Energy And Space – Do You Want To Make Rooms Feel Bigger and Better?
Although the interest in Feng Shui has largely passed there are some ideas from “the art of placement” that are gems and worth keeping in mind. Much of the practice focuses on making rooms feel bigger and better along with increasing good fortune.
Organizing spaces so that “energy” (or people ) can flow freely through them it is of critical importance in Feng Shui. This principle ensures that people are more comfortable and feel at ease in the rooms. It resonates with us on both a physical and a psychic level. This sounds obvious but is often ignored and it is crucial to both make space feel bigger and better.
There is nothing that will make a room feel smaller than furniture blocking the path of movement through it. When we have to squeeze by a chair or detour around a cabinet, in a traffic path, we have a sense that the room is too small to hold everything in it, and allow us to “be” freely in it too. We feel it is cramped or somehow that we are big and clumsy navigating around the space.. and it simply makes us ill at ease.
Open space in a room allows us, very importantly, to breathe -to relax….so called “negative” space lets us take in what is there without feeling overwhelmed.
You can imagine the difference between being on a city street in a high density area, with buildings lining both sides of a road, versus a street with many buildings but also a park that offers a break and a sense of expansiveness between the buildings. This need for openness is why we crave green space in the city and why we need to have some empty space inside our homes too.
The open areas does not only apply to floor space. Clear counter tops and inserting visual breaks in bookcases and ensuring they are not jammed to capacity opens up our visual space. An uncluttered and ordered environment allows our gaze to meander easily from area to area delivering a calm, peaceful experience.
Unobstructed “flow” both visually and physically are crucial keys to make spaces feel bigger and better.