Why you need natural light in your home | AD

Having plenty of natural light in your home is great for your mental health. Not only does plenty of natural light aid your sleep and generally just makes you feel a bit happier, but plenty of natural light in your home can help spaces feel bigger, more airy and give you a more positive feeling towards your home. 

There’s lots you can do to ensure your home is flooded with a much light as possible, if you need to have blinds consider going for light colours and styles that will maintain some privacy but still allow lots of light in, Venetian blinds are great for this. Whilst curtains can create warmth in your home, I’d say ditch them if you have a smaller space as they’ll just close your room in and block out some the light from the sides of your windows. This will have a negative impact on how you feel in those rooms. If you really want curtains, go for lighter colours and materials that won’t absorb as much light. 

Some houses just aren’t maximising their potential for natural light with a lack of windows in key places that could makes a massive difference. A lot of people think adding windows to their home will be an expensive project but with discounted windows that’s not the case. Providing you have the space, adding windows to a landing or staircase will make those darker spaces much brighter and the addition of french doors to a room will also bring in a lot of light.

One of the things I love about our house is how much natural light we get. When we first got the keys to our house it wasn’t like that though, there were blinds up at every window and dark, thick curtains up at the living room window and the french doors in our kitchen. Our house is fairly private so we’re lucky in that we don’t actually need all those blinds and curtains up as no one can see into our house anyway! We took the curtains down straight away and it made such a big difference, having a window and french doors in the kitchen means our kitchen is flooded with light making it an really airy space. It’s only a small kitchen but having so much natural light in there makes a big difference and where as the curtains cut off the space and made it dark and dingy, the natural light creates a much more positive feeling space as we can see straight into our garden and it makes the room feel bigger. 

As for the blinds, we ditched a few of them such as the one in the porch and the one in the downstairs toilet as again, they’re fairly private spaces (and the toilet has a frosted window that only faces down the side of our garden anyway) but they’re small spaces too so by removing the blinds it allows for as much natural light to get into those rooms as possible. The best decision we made was getting wooden Venetian blinds for our living room and office as they still let a lot of light in but stop the sun from blinding us when watching TV or working. Our office used to have a roller blind in it which meant on bright days we had no choice but to close the blinds completely which didn’t really make for a happy working environment. Josh works from home full time and I run my blog which requires me to work when I’m home from my job and I can’t tell you how much of a positive difference it has made to us both been able to have lots of natural light in the office and actually been able to see out of the window now when we’re working!

As I’ve mentioned, natural light can have a huge positive effect of mental health so maximising the natural light in your home in a no-brainer. Our homes tend to be our safe spaces, the places we retreat to after a long day, the spaces we relax in on a weekend. Ensuring that our homes bring us as much happiness as possible is really important and having plenty of natural light flooding in will make you feel a lot better in yourself and about your home.