Book offers steps on harnessing a perfect home
New Delhi: At a time when staying indoors has become the new normal, a book offers step-by-step tips to improve our homes and the quality of life within it.
Author Michelle Ogundehin says a home that actively supports our well-being can be a game-changer and a secret super power in today's profoundly unpredictable world.
In "Happy Inside: How to Harness the Power of Home for Health and Happiness", she lists "nine steps to a home to help you become your best self, regardless of how much money you have, the size of your home, or whether you own or rent".
The purpose of life and home, she says, is to be happy inside.
Ogundehin, internationally renowned as an authority on interiors, trends, colour and style, writes about everything from how to create more light and space to how to get a good night's sleep; the path to a perfect sofa and why a dining table is your most vital piece of furniture in the book published by Penguin Random House.
She also tells how to decorate to promote joy; the importance of play (and circular side tables); definitive capsule kitchen kit; and why the hallway is where it all starts.
She combines these with his knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, mindfulness, colour psychology and good design.
According to Ogundehin, for all "our advanced technology and supposed sophistication, we are at heart primal, emotional beings, which means that to feel centred, healthy and happy, we also need to feel safe, secure and protected".
It is, therefore "increasingly essential that our homes support us, as nurturing, sensory, tactile retreats, not so much as insulation from contemporary life, but strengthening us, body and soul, to deal with it", she says.
Ogundehin says her intention is to "give you some ideas and recommendations, alongside the benefit of my hard-earned experience and a few tricks of the trade".
This, she says, will "help you to set up your home, and a way of living within it, to get you where you want to be at your own pace".
