Bring the hotel home

Hotels are relaxing. 

We feel so good when we’re in hotels, it pays to wonder: why? What is it about a hotel that so pleasantly suits our senses? I’d like to think that it’s gotta be more than the simply novelty of being away from home – otherwise staying with our future in-laws would be more fun. There are other aspects of hotels that please us – many of which we could recreate at home.

Here’s the secret of a hotel’s relaxation: hotel rooms aren’t packed with all of our stuff. You walk into a hotel room, and its pristine, crisp quality has an instant “soothing” effect. (This effect declines a little with each night we stay, as our clothes unpack themselves from our bags and army-crawl across the carpet.) That initial, fresh feeling is pretty nice, though. I don’t know why certain décor magazines continue to showcase rooms decked out in floor to ceiling “design” as though those are comforting. I maintain that minimalism will always feel more relaxing in the bedroom.

Fewer “design” details gives the eye fewer things to jump to. Books, photos, shoes, dirty laundry, and toiletries demand our visual attention. Without these, the mind is permitted to relax a bit. Add a subdued color scheme to this, and your room will feel downright good.

So if you want to recreate a “hotel” feel at home, push all your clutter-stuff out of your bedroom. I know, we all love our photos and our half-library of books and our neato-throw pillows. But if we corral all of those things to all the other areas of our homes, it allows the bedroom to serve, as it should, only as a retreat.

Like a bit of “hotel” at the end of each day.