UNCOMMON GROUND

Shelter me.

In a week where the world feels shaky, I keep returning to the idea of groundedness — how we find it and how we hold it — in relation to how we design our lives and how we design home.

The truth is, being grounded isn’t common anymore. We live in constant motion, plugged in, overstimulated, overcharged, overwhelmed, and generally just over the 24 news cycle that leaves a digital dent on our brains.

Finding comfort amidst a chaotic world has never been more challenging, or more important. Steadiness doesn’t come easy and it can’t be found everywhere. Our world increasingly distracts or distresses us, so I can’t help but believe the notion of Life Architecture, the premise of making sure we’re scaffolding ourselves just as we’d scaffold the substrate of a house is just what the doctor ordered.

We need to ensure that not only our homes but ourselves are fortified with a solid foundation, a structure designed to weather storms, good flow (a must for both home and self) and beauty. But, here’s the truth: we have a far better chance of being healthy, resilient and strong if our home can support us. That means we need to design it right — for comfort, calm and YOU.

That’s the uncommon bit. We don’t often think of home as a complement to help ground and regulate us.

If you’ve ever built a house from the ground up, you know that the HVAC system (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) is one of the most important things you’ll install. It’s integral to the inner workings and comfort of any structure. An HVAC system modulates the warmth of your space, the cleanliness and distribution of air flow and temperature control.

Just like climate control systems work to keep our house comfortable, our autonomic nervous system constantly works to regulate our inner climate. Our nervous system is subdivided into two large branches (yep, just like ductwork): the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system, which we commonly think of as fight-or-flight mode and the relaxation response.

The sympathetic arm acts like the heat switch, kicking on in moments of stress, mobilizing your body’s energy for action. The parasympathetic arm is the cooling system, constantly slowing the heart, restoring calm and conserving energy as needed. Together they work like a house’s thermostat, adjusting moment by moment to keep us in balance.

How we architect our nervous system plays a big role in our larger health picture. As it turns out, our home’s design plays a role too. Growing evidence across multiple studies are linking everything from heart rate variability, psychological health and overall well-being to your environment, with home topping the list. Heart rate variability alone, the fluctuation in time intervals between our consecutive heart beats, is a critical biomarker within our nervous system and increasingly, we’re beginning to understand home’s influence over it.

A recent 2025 study indicated that HRV measures taken at home yielded more stable HRV patterns among its participants. This is no surprise as home represents comfort, even sanctuary to us when it’s designed right. It’s precisely the place where we should feel more relaxed.

Psychologically, there’s even greater impact. Under the right circumstances, home gives us agency, feelings of autonomy and an enhanced sense of perceived security. This too is understandable. Home should be the nest to recede from the world, on our own time and feel like we’re in a protected space.

I, for one, am the biggest homebody. As much as I love to work, travel and be among family and friends, I love to go home. Nothing gives me more pleasure or comfort than stepping into my apartment after a long day.

I always think of one of the six tenets of Ryff’s psychological well-being model: environmental mastery. Home is the direct correlation to this principle. People who feel capable of organizing their environment, creating order, and exerting control over their settings report higher degrees of well-being.

This means when our living spaces reflect our true choices and give us an appreciable sense of self and safety, they don’t just look good, they measurably enhance our happiness and psychological health.

And, environmental mastery isn’t just one of the tenets. According to a British study among women, it’s one of the first four factors when listed in order of priority. That’s huge. Our homes really do shape our feelings of comfort and safety.

Understanding the impact your home can have over these feelings, both from a positive and negative perspective, is hugely important if you want to enhance your environment for comfort. If your home is uncomfortable for whatever reason, due to any number of factors from relationship stress to hygiene, safety, or lack of simple peace and quiet, the consequences are significant.

A home that weighs you down, brings you down. And you feel it. When your inside world feels just as stressful as the outside one, that’s never a good thing. But, when your home feels like the safest place in the world, especially when the world is moving fast or feels uncertain, you’ve struck gold; you’ve found your port for any storm.

Knowing the difference between positive and negative contributors, and how to govern these variables is key: if we can design our spaces in tandem with our most important self-needs, then we can optimize not only our time at home, but also how we feel there.

Creating a sanctuary at home amidst life’s daily stresses is our easiest off-ramp from a frenetic world. In all my years of designing I don’t think a single client ever excluded some form of a comfort directive from their program list. Everyone, to some degree or another, seeks comfort. It certainly means different things to different people, and style and preferences vary, but when I think of any home I’ve designed, including my own, I think of how it’s going to make me, my family and my guests feel — and how it will support us.

This is purposeful design and it usually involves as many rooms and gathering spaces as possible planned with oversized sofas or chairs in textural fabrics, woods and/or some combination of organic shapes and natural materials. These elements make us feel cozy and comfortable enough to put our feet up and above all, feel grounded. At its core, this is exactly what home should feel like — a place to rest, relax and to feel safe.

I often refer to three primary necessities when it comes to life: structure, food and security. What I also often say is that unlike other living beings, we don’t just seek life’s bare necessities — we long for more.

We want a home that’s not merely a structure, but a place of belonging and beauty. We want food that not only sustains us, but also nourishes and delights. And we seek security, not just for survival, but because it grants us freedom, the ultimate luxury. When you think of home as the centrifuge for these important needs, you realize both its potential and its importance in your Life Architecture.

They say the only sure things in life are death and taxes, but I’d add a third: change. I learned this from a very young age. What I also learned from early on was that home was where my family was, wherever that might be.

My parents divorced when I was four; while my sister and I were lucky that they remained friendly (enough), my mother had to go back to work. This meant we had to go where the jobs were and we moved around a lot. From state to state we went. From Tennessee and Kentucky to Georgia and Indiana, we went where my mother’s jobs took us. Over the course of my school years, I went to three or four elementary schools, a few middle/junior high schools, and finally landed at one high school (if memory serves).

I was always the new girl in class whose name the teacher inevitably mispronounced on the first day. I was mortified. I knew what was coming: I’d have to speak up (I’m dying a slow death just thinking of it) to correct the teacher’s pronunciation. And then, everyone would see me. Novelty and new are doormats for kids who lean toward mean. I was picked on and bullied, essentially every child’s nightmare and one I think most of us have experienced at one point or another. I know it could have been worse and the reality is what felt miserable then, really turned into my super power.

From a young age, I learned two things: the first — change is inevitable, so I became good at it. The second — home was what I made of it, so I became good at that too. The experience of moving so much in my youth was pivotal. It informed everything–most importantly, it cemented my relationship to home.

Moving often meant that I had to find refuge and groundedness in many places. My mother had her challenges too raising two young children as a single parent, but somehow, amidst all she was juggling, she recognized the instability it presented; she intuited the importance to me physically to create a safe space, so she allowed me to do whatever I wanted to any house or apartment (more apartments than houses) we had. I suppose all of these places, no matter how temporary they were, became my first design projects. I would study the rotation of floor plans when we’d move to a new city, walk the model units of a house or apartment complex with my mother, often choosing which one we’d take. I’d think of how the furniture should be laid out and determine how our things would be best organized.

Since my childhood, I’ve gone on to live in many places over my lifetime — different homes in other states, even countries. The point of my story is that in our changing world, our sense of home and groundedness can shift. Whatever your space is — a house, apartment, room, bed…carve out whatever brings you peace and refuge from the outside world. Comfort can be found in small places. And above all else — remember, you are your home too. Make you your superpower.

So, what can you do to bring comfort into your life and home? In addition to making your space feel nurturing and relaxing through your choice of furniture, fabrics and natural materials, lighting is key.

In fact, if I had to rank the importance of lighting to our homes and selves, it would be top-of-list because it drives everything from mood to our ability to sleep. Another important fun fact: all light is not created equal. Lighting is one of two master regulators for almost every system in the body and home. Exposing ourselves to good light and the right light is one of the most important things we can do for our bodies.

The first light is the best and it should be natural. This relates to your circadian rhythm. The master of all things related to neuroscience is Dr. Andrew Huberman. If you’ve never done a deep dive into the import of morning light for your body and more specifically, your nervous system, it’s worth some time on his site. You will learn a ton.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Andrew speak a few times. If you’re really interested in health and neuroscience, he tours on occasion. It’s another fun way to learn more. In the meantime, here’s a link to several of his articles on circadian rhythm research to start.

Second to natural light, that’s foundational to your circadian rhythm health, the artificial lighting conditions we create indoors for ourselves are just as critical. But not all bulbs are created equal.

Incandescent light, once standard, was closest to the warm spectrum our bodies respond well to, but since incandescent bulbs are no longer readily available, the next best choice is warm, dimmable lighting that shifts with the day.

In the evening, steer clear of blue light found in most LEDs, screens, and harsh “daylight” bulbs. These trick the brain into thinking it’s still daytime, suppressing melatonin and delaying sleep. Warmer tones mimic the setting sun and help us power down the body.

While red light has its own potential benefits, that’s a story for another day. I love my Joovv panel, so I promise to return to this soon. But for now, think of your home’s lighting as an extension of nature’s cycle: bright in the morning, softened and warm lamp lights at night.

The other master regulator.

Without sleep, there is no comfort, there is no solace, there is simply no quality of life. We must breathe to live and we must sleep to live too. It’s a fact. Gone are the days when the lack of sleep, or no sleep at all, was worn like a badge of honor. The best performers today don’t just sleep, they protect it and they obsess over the quality of it. Sleep touches everything we do: how we think, how we act, how we stay healthy and yes, how we feel comfort.

One of my favorite authors on the subject is Dr. Matthew Walker. If you haven’t read his book Why We Sleep, it’s a must-read. Dr. Walker has a wealth of knowledge about sleep and shares his insights on lighting and circadian rhythms, too. Walker writes that sleep is an act of critical restoration that we can’t live without. It’s our body’s time to clean and restore itself. Sleep clears toxins from the brain, strengthens our memory, recalibrates our emotions, restores immunity, and even regulates appetite and metabolism. One bad night raises stress, lowers immunity, and clouds your thinking.

So remember, the home that truly comforts us is the one that also prioritizes a good night’s sleep. Bedrooms that are cool, dark, and free of blue light allow the body to rest best. Sleep isn’t an indulgence; it’s a master regulator of our body’s nervous system. It's essential to our lives — and the one luxury none of us can fake. Sleep is not idle time. It’s housekeeping time. And when we design our homes to protect it, we’re designing our deepest architectural need for comfort and longevity.

If we’re going all-in on and creating the very best home environment to de-stress us and make us feel comforted then we’re going to have to be comfortable while we’re lounging or sleeping, no? If home is our oasis, then we need to be wrapped not only in cozy blankets and chunky shawls, but in casual-wear that makes us feel good. There’s so much great loungewear out there — much better than my look from London days!

At the end of the day, what I’m really saying is this: home is the uncommon ground we stand on. It’s where our nervous system learns calm, where light and dark shape our rhythms, where food and safety give us freedom. I’ve moved enough in my life to know that change will always find us — but the comfort we build at home is what makes change bearable, even beautiful.

So, whether it’s the temperature of your bedroom, the lighting you turn on at dusk, or the deep sofa that you sink into, remember these details aren’t decoration. They are the quiet architecture of your well-being. And in a world that feels anything but steady sometimes, that kind of ground is rare, and worth protecting.

Home is where comfort becomes resilience. Designing it with intention is one of the most powerful choices we can make.

Stay tuned for a framework to sum up how you can bring groundedness and comfort to your Life Architecture and home this week, too.