the name of the book. Yeah, I think there was like one well-known one that came out and then a few others were like oh, let's bring out a book as well, because this is like a whole thing.
Speaker 1:And I think when I think of the word hygge, what comes to mind is like warm, fuzzy socks, hot chocolate, open fire, you know this kind of thing. But I think today, hopefully, we'll dive a little bit deeper into what it can mean for how we live, and related to interior design Makes sense, I suppose. So what is hygge, I guess, is a good place to start right. Yeah, what? How do we break it down? Well, I think hygge is not just a look, it's more a feeling, and I think you know you and I are pretty aligned about how a space feels is really important. You know, we we love talking about color and you know different kind of style, directions and things, but at the end of the day, I think it's just really important to really always come back to how a space feels, absolutely. I think that's what our aim is usually, isn't it? When we work with anyone on any space, or even if I go back to creating content and creating images, it always comes back to how we want someone to feel about something. So, yeah, it's very connected to feeling and not just prettiness, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:And when I started to think about this concept of, you know, wellness in our spaces, I looked up who were the happiest people in the world and apparently it's Finland. They've been number one for quite a few years, yeah, and those other Nordic countries are pretty close behind as well. And it's things like the GDP, life expectancy, governance and things like that. But it's also social support, generosity and freedom to make choices. And when I started to think about that. It's feeling connection and trust. They have a really high sense of trust in things and a sense of safety, and I think that's what spaces can nurture those things.
Speaker 1:In fact, we talk about that all the time. Like you know, in trend forecasting, when there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, we do talk about this kind of like cocooning effect and wanting to be somewhere safe, and that home is this safety. We try not to use that word because it sounds like something a bit scary is going on, and I think it is. It's like it's really scary out there. So home is this haven where we want to escape to, where we can be completely ourselves, be surrounded by things that make us feel good, and then that's what makes us feel safe. So there's all those things that you know you have to tick the boxes for right, and you know a space that feels yourself like is so important. But also you want to feel yourself in your home, but you also want your guests to feel themselves in your home too.
Speaker 1:And I mean, I feel like when I think about that in the first episode or the second episode of and Just Like that, remember when Carrie is like, oh my gosh, my husband's just died, I need to sell that apartment, yeah. And she goes and she looks at this penthouse and it's the best penthouse on offer in New York the bright white one. Amazing, exactly. So there she is, standing at this bright white kitchen, stark white, shiny materials. But there she is, this colourful person with a hat, with a scarf and everything. She's not herself. All the layers and all the feels and all the tactility that she has, yeah, yeah, all her personality, and I feel like that's a lot of homes in australia, these bright white spaces. I mean, I'm going to be banging on about this until I die. I think probably me too.
Speaker 1:I just don't feel like you can be yourself in a place, in a space that feels so sterile and just no texture, no color. It does not, does not feel relaxing, it's not. It's like living in a warehouse or something that's overly lit and designed for work or something. How is it relaxing? I don't know how it can be. I know I was really worried. So I've just moved house and, as you know, I had painted a few of my rooms in my last place I rent and I'm moving now into another white space and I was so scared. I would feel like like that, like, just like, really it does affect my happiness 100%. It sounds like this sort of superficial thing and it's definitely not. It's been okay because the light's really beautiful in here and they actually have drapes, so there's some tactility and softness, and then I've got all of my stuff in there, obviously, which changes it and brings all the color.
Speaker 1:But there's this fear for me of living in like soulless spaces and going around to find a new home. It reminded me how many awful places there are out there. When I say awful, like yes, there's a lot of issues with functionality, and I'm not talking about something being old or even something being brand new, it's just soullessness. It's kind of soulless feeling when you walk into a space and I know you bring a lot into a home when you move into it the shell itself can do so much already for you, right, agree? And you know, if you have a space like that Kerry Bradshaw, in that stark white space, it's like even her presence looks messy. Even a phone on the island bench looks messy, like even the smallest thing. You try to make it feel at home but there's nowhere for anything to properly live. It's just like a gallery space where everything is sort of heightenly on display and looks messy, so I'm just not about it, nowhere to hide. Yeah, exactly, you're under the spotlight.
Speaker 1:And when I was looking into this topic a bit more, I was looking into some statistics on you know that happiness index and I found out that 15% of Australians reported loneliness in 2023, according to the HILDA survey. And social isolation is directly linked to poor mental and physical health. So I'm like, okay, we know that there's like a loneliness epidemic. It's no joke, it's serious. How can our environment help with that? How can we feel more nurtured and connected in our spaces? And then, when you look at the size of an Australian home, it's the largest homes in the world. They're 214 square meters. We're so disconnected, even in our own home, and I actually feel like that's really so wrong on so many levels that we're building houses this big when we're all off on our own little, in our own rooms, in our own quarters, in our own home. We also have a housing crisis, don't we? So I mean, I know there's a lot of talk about how to fix that and I guess a lot of dual-oc sort of situations happening.
Speaker 1:That's what I've moved into here in a townhouse, but there was this funny sense of when in my older home it was very big and it was exactly what you're talking about. It was a sort of spec build with four bedrooms, a study, a living area, a meals area, a dining room, another living area upstairs and another like kids room at the back, and it was, and I didn't, I didn't sort of choose it for those reasons. It's just ended up happening to be the best place for us to go at the time. But I always had this weird feeling about it being too big and even like so, my, the main bedroom, was big enough for me to have my queen size bed, bedside tables, a whole sofa, a big coffee table, another chair. It was a living room. And then you walked through the walk-in robe. I do I do, slightly miss my walk-in robe, though that's practical. That's practical. That's storage. I did use that. Well, I probably used that better than I did my bedroom Into a bathroom which had a bath and a separate toilet and a big, big shower, and it was like I could have probably did dance in there many times, pirouetting, you know, with my arms out.
Speaker 1:I would bet my life on it that you danced in that bathroom, because when we stayed in that Paris hotel, you guys, the music, the singing, it was the most joyful thing. Yeah, there's probably not a room I haven't danced in in any of the houses but it was just. It was sort of this kind of yucky feeling of excess and I like it's nice to have big spaces. But to the point where before I had to move, weirdly, before I was told that we had to move, we did have to. It wasn't a choice at the time and that's just because moving is awful I had these weird feelings of feeling almost suffocated in a house that was so big I can't explain it.
Speaker 1:I think it would be more about it being small, but it was just. It was this feeling of kind of excess and that I didn't need it and it was like bothering me that I had all this space. That was kind of just like wasteful. There was this wasteful feeling. I don't know we're getting off track, but yeah, I think it's like you sort of feel this. I can see how I would feel it was. Like one night there's usually someone here, but you know, my kids are pretty grown up and all the teenagers and grown up. So sometimes, very rarely, I'm at home and no one's there, and when it happened, it was just me and the dog and we would be like using one tiny space in this huge house, and you do feel more lonely, I think, if the home was smaller and you're kind of, I don't know, like there is definitely a factor in the size of our spaces and how do we need all that space? We don't, we just need to use it better. Yes, oh, that's so interesting, isn't it? So we aspire for big, big houses, multiple living rooms.
Speaker 1:You know the butler's pantry, which is another rant for another day, or I could, I mean it could set me off anyway, I don't have one of those now. I have got no butler's pantry. Be very happy. Well, to be honest, it's not about a butler's pantry, it's about double kitchens. Really, it's about having a kitchen for show and another kitchen where the actual cooking happens.
Speaker 1:Again, it's that you mentioned wasteful. That doesn't make you feel good, I don't think, when you feel a sense of wastefulness in your home and I think that at different stages of life, I mean sure your boys don't want to hang out with each other and you, no offence, every minute of the day, not all the time, but I still think that there are times when families should be together and this is just my own idea, which is mealtimes Like that should be effortless for a family to sit around a table. And actually I just visited a client today and they just moved in and there's a U-shaped sort of kitchen and they were thinking about renovating it and putting an island bench in the middle so they could put stools up in the kitchen. But they've put a beautiful old it's like a French rustic farm table, farmhouse table, surrounded by chairs, in the middle of the kitchen. So they were amazed about how they all sit together as a family and just a simple chair and tables has brought them together just for chats, just for coffee, just for yeah, I mean, because it's inviting, right.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's. You know, they've had stalls, they've had an island bench, but there's nothing as simple and as as powerful as a table and chairs. Like I mean, yeah, it's nothing new, but I just feel like we're so focused on kitchens. But what we need to focus on is a dining experience. And it's funny too there's one of the trends that we've talked about for next year is kind of this revival of dining on all those levels, on this kind of bringing people together, creating convivial moments, making it really inviting for the simple casual thing that we're talking about, like where it's just impromptu, and also kind of creating these more grand dining experiences and really, you know, focusing on it being all about that. And I think it's because people want that connection.
Speaker 1:So even those sort of more grand, amazing kind of events that are focused around dining are still really about, you know, at its core, about connection, because we love to connect over food and I think if we had to talk about something to do with Australian culture which you know I struggle with trying to work out exactly what that is I do think that that's part of it and I think that's probably to do with the fact that we have, you know, come from immigrants from all over the world, and particularly Europeans, and they love to connect over food right, and I think that has been passed down into an Australian culture. We might do it slightly differently, but it's really important. That's one of those moments that's kind of casual enough that you can actually have a conversation with, maybe, yeah, like your family that you haven't seen for all week, or whenever it is if everyone's coming together in that moment, it lets you guard down a little bit, I think, when you, when it's about the food, that's nice. Well, I mean, you know, my husband feels chinese and it's the same obviously. I think it's the same in pretty much every culture. Food brings people together and it is right, the feasts. So I've just identified another thing that isn't unique about a story and culture.
Speaker 1:Sorry, yes, well, I, when I was writing the French book the New French Look, I was looking for images of kitchens. I'm like, why am I not finding images of kitchens? It's because that's not the heart of the home, it's the dining experience. And I was like that's really interesting, because they literally stop for lunchtime every day. They don't just like grab something in the car and go, like they are. It's actually that culture that's quite ingrained, which I think that we some do, some don't. It's not part of our culture to stop for lunch and sit at a table. No way, no, it definitely isn't. Yeah, or even, you know, in Europe it's not unusual to go home for lunch. You know, even if you're at work, if you're not far to head home, I mean, hopefully they'll hold on to that for, like, some of that sort of seeping away.
Speaker 1:But I think also that's that whole thing of you know, when you do see Parisian or even Italian kitchens, they're usually quite small, they're not our ridiculous kitchens, and they have a table in them, whether that's a tiny table or whatever it is. So it is kind of all quite contained and small and everything kind of happens in that one space, right, and I think you know that goes back to that idea of hygge. It is you can hygge by yourself or you can hygge with others. Is that how you say it? I don't know, I'm gonna go hygge by myself, but it's like, don't question me. Yeah, it's something that it brings people together. It's that warm and fuzzy feeling when you're sitting around the table, and it's easy. There's a table there, there's a deck of cards there, I don't know, sitting around playing uno or something like that, like it's a very good thing, yes, a very good board game, yeah, yes, yes. So it's the feel, I guess. Would you break it down, it's how you create the feelings in your home, and so hygge could be kind of different for everyone in a way. Right, I think so Does it have to be all the same? I mean, there are some basic things. Well, I think that there's some things I kind of jotted down.
Speaker 1:Colour I don't know if we can hygge in a completely white space. No, not if it's very cold and minimal. I mean, I don't think there's a lot of hygge going on in, like, you know, doctor's surgery, or no, exactly Is there? I don't think so, not in the actual surgery itself. Maybe in the waiting room there could be some hygge.
Speaker 1:So, lighting I think lighting is essential. I feel like that's even I would go as far to say that lighting is more important than colour. Yeah, same Blasphemy, I know, coming from my mouth. However, if we do have an all white, bright space, you can, without painting at all, you know, and doing the extreme things, you could just change the lighting and make a huge difference, right? Well, you know, we bang on about white spaces, and I think somebody who does white spaces so well is leanne ford, and they are loaded with hygge, good feels, you know, she's got the record player, the music, it's amped up in the texture, it's layered lighting and it's uh, it's cozy and it has a warmth to it, even if it's softness too, right, yeah, and that can come from the type of lighting. See, even if you have, like quite a cool white, you can actually.
Speaker 1:I guess the greatest benefit of white is you can adjust the warmth just through light. You can actually add a little bit of warmth to your very clinically white space by having warm lighting and kind of pulling it all down and not using, you know, the overheads or any kind of white light at all. I can pull it all back, that's true. Yeah, not that I'm advocating for the all white spaces. Well, yeah, they can be done. Well. So you want to create little pools of lighting, to create like little intimate corners. It's about a textured lighting effect. So you'll have a pendant light for general lighting. You'll have table lamps, floor lamps, wall sconces maybe Absolutely I love that or something that at least hits the wall with light. So you know, I think it's great if you can't have wall lights or you don't have wall lights, if you have a lamp where you can direct the light or it's got uplighting in the lamp, it just creates that beautiful glow that maybe hits the wall, hits the ceiling, without it being, you know, crazy. Yeah, I think that's really nice, that indirect lighting.
Speaker 1:Another one is comfort. So I think that you know, and I mean, it sounds like so obvious, doesn't it? But sometimes, I mean, as we were saying, even if you're talking about a kitchen, an island bench situation which turns into where the family does all of their shares, their meals, together, is it actually comfortable sitting precariously on a stool, yes, or would you prefer sitting on a dining chair? But also, it's not just how comfortable it feels to sit on, but it's also how inviting it looks. I was about to say exactly that. So that's comfort is seen first, right, and then enjoyed, like through feel. So you might look at something that looks comfortable and you sort of head towards it and it's inviting. You look at it and it's like you know, sharp angles and cold looking, you're like, well, that doesn't look so comfortable. So visually it has to kind of invite you in, and that's that tactility moment often, isn't it? It's whether there's perceived softness or something about it that you want to touch or be close to. That makes sense. I like that. Yeah, it's comfort is seen first. I like that. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:And I think the fourth one that I kind of thought could be scale, which is kind of what we've talked about. You know those big, oversized, cavernous spaces, you actually feel kind of exposed. I mean, even if it's in your own house, it doesn't feel good to be in a one big space with lots of windows. I don't know. People feel more comfortable being in a space where we can feel a bit more of a boundary. Well, it comes back to, I guess, a perceived safeness as well. Right, you're not as exposed. There's something creating safety, whether that's tactility or not, having your back to cold, even with windows.
Speaker 1:As much as I love big windows and obviously different homes in different areas, it suits different things but I actually even hate even if it's like this amazing view and all these grand windows, I still kind of want to be able to like have a little sheer tactility drape moment, just to kind of break it a little bit, because it can be a bit much, can't it? It is quite. You do feel like you're very exposed and you can't maybe fully relax unless you have that at some point you can sit there and take in the view and have those moments, but you don't always want to feel like that. Sometimes you want to have a little bit of I don't know a little cozy, cocoony moment. I agree, I mean, where we are, we've got big windows and because we can move from apartments before we lived in an apartment and we had shears you could close. You know you do want that privacy because there's other apartment buildings but you're up high and you know that somebody can't walk past your window.
Speaker 1:But when we were here the first few nights I was a bit scared because I couldn't see. I couldn't see anything outside, yeah, so you would have been used to seeing other lights and other buildings and then all of a sudden you're like countryside kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, country, but it looks like the countryside. Yeah, and we did, we did put some shears up on a window. Um, that does help with that feeling of feeling, of feeling safe. But you weren't thinking that all the kangaroos were just standing out there staring at you. They, they could have been, you couldn't see them, I couldn't see them. So I sort of thought color, lighting, comfort and scale were some key things that can create that sense of hygge in our home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the other I guess slightly still important but that you could add into those layers would be, um, scent and how things smell, right, so you could have all those things and walk in and get, like one of the houses I looked at, walk in and get an immediate smell, like there's rising damp or some kind of mold, yeah, and you're like I can't relax, get out of here, whereas you walk in and maybe you smell freshly baked cookies or bread in the toaster or just a beautiful candle or some essence, I don't know. I feel like that's a big deal for me and particularly like almost can be nostalgic, so it can make you feel safe and calm, or it's just, you know, just smells good, I guess. Well, I think that when we went overseas and when we went on our design tour visiting the apartments, it was scent, especially in Milan, those properties that we visited, those apartments, apartments sounds like that. It sounds underwhelming because they were so amazing, but they smelled amazing. But the mentor yes, yeah, yes, they did. Yeah, it was all the senses right, and they do lighting so well too. So well, you know, when we were talking about sitting around a table, talking about hygge, I had like the most hygge day of my life life.
Speaker 1:Um, it was 2020, at the start of the year, and I went to the stockholm furniture fair. Oh, yeah, yeah, and I wanted to visit ethem, and ethem is a hotel. It's a boutique hotel. It's designed by ilsa crawford and a lot of interior designers really froth over her projects because she's really does that Hoogah concept really well. And anyway, I was like I'm going to go and have a look. So I wrapped up there, got out of my Uber, dropped off at this hotel and it's a house. It's like a stately brick house with a brick fence. And just as I was kind of looking at the fence, thinking at the gate, how do I get in here? A car pulls up and it's Anton and Megan from Great Dane. Literally at that moment, at that exact moment where I'm like literally just sitting there, it's like standing there scratching my head, thinking, oh how I can't get in here because I'm not a guest they pull up, they're like hey, laura, do you want to go in and have a look? We're staying here, yes, please. So that was so impactful.
Speaker 1:I think about that visit quite often and it was because it used to be a home. I mean, already it has a homely feel. But yeah, you can't just float in from the street because the foyer, if you could call it that, is really like a living space, so it's made up of all of these different sort of areas. A couple of armchairs together under a lamp, there's this black and white stripy sofa You'd love that, really sink into it. And then there's a piano. There's actually a bar as well, and the concept with the bar is you mix yourself a drink and you just write your name down and they'll bill you at the end of the stay.
Speaker 1:So even their trust, as we sort of talked about with the hygge and, you know, feeling connected, that's kind of inbuilt in that space and a sense of community, because a lot of different people can be sort of using the space as they were. They were on their laptops, they were having a conversation, they were just reading a book, like it was just like I was stepped into, like a movie. It was amazing. But everyone's got space, everyone feels at ease, you feel like you can be yourself, and we had a cup of tea and a piece of cake at the kitchen. So in the kitchen you've got a dining table, as we were saying, and every day they bake a cake and you can take yourself a slice. Oh my God, brie is the best I know, I know. And then who should walk in?
Speaker 1:But the Queen herself, ilsa Crawford, your best friend that time, yes, and I was like, act cool, act cool. Well, I didn't act cool. I love your photos from that. Oh, I couldn't resist. I was like, can we please get a photo together? She did not want to take a photo with me. She was so happy in the photo, I'm gonna have to dig it out. Oh, my god, she was not impressed. Yeah, oh, how embarrassing for me and that I mean you are you probably.
Speaker 1:I think that story, when you told me I'd been seeing the photos and I thought it was so funny, has made me like hesitant all the time. But you're still like, we saw Faye, our friend Faye. Yeah, too good. Yeah, you still went like just going to do it. Come on, let's just go talk to her. I'm like, hey, I know I'm really bad, like that, you're really good. No, I think it's great. Who cares? Who cares what they think? Our friend Faye, she was just gorgeous. Faye's beautiful. Yeah, she was happy, she was smiley, she was, yeah, she was really cute.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that hotel. So if you like the idea of Hooga, look up Etem. I think it's E-double-T-H-E-M and it's in Stockholm, which brings us to, I guess, our trip. That's made you feel a little hygge there. You just had a little moment. I did that was the best, oh my God. Well, the hotel we stay in in Paris I find has pretty good hygge. It really does. I love that hotel. Experimental yeah, experimental group Grande Boulevard. How do you say it in French? I say everything I say sounds like I'm trying to talk in Italian. I think that was perfect.
Speaker 1:We only have a few spots to fill from our tour and we haven't even advertised it fully properly yet. We haven't tried. I've been slacking off. I've been moving house. I haven't tried. I've been slacking off. I've been moving house. I haven't tried yet. But I have to say when I saw some of the ladies pop their name and say, yes, I'm coming, I was like, oh my God, brie Already such an exciting group. That's a cool person, I love her, she's going to be fun, so it's a good group.
Speaker 1:So I guess, if you're curious and you want to know about our Milan Paris trip in April 2026. Get in touch with us. We'll put a link in the show notes. Yes, I think. I believe, because we'll be annoying people about that this week. Well, you know, they won't be annoyed because they'll be happy to hear from us about it, but I think those last spots will fill pretty quick.
Speaker 1:Yes, so it's not really I decided to drink at the same time. That was funny. People love it when there's a nice silence in a podcast episode. Thanks for cutting that one out for us, bill. Yes, so wrapping it up. Wrapping it up, what is that? What are our key takeaways? Aluren tell me.
Speaker 1:Well, I think hygge is about connection, comfort and well-being. I think our spaces shape our behavior more than we realize and I think that we're in tune with it, because that's our literal job interior design. But even if you're not in tune with it, your behavior is adjusting to your surroundings, it just is. I think the tricky part with that sometimes is because a lot of people let's face it don't necessarily put a lot of emphasis on their surroundings. It's only when they are somewhere else or they make changes to that space that they realize how much happier they are or more relaxed, or that it does actually affect your mental state and your well-being, like I, and even, as you said, we are quite attuned to it and I'm even being more aware of it, even when I painted those couple of rooms in my house, how much it changed the whole mood of that space, even as a family being in it, and how much the boys appreciated it. Even so, like it's, it is something that has huge impact and that you should. You know if, if you're just not quite feeling right at home or that it doesn't feel homely enough, like just making those few little changes, like, do something small. Even buying yourself a few new beautiful cushions and lighting a gorgeous candle can be enough on a Sunday night just to wind down and have your own bit of hygge. Right, definitely. And if you wanted to make a change, I love what you said cushions, candle go to Ikea and just get yourself some lamps. Yeah, the lighting so let's come back to that Absolutely. Yeah, like you don't have to spend a lot of money but you can really create a beautiful atmosphere with lighting, definitely.
Speaker 1:What was another takeaway? I think Australian homes are too big. We need to start building smaller homes and I think it's up to us as designers to see if we can have some sort of influence on that. Yeah, and if you, you know, obviously you're already in a bigger home and you're so happy with it, but you have that feeling, I think it is coming back to creating exactly what you described in the hotel.
Speaker 1:Those moments create moments within your spaces. Don don't stick to that formula of you know, like, um, here's the living room with a sofa and a chair and a coffee table. Like you can break that up. It doesn't all have to face the television. You've got room to create another little moment with two chairs where you can kind of sit in a little table and have your cup of tea, and that's orientated a different way and there's a lamp there. Those are the things you can do to break up those kind of big, cavernous, soulless spaces that you might end up with in a new home too.
Speaker 1:So true, and I think, just to round that out, it's design isn't just aesthetics, it's health and happiness, 100, 100. And even if I wasn't a designer, I just know you know in your core that actually makes a difference, because it's not just about interiors, it's about everything. It's about the comfort of you know a handle and the way you use a stove and the way you open a fridge, like all of those things are designed and they've been designed to make you feel better, and you know ergonomics, like all of that stuff. It's all sort of intertwined and interrelated. And when you add interiors into that and treat it in the same way, then you just get like a brilliant result from the space. I think.
Speaker 1:So good, brie, I love it. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, it's been fun. Bye everyone. See ya, we've got the utmost respect for the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. They're the OG custodians of this unceded land and its waters, where we set up shop, create and call home and come to you. From this podcast today, a big shout out to all of the amazing elders who have walked before us, those leading the way in the present and the emerging leaders who will carry the torch into the future. We're just lucky to be on this journey together.