Calm Home: 13 Ways to Create a More Peaceful Home

 As you’re decluttering and simplifying, one of your goals may be to create a calmer, more peaceful home. A calm home where you can rest, relax and recharge. Instead of a home that leaves you feeling overwhelmed, stressed and exhausted.

A calming, peaceful home sounds pretty good. But how do you actually create a calmer home? Especially if your home feels anything but calming right now?

It will take some time and effort to transform your home into a more peaceful, calm home. But there are things you can start doing right now to transform your home into your own calm, peaceful oasis. Keep reading for 13 ways you can tame the chaos and create the calm, peaceful home you’re hoping for!

The impact of your environment on how you feel

The environment you’re in definitely has an impact on the way you feel.

Just think about how you feel when you’re in a quiet yoga studio or spa, compared to how you feel when you’re in a busy store or mall. You probably feel quite differently in both places.

And if you’re someone like me, who is a Highly Sensitive Person, you probably feel the impact of your environment even more deeply and strongly.

You can’t always control how outside environments make you feel. But you can absolutely control how your home environment makes you feel.

Your home should be a place that feels good to you. Whether that means it helps you feel calmer, more relaxed and better able to rest. Or if it means a home that makes you feel invigorated, lively and energized.

Today’s post is focusing on changes you can make in your home to make it feel calmer and more peaceful. A home that feels restful, restorative and soothing. A place you love spending time in because it feels like your own personal haven or oasis from the outside world.

Start small if necessary

If making these changes and applying these ideas to create a calmer, more peaceful home to your whole home feels like too much right now, start small. Start by making one room your own personal retreat and calm space. Or even one corner of a room!

You don’t want to stress yourself out in your pursuit of creating a calming, stress-free home!

Your bedroom is a great place to start. A bedroom is already a space designed for rest, so taking steps to make it more peaceful, calming and restful, is an easy and natural progression.

Even if you can only start with one corner of your bedroom or your side of the bed, that’s ok! Do what you can, then pay attention to and notice how the calming space you created makes you feel. It just might inspire you to keep going and apply these same ideas to other areas of your home too!

13 ways to create a more peaceful, calm home

With that being said, let’s get to it! Here are 13 different tips and strategies to create a calm home that feels peaceful and restorative.

1. Clear the clutter

The quickest way to create a calmer home is by clearing out the clutter. Clutter immediately makes a space feel messier, more chaotic and more stressful.

Not only does it feel like a giant list of chores you need to do every time you see all the “stuff”. But it also gives your mind and your eyes very few places to rest without taking in all the stimulation (i.e. clutter). And when your mind and your eyes don’t have a chance to rest in a space, it’s hard to feel calm and restful in your home.

Start by clearing the clutter from the space. Get rid of anything you don’t use, need or love. Only keep the things you use regularly or love and enjoy.

And don’t forget, clutter comes in all kinds of different forms. From “stuff” filling the space, furniture you don’t need, use or love, décor items, etc.

If you’re just getting started decluttering, check out this post for some great tips to help you clear the clutter!

2. Keep surfaces clear

Another quick way to make your home feel calmer and more peaceful is by limiting the amount of stuff on the flat surfaces in your home. Surface clutter can make a space feel busy, with so much for your eyes and your mind to take in all at once.

Keeping the surfaces in your home clear, or mostly clear, instantly adds a feeling of openness and calm to the space. Either choose to keep the flat surfaces completely clear. Or limit décor items on display and other items on your surfaces to things you use often, really love or have meaning to you. Carefully editing what you display so it doesn’t feel too busy or overwhelming.

Surfaces can be places like countertops, tabletops, shelves, display cases, etc. You can even extend the idea of limiting surface clutter to the floor. Aiming to keep it as clutter-free as possible too!

Here’s a great post with some tips to help you reduce and limit surface clutter.

3. Keep wall décor simple

Along the same line as surface clutter, think about how you can simplify wall décor in your spaces as well.

Reducing wall décor is an easy way to add feelings of spaciousness and calm to a room. You don’t have to have completely blank walls if you don’t want to. But limiting what hangs on your walls is a great way to make your home feel calmer and more open.

Also, think about scale when it comes to wall décor. A grouping of several smaller pieces can feel busier than a single larger piece.

Color is also important when deciding what type of wall décor you prefer. Muted, neutral or toned-down colors can help create a calmer look as compared to more colorful wall décor.

4. Display things you love

Your home should be a reflection of you and your family. A reflection of your style, your tastes, your values, your priorities, your story. You have the power to create a home you love .If neutral, minimal wall décor, mostly clear surfaces and plenty of empty space feel good to you, give yourself permission to experiment with that.

If you prefer bold or colorful artwork, keeping important items on display and a little bit more “stuff” in your spaces in general, follow your tastes and preferences instead.  There’s no right or wrong way to create a home you love. Your home should look, feel and function in a way you love.

Give yourself permission to experiment. Let go of comparison or trying to follow someone else’s decorating rules. And instead, do what makes you happy so your home can become a place you love spending time in.

The only caveat to this is to make sure your décor, display items and everything else in the room is truly something you use regularly or love. Regardless of what level of simplicity you prefer when it comes to décor, remove the clutter so you can see, use and appreciate what’s left even more.

5. Embrace white space

As you clear the clutter and work towards creating a calmer home, practice embracing and being ok with the blank spaces, or white space, you’re creating. If you’re used to seeing more “stuff” in your spaces, it can look strange to see the empty or emptier spaces after decluttering.

But instead of being in a rush to fill the space up again, give yourself some time to sit with the empty space. Allow your eyes and your mind to adjust to having less stuff for a while, at least a week or two.

When you add more white space and breathing room to your home, it’s a great way to make your home feel calmer and more peaceful. Even if it looks strange to you at first!

6. Opt for hidden storage

Having less out and visible to the eye is an easy way to make a space feel more calming and peaceful. If your goal is to create a peaceful, calm home, aim to use more closed or hidden storage instead of open storage.

For example, you may prefer keeping plates, bowls and drinking glasses in a cupboard as opposed to on open shelving. Or you may prefer to keep jackets inside a closet instead of on hooks on the wall. When it’s possible and works for you, using closed or hidden storage can make the room feel less busy and calmer.

Just be sure that you have thoroughly decluttered first, before organizing items in hidden or closed storage. Don’t use “out of sight, out of mind” storage as a place to hide and avoid clutter. Always clear the clutter first so you don’t end up organizing clutter!

7. Choose neutral colors

If your goal is to create a peaceful, calm home, think about the colors you use as well. Including the colors of the walls, floors, wall décor, fabrics (i.e. curtains, pillows, upholstery, blankets, etc.), furniture, storage containers, décor items, etc. In general, soft, light, neutral and natural colors are great for creating calming, peaceful spaces. Think colors like ivory, white, beige, greige, soft blue or green, natural wood tones, etc.

Also, the more consistent your color palette is throughout your house, the better your spaces flow together and the more calming your home can appear.

When choosing colors for your home, always think about how the color will make the space feel. Then ask yourself if that feeling is what you’re aiming for.

8. Let the light in

Allowing natural light to fill your home is another great way to add feelings of openness, airiness and calm to your home.

And the great news is, accomplishing this can be as easy as opening the curtains or blinds!

9. Layer your lighting

And speaking of light, having layers of lighting in your rooms is another way to impact the mood and feel of your spaces. Giving you more control over how a room can look and feel.

Overhead lighting is great for some situations, but at other times it can feel harsh or stark. Layer in different sources of light so you can create softer, warmer or cozier light when preferred.

For example, table lamps can be softer than overhead lighting. Candlelight is another way to add softer, cozier light to a space. Adding dimmer switches to your different light sources can also help create softer light as well.

10. Go green

Adding plants to your rooms is another great way to help create a calmer feeling in your home.

Not only are nature and elements of nature naturally calming to your senses. But plants can also help clean and oxygenate the air, making your home not only calmer but also healthier! Research even shows that plants (indoor or out) can significantly improve your mental health as well!

If you’re like me and are not blessed with a green thumb, look for plants that are resilient and hardy, and are able to grow in spite of you! Plants like a snake plant or ZZ plant are great ones to look for.

11. Let things flow

When arranging furniture in your rooms, leave space to allow easy traffic flow throughout the room. It doesn’t feel very calming to move through a space that feels like an obstacle course!

Stand back and look at furniture placement for not only traffic flow through the space but also visual flow. Arranging the room in a way that lets your eye easily flow through it as well will help it feel more open, spacious and calming.

12. Clutter-free cozy

A calm home is a place you will love spending time in and feel comfortable and relaxed in. Don’t be afraid to add a few things to make your spaces feel warm, cozy and a place you want to spend time in. Adding a cozy throw blanket and an inviting pillow to your couch can help create a warm, inviting, welcoming space, that still feels calm and peaceful.

The key is to be very selective when adding cozy elements into your spaces. Keep it simple to keep the space feeling clutter-free, open and calming. It can also help to stick to neutral colors for cozy elements. Adding things with texture instead of a lot of color.

13. Reset your home regularly

And finally, a great way to maintain your calming, clutter-free home is to reset your spaces regularly so they stay calming and clutter-free. Your home is where you and your family live, not a showroom. So of course, it won’t stay perfectly tidy all the time. Instead of stressing about keeping your home perfectly tidy all the time, build in times to reset and clean it up again into the rhythm of your days.

If you’re able to reset your home at least once a day, it will be easier to keep the calming, peaceful and clutter-free feel to it. A reset isn’t about deep cleaning your home. Instead, it’s making a point of taking a few minutes during the day to tidy your spaces, clean up any messes and put things back where they belong.

The more consistent you are with your resets, the faster and easier they become. Simply because messes don’t have a chance to get completely out of control in between your resets. And having a home that’s tidy, easy to keep tidy, and easy to put back to its original, tidy state is a great way to keep chaos at bay and create a calmer, more peaceful home you love!

What’s your favorite way to keep your home feeling calm and peaceful? Leave a comment and let me know!