![\"five-senses-sensory-interior-design-pippa-jameson.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/thesensoryhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/AdobeStock_405771844-scaled-jpeg.webp)
<\/source><\/picture><\/noscript><\/figure>\nWe have almost been conditioned to think about our homes in terms of how they look, rather than how they feel. We choose paint colours, furniture, artwork and accessories, save images of beautiful interiors and think about whether everything works together visually. But we spend far less time asking how those same choices make us feel when we are actually living in the space.<\/p>\n
But we need to move beyond just looking at our homes. We\u2019re listening to them, touching them, smelling them and moving through them. We\u2019re eating, sleeping, working, socialising and recovering in them \u2014 that\u2019s a lot of heavy lifting for our homes to do.<\/p>\n
We experience our homes through our senses all the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is one of the simplest ways I explain sensory interior design, because I get asked about it a lot.<\/p>\n After more than 25 years working as an interior stylist and creative director, I\u2019ve become very good at looking at a room. But through my work with The Sensory Home\u00ae, and through understanding my own sensory responses, I\u2019ve learnt that a room can photograph beautifully and still not feel<\/em> right.<\/p>\n That distinction has completely changed the way I design. Today, before I start thinking about what a room should look like, I ask three questions:<\/p>\n Who is the space for, how does it need to feel, and what do they need from it?<\/strong><\/p>\n That is where designing for the senses begins.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re completely new to the subject, I\u2019ve written more about what sensory design is and how you can use it at home<\/a>. Here, I want to go a little deeper into the five senses themselves.<\/p>\n Sight tends to dominate interior design. Colour, pattern, furniture, artwork, lighting and styling are the things we notice first, and they\u2019re important. But with sensory design, I\u2019m interested in more than whether they look good together. I\u2019m interested in how much visual information the room is asking us to process<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Walk into your living room and really look. How many colours can you see? How many patterns? Are there shelves filled with objects, piles of paperwork, children\u2019s things, cables or screens? Where does your eye naturally rest?<\/p>\n None of those things is necessarily a problem. I don\u2019t believe sensory-friendly interior design has to mean beige walls, empty shelves or minimalist homes \u2014 far from it. I love colour, character, art, books and objects that tell a story. It\u2019s about balance.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found this particularly important when designing spaces for wellbeing. Sometimes removing one competing element, grouping objects together or creating a quieter area for the eye can change the feeling of a room without removing its personality.<\/p>\n Light belongs here too. Rather than relying on one bright ceiling light, I focus on layering: natural daylight, task lighting where it\u2019s needed and softer, warmer light for evenings \u2014 avoiding glare wherever possible. The right light at 9am isn\u2019t necessarily the light I want at 9pm.<\/p>\n Colour needs the same consideration. When I developed the Paint for Wellness collection with Graham & Brown and their design studio, we weren\u2019t interested in simply creating a palette of attractive colours. We started with what we need from different spaces \u2014 rest, focus, gathering and retreat \u2014 and considered how colour could form one layer of that experience.<\/p>\n You can read more about how I use colour to support wellbeing at home<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sound is one of the senses I often ask people to actively stop and notice. Turn everything off for a moment and listen.<\/p>\n The hum of the fridge, traffic outside, a dishwasher, the television in another room, children upstairs, a washing machine, neighbours or the clattering from the kitchen. We become incredibly accustomed to the noises of our homes and sometimes have to concentrate before we can tune back in and hear them.<\/p>\n Just because we\u2019ve stopped consciously noticing a sound doesn\u2019t mean it has disappeared from our environment.<\/p>\n In my own design work, I rarely think about sound in isolation; I look at what the room is made from. Hard flooring, large windows, bare walls and hard furniture can create a very different acoustic experience from curtains, rugs, upholstery, timber, cork and other softer or sound-absorbing surfaces.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t necessarily need specialist acoustic treatment. Sometimes a rug, layered curtains, upholstered furniture or simply changing the balance of materials in a room can help soften the experience.<\/p>\n For our Sensory Retreat at RHS Chelsea Flower Show<\/a>, sound became one of the five sensory zones. We combined gentle music, moving water and the natural rustling of palms rather than treating sound as something that simply happened in the background. It became part of the design itself.<\/p>\n That project reinforced something I strongly believe: we shouldn\u2019t only design what people can see.<\/strong><\/p>\n Touch is much more than adding a lovely throw to a sofa. Think about how many surfaces your body comes into contact with at home: the floor beneath bare feet, the handle you pull every morning, your kitchen worktop, the chair you sit on for hours, the sheets against your skin and the sofa fabric against your arms.<\/p>\n Then there are sensations we don\u2019t always immediately think of as touch: temperature, draughts and physical comfort.<\/p>\n I notice materials very quickly. Something can look beautiful, but if it feels scratchy, cold, overly shiny or uncomfortable, that changes my experience of it. How many times at home do you gravitate towards a certain chair or throw because its softness makes it feel almost like a favourite jumper?<\/p>\n photography lucijas ros<\/p>\n This is why I use so many natural and tactile materials in my work: timber, linen, wool, woven fibres, ceramics, glass and textured finishes. Not because every sensory home should contain the same materials, but because materiality gives a room another layer beyond the visual.<\/p>\n Contrast can be useful too: smooth beside textured, soft beside solid, cool ceramic against warm timber. The aim isn\u2019t to fill a room with texture; it\u2019s to consider what the body is actually experiencing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesensoryhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/STANLEY-STREET-STAIR-SensoryHome-LP-EDITED-scaled-jpg.webp)
<\/source><\/picture><\/noscript>1. SIGHT: WHAT ARE YOUR EYES PROCESSING?<\/h2>\n
![\"colour-sensory-design-paint-for-wellness.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/thesensoryhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GB-x-TSH-GATHER-Uluwatu-jpg.webp)
<\/source><\/picture><\/noscript>2. SOUND: LISTEN TO YOUR HOME<\/h2>\n
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3. TOUCH: THE MATERIALS YOUR BODY MEETS<\/h2>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesensoryhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/lucija-ros-EIkb7s6bQfw-unsplash-1-jpg.webp)
<\/source><\/picture><\/noscript><\/figure>\n![\"Woman](\"https:\/\/thesensoryhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/2025-05-21-RICHFOTO-sensory-retreat-RHS-856-jpg.webp)
<\/source><\/picture><\/noscript>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesensoryhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Book_cover-878x1024-jpg.webp)
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