Make Your Home Your Feel-Good Place With Dopamine Decor

Learn how the colors, accessories, and lighting in your home can improve your mood.

Home design is embracing a new look — one that’s centered on the way it makes you feel. The idea is that if your home doesn’t feel good, it won’t look good — at least to you. It’s called “dopamine décor,” and it’s generating buzz across social media for bringing “happy design” home.

Dopamine, the “feel good” hormone, was originally channeled into “dopamine dressing” — wearing bright colors and bold patterns to boost your mood. Now that same idea is entering home design, urging you to fill up your home with special items that bring you joy and a dopamine rush.

The idea is grounded in research. For example, when study participants looked at artwork they considered beautiful, the activity in the reward center of their brains (the same area of the brain that's activated when you’re in love) increased significantly, according to research from neurobiologists Semir Zeki and Tomohiro Ishizu. Other studies also found that colors affect our psyche. Warm-colored interiors evoke excitement, and cool-colored spaces offer more restful, spacious feelings.