Architecture is sometimes poetically called stiff music. And it is true: the impact of the building's exterior and its interior especially on the human mind can be compared to the impact of a melody. Very often even a little detail can cause melancholy or vice-versa, bring the feeling of cheerfulness, burst of power and joy.

Fortunately, there has sunk into oblivion the time when interior was arranged only with pragmatic considerations of practicability and utility. Striving for full observing these often doubtful criteria of fashion and prestige is no longer the most important thing, but here comes in the forefront the personal and psychological aspect in housing design. A flat or a private house is gradually becoming not only the space for living but a certain expression of its master's inner world. The house style is oriented on first of all the creation of a comfortable and harmonious climate, and when choosing carefully all decoration components it can be some sort of a passive psychiatrist.

Psychological approach to interior design includes two basic functions. The most widely spread and common is a harmonizing function when the decor of a room or the whole house reflects its master's temperament, his habits, his world outlook and mind. The task of such a decor is to create the atmosphere of harmony and calm. Bold and nontrivial solutions can hardly be appropriate. Such an approach actually assumes interior inactivity towards its master. Owing to optimal combination of shades and structures of decoration materials as well as decor and accessories elements, the interior is adapted to an individual and continues his inner ego.

The second and more interesting function can be called stimulating. Such an approach assumes some feedback between the premises design and a human mind. Nowadays design plays an active part: it favourably emphasizes certain features of character and temper of its master or vice versa it smoothes and levels unfavourable features. For example, such an interior can balance an impetuous choleric or encourage a melancholic inclined to depression. It is not a secret that feng-shui popularity today owes a lot to the variety of methods for arranging stimulating space offered by this ancient study. But feng-shui successors look more deeply, claiming that favourable arrangement of space can magically influence not only the minds of house dwellers, but also the events of their lives, their personal success and success in business.

It goes without saying that ideal can be such a design which combines both stimulating and harmonizing functions. But not every person can get a professional consultancy in interior psychology or house planning from a master of feng-shui. But still one can master and use in practice the basics of personal approach to house arrangement on its own.

Interior design starts with house planning, creating a certain inner space structure. In terms of psychology such structuring is of primary importance. It sets the rhythm of life in a house and often dictates specific models of house dwellers' relationships and those between the house dwellers and their guests. Though there are lots of versions of space planning they can be reduced to the two basic types: close and open interior. A close interior assumes clear fixed division of the whole one into several isolated rooms with each having a certain function.

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Arthur Prudent is a developer of Builders London: bathroom, kitchen installation - web site offering all aspects of builders services. London builders: Interior Psychology. Part One.