7 Easy Home Styling Ideas For A Calm Home

If you’re looking to create a home that resembles the motto ‘Keep calm and carry on’, you're in the right place.

With over two decades experience in building, renovating, and designing houses, we’ve learnt a thing or two about creating the perfect mood at home through home styling. Research, as well as our own experience, shows that certain home decor elements are proven to drop your stress levels and promote calm and wellness in your home environment.

And we’re going to show you how to integrate these into your home decor, to create a peaceful atmosphere where every corner and room promotes relaxation and exudes zen vibes.

Far Studio • Neutral living room interior design ideas

1. Indoor Plants

Often when a home or interior feels like it’s missing the final touch to bring everything together, plants and foliage are the winning ingredients — and can balance and bring life, colour and scale to a room.

Beyond their aesthetic appeal, indoor plants are natural air purifiers, filtering out toxins and pollutants to create cleaner, fresher air for you to breathe. #winwin

If you’ve got an empty corner, try using 2-3 plants in varying sizes to create a beautiful, green cluster. Or, if you’re short on space, turn to smaller pot plants that can sit on shelves, a vase filled with your favourite flowers to add to your coffee table, or install a sturdy hook into your ceiling and opt for a hanging plant pot.

Zephyr and Stone • Grey living room design with indoor plants

The Stables • White VJ panel fireplace with floating shelves

2. Signature Home Scent

We love finding the perfect perfume or cologne for ourselves, but have you considered doing the same for your home? When you enter a home and are hit with a calming signature scent, it completely changes the atmosphere and your experience of the space.

Creating a calm home is about using as many of our senses as possible so that we’re able to fully relax as soon as we get through the front door. The great thing is that there are so many simple ways to introduce scent into home spaces, from scented candles to incense burners, oil diffusers and room sprays.

The simple act of using scents at home is also a calming routine ritual, and a reminder to your body that it’s time to relax.

These Four Walls • Cosy reading corner with candle

Cedar Lifestyle • Calm home styling with oil diffuser

3. Clean Windows

Be honest, how are your windows looking right now?

Natural light, and as much of it as possible, is one of the most effective ways to transform the feeling of your home. And you’d be surprised at just how effective giving your windows a good wash can be at bringing in more sunlight to your home, so add it to this weekend’s task list!

The natural light that enters our homes automatically connects us with the outdoors, which as we know, is paramount for our health and wellbeing. If you’ve got a particularly sunny spot, try sitting for fifteen minutes every morning to start the day off right.

Zephyr and Stone • Hamptons Home Design neutral living room with sheer curtains

4. Declutter Your Home

If there’s one thing that’s an instant calming tool, it’s a fifteen-minute power home declutter session, and it’s easy to do and achievable for even the busiest of us!

Letting the compounding clutter of each day pile up — until it becomes an overwhelming task and your home feels anything other than calm can cause overwhelm and anxiety. Doing shorter, dedicated decluttering breaks each day or a few times a week, gives you instant satisfaction of accomplishment and a tidy space, and makes the weekly clean a much less daunting task. Utilise concealed or hidden storage to store away daily clutter so it’s out of sight and out of mind.

Z+S Tip • Set a fifteen-minute timer so that you stay focused on decluttering and don’t get distracted by other tasks.

Melanie Beynon Architecture • Minimal Kitchen dining area with concealed storage

5. Sheers + Soft Furnishings

When we talk about calm homes, it’s the extra details that really do make a difference, like sheer curtains and soft furnishings.

Let’s look at sheer curtains first, because they’re undoubtedly one of the easiest ways to elevate your home — adding a beautiful softness that offers privacy, while filling the room with filtered light. Sheer fabrics make rooms feel warmer, cosy and secure inside, yet filter the views beyond to maintain connection to the outdoorsl.

Soft furnishings and furniture pieces are important in setting the mood in a home, and absorb sound to make rooms naturally quieter. They completely transform and enhance the experience of a room, and can add warmth through colour and texture. It’s these finishing touches that make a room look and feel comfortable and add to your comfort when you’re resting or relaxing in a space. You can totally transform a room design and add calm with small additions like new textured cushions on a sofa or layering throws and blankets on a bed for a supreme sleep.

Zephyr and Stone • Minimalist Dining Room with sheer curtains

Tarina Wood • Warm neutral bedroom styling

6. Ambient Lighting

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that ambient lighting is something that we always prioritise when designing our homes.

While they serve a functional purpose, relying solely on overhead lights can make your home feel cold and clinical, especially at night. Ambient lighting helps to create a calm mood and can be implemented in any room in your home, from the bathroom to a walk-in wardrobe.

You can use a combination of lighting styles to add ambient lighting and create calming corners in your home. Wall lights are perfect for above a vanity, at a bedside, or along a hallway, and will wash a wall with beautiful, soft light. Floor lamps are ideally positioned next to armchairs or sofas to create the perfect reading corner, and pendant lights, which focus light in an area, can create beautiful atmosphere, and really define a zone, especially in larger rooms — to create the ultimate design feature.

Zephyr and Stone • Neutral Bedroom with VJ panelling and wall lights

7. Calming Colours

To really create calm in your home, you cannot overlook your colour scheme. Does it feel calming to you? Or do the colours clash and feel too heavy?

Colour is a completely subjective thing, so start to observe not only how you feel in your own space, but also when you’re in other people’s homes and other interiors to see how different interior colours affect your emotions.

Light, neutral tones like white, beige, muted greens and warm greys, mixed with tones from timber, stone and other natural materials, generally make homes feel grounded, balanced and at peace, so when adding new styling pieces to your home, really consider colour and how it will affect your room refresh or design.

The Stables • Neutral living room styling

Kate Lawrence Interiors • Neutral living room colour scheme