Both Karol and her husband have a taste for fashion and see interior design as an extension of this taste in fabric design. She has been living in the US for 19 years but only worked as a financial lawyer for nine of those. According to her job atmosphere and Boston’s fashion milieu, it is conservative and in hindsight she wasn’t really expressing herself with fashion. It was then that she realised it was beauty of the inner home that was the medium of her personality.  

Her home design had not changed since they moved in but only evolved as time passed, all the furniture staying in their original places. “It took me a long time to figure out what design we were going for,” she says. “A lot of thought has gone into every single piece of furniture that we have gotten – probably took me two weeks just to pick out a dining table.” Patience and diligent research are key to ensuring that the home is a comfortable space. After all it is a personal retreat from the evolving world of noise where we can’t seem to keep up.  

It just may seem that patience and research are what is needed because your interior design can have an impact on the occupant’s mental health. As Sarah Barnard writes in her article “Design for a healthy mind: Interior Design and Mental Health”, our psychological well-being is directly affected by our immediate environment and how one lives within this.  

It isn’t the walls and the distance between them that constricts a room, she continues, but its improper selection and placement of furniture. And a cluttered environment with no creative and harmonious direction can drain energy levels and deflate mood. Freeing up your space allows for an organised feeling and induces better flow of movement.