By Shannon Harris

We are not so far evolved that we’ve forgotten the intrinsic connection to nature and how our body systems respond to natural settings. Our nervous systems and subconscious minds work hand in hand to keep us alive, recognize threats, and seek out familiarity, calming the system back down. Wellness is about the whole story when we consider the environment as part of it. 

But here’s the catch – we cannot talk about the nervous system without talking about neuroscience, and we cannot talk about neuroscience without talking about our sensory experience. It is through all our senses that we receive inputs – signals and cues – all day long that fire off neurological responses that are then sent to the rest of the body to react. Many of which happen subconsciously.

So when we consider this to be true, it naturally makes us – or definitely me – wonder how the environment around us plays a role in how our systems are responding – to what, in what way, what is it triggering biologically in the signal and response (cause and effect)?

To answer this question, I’ve built a framework for how I approach design at Homeshelf Neurodesign using a few main, nature inspired and biologically intertwined, methods of what a space should provide for its humans.

A Framework for Biology Based Interior Design

Areas to Consider in Neurodesign

When making design decisions for Homeshelf Neurodesign, I consider each of these areas: light, visual cues, temperature, noise, air flow, and biophilia. I ask the question, What is the sensory value in this fixture, or placement, or method? Like on all curves on a graph, there are positive and negative values. We want to aim for more positive values in a design feature than negative. To do this, we need to understand exactly where the threshold lands within a design element.

Light as a Powerful Lever

For over a century, lighting has been driven by aesthetics and energy efficiency — with almost no consideration for human biology. We are approaching a time when this is shifting into awareness.

Light is the most powerful lever. Not only because it makes a room look good, but because it is the primary signal your body uses to tell time, to signal hormones release, and to know when it is safe to rest. Every cell in your body runs on a roughly 24-hour internal clock. That clock is set, reset, and disrupted by one thing above almost all others: light.

Research shows that access to natural daylight at home allows people to fall asleep 22 minutes earlier. People also showed more consistent melatonin onset, and had measurably higher sleep regularity than those whose windows were blocked. Twenty-two minutes sounds small, yet it can mean the difference between a nervous system that had time to fully restore and one that didn’t compounded, night after night.

By now we all know that blue light before bed delays melatonin, suppresses the sleep signal, and keeps the nervous system in a state of alertness. We do in fact need all types and temperatures of light, but we also need to understand when is the appropriate time to use them – and where to place certain light temperatures in the way that your system will receive them for optimal functioning.

The sensory value question we ask at Homeshelf Neurodesign here is simple, What is this light source telling my nervous system right now? Bright overhead white light at 9 p.m. is telling it, “Stay awake, stay alert, the day isn’t done.” A warm, low ambient source pointing upward at eye level or below is telling it something very different. Both are light. Biology hears them as opposite instructions.

How the Body Responds to Airflow

As much as the quality of air matters to our overall physical health in our environment, the flow of air has many effects that are never talked about. There is a biological conversation happening with air flow, a conversation that began far before any building was built. When something hits us through our skin, our senses, it’s an evolutionary intelligence of our aliveness, being alert to changes in the day, and in the shifting of the seasons.

I could write an essay on air quality and VOCs, toxins in our products. The EPA has reported that indoor air can be two to five times more polluted than outdoor air. A still, air-sealed environment subtly registers as confinement. Our bodies notice, even when our minds do not.

Think about the last time you felt a nice breeze carry across you – that feeling of relaxation and ‘this feels so nice’ has science behind it. When I consider air flow when making a design for Homeshelf Neurodesign, I consider how the body responds to it.

Researchers have identified this as non-noxious mechanoreception, the same sensory pathways that respond to soft touch, warmth, and the comfort of being held. It signals safety and activates without alarming.

An Auditory System That Never Sleeps

The sensory value question we ask at Homeshelf Neurodesign for sound in a home is this, Is the acoustic environment I’ve created asking my nervous system to be on guard, or giving it permission to soften? When it comes to noise, sound is the one sense you cannot turn off.

Even during sleep, the auditory system remains open. The reason is evolutionary. Silence meant safety, but sounds, especially unexpected ones, meant potential threat. That system never got the memo that a neighbor’s TV or a dripping faucet isn’t a predator.

Soft furnishings absorb sound. The placement of a living space away from street-facing walls is a design decision that the nervous system registers as relief, even when the conscious mind never notices why.

Natural soundscapes can be introduced intentionally. Real-world data collected from wearable devices found that increases in ambient sound intensity were directly linked to measurable increases in mean heart rate, with physiological changes appearing within two to five seconds of noise exposure. That’s the body reacting before the mind has registered anything consciously.

Inversely, an analysis published in a peer-reviewed stress research journal found that exposure to natural sounds: birdsong, water, wind moving through trees, was associated with decreased cortisol, reduced anxiety, lower blood pressure, and improved heart rate variability. The sounds that evolved alongside us as humans still speak a language of safety that our nervous systems understand immediately.

I ask the sensory value question at every design decision for Homeshelf Neurodesign, not because a fixture or a finish needs to justify itself aesthetically, but because every element in a space is either adding to the load your nervous system is carrying or relieving it.

A Nervous System Safe Home

Home, when it is designed with intentionality, stops being a backdrop and starts being a participant in your wellbeing.

Most of our body’s cues are happening below the threshold of conscious awareness: increased heart rate, a drop in cortisol, a loosening in the shoulders, a thought that comes with unusual clarity. This is exactly what makes the home environment so significant: it is running in the background of your life, shaping your biology, continuously.

The home not a sanctuary in the aspirational sense, but a literal, biological support system. One that works with your nervous system instead of against it.

Learn more about: Homeshelf Neurodesign.