We designed a house with the ‘formula’ for happiness – this is how we feel now
If you’ve ever been put in a bad mood (or even felt ill) from spending time in a house that was dim, cramped, cold or badly laid-out, then you’ll know exactly how architectural and environmental factors can shape your sense of wellbeing. So it stands to reason that the opposite is true, too – that good design can support and promote wellbeing at home. In fact, there’s even a ‘recipe’ for what works, with scientifically backed evidence proving that certain factors can make us feel happier, more peaceful and more productive at home.
“I just have a much greater sense of serenity and calmness [here],” says Nic Gray of the south London home he shares with his wife Hayfa Hamdan and their young daughter. The Edwardian house has been extended and renovated by Wellstudio, an architecture practice that focuses on promoting the wellbeing of its clients as much as designing beautiful and functional buildings. “The outcome has absolutely been transformative emotionally, as well as for the way we live our life,” continues Gray. “Here, I’m just happy to just sit and enjoy the space and do nothing else. I couldn’t have done that in any of the other places we’ve lived.”
Gray, a strategy and innovation consultant, and Hamdan, who works in insurance and also runs fashion-hire brand Ownish, moved into their home in late 2021. Dating from 1903, the Arts & Crafts-style house had period charm in spades – a grand tiled hallway, stained glass, original fireplaces and a curving bay at the back with french windows opening onto a 100-foot-long garden.
It was also freezing cold, hard to keep clean (with corbel foundations at the base of the walls, the floorboards practically rested on top of bare earth, and dirt kept coming up through the cracks), and the kitchen, tucked on the side of the house with a tiny window, was no bigger than a scullery. For a couple who loved to cook and entertain – and wanted to start a family – the layout was wrong, with each room a dead end, and zero flow between all the ground-floor spaces.
Wellstudio’s Tom Manwell was charged with making this grande dame of a house fit for purpose again. The couple confess that they weren’t really looking for an architect who prioritised a feeling of wellbeing: “We loved the house and wanted to do right by it, and Tom obviously had a passion for it too, which is what swung it,” says Gray. And Hamdan loved the fact that “he thought more creatively about it. The other architects we spoke to were a bit like, ‘Here’s a box, and here’s what you can do with it.’”
Manwell’s kitchen extension design is one of a kind. Taking inspiration from the design of the period French windows, he placed super-sized arches across the room, one framing a set of doors to the outside next to a smaller window; and two upside-down examples that connect via a ribbon of glass roof, with one swooping down to about a foot off the floor, deep enough to form a cosy window seat overlooking the garden.
Really high ceilings add to the sensation of space and airiness. “When I stand at the door to the extension and see all those curves, it makes me feel… it’s hard to find a word to describe it, but I would say ‘free’,” says Hamdan. The small former kitchen is now divided into a utility room and WC, while the new kitchen is arranged around a large island big enough for cooking and entertaining.
So, what about the wellness factor? Manwell’s is one of the few residential architectural practices in the UK accredited by WELL, a formal standard started in the US in 2013 that uses a points system to evaluate how a building performs for people’s health and wellbeing (think of it like the better-known Passivhaus standard for ultra-green, low-energy buildings – but with more focus on the occupants).
Originally envisaged for commercial spaces such as offices, WELL’s evidence-based knowledge can also be applied to homes. Manwell says that this framework is heavy on research and data, but that he “took that as a foundation for developing our own approach that’s more down to earth and easy for clients to understand. We came up with seven elements that we see as the most important factors.” Light, air, sound, warmth, touch, togetherness and nature are his seven pillars for a better quality of life at home.
“I would never say, ‘We’ll definitely improve your happiness levels,’ because there are so many things involved in one’s health and wellbeing. But it is an increasing factor in people’s decision-making when they are hiring an architect,” says Manwell. “After the pandemic, people just have more awareness now of how a building can support their wellbeing.”
In touch with nature
With views on to the newly landscaped patio, the window seat in the kitchen is the spot that everyone loves, and Manwell says it is “a great example of where you can come up with an opportunity for wellbeing. You can see the clouds moving across the sky, see the sunlight falling on different shades of green in the garden, and get a feeling of safety from being in a cocooned place.” There is strong research on the link between nature and wellbeing – for example, how a leafy view (or even a houseplant) can lower blood pressure and allow us to disconnect from everyday stress. Scientists have a name for the benefit that Gray feels from simply doing nothing but admiring the view from the window seat: Attention Restoration Theory.
Being able to fully enjoy their large, peaceful garden from the comfort of indoors is something that the couple were very keen on, having lived through lockdown in a flat without a balcony. Hamdan and her daughter sometimes connect to the outdoors in a different way to sitting in the window seat: “Really early in the morning, we will just lie on the floor and look up [through the skylight], watching the birds and the aeroplanes. It’s really nice.”
Here comes the sun
Science is coming to understand just how important daylight is for our health, and particularly our sleep. It triggers our circadian rhythm to wake us up in the morning with the release of serotonin (the so-called ‘happy hormone’ that helps regulate mood), while our bodies release melatonin to make us sleepy as the light fades.
Gray and Hamdan’s garden faces north-east, which explains why the rear of the house was so dark before, but the extension’s ribbon of glass across the walls and ceiling now tracks the sun from east to west, bringing light inside all day: “The sunsets are just beautiful,” says Hamdan. It also casts some simply gorgeous shadows across the room, enhanced by the thickly recessed arches, whose beauty is a further mood-booster.
Getting together
The old cellular layout of the house, with its dead-end rooms, is now a flowing series of spaces. A large arched opening has been created between the dining room and the extension, and the dining and living areas have also been knocked through, but with doors that can close them off. Simply being able to circulate helps the family to connect, even if they’re not in the same room (before, whoever was cooking was totally cut off, for example), and the layout works well for entertaining too.
Hamdan was clear that she didn’t want the interior to be completely open plan. “I don’t think it always fits in with everyday life – we like having people over but we also like not having to worry about what the kitchen looks like,” she says. “It’s definitely more social now and we’ve still got an open feel, but there’s enough of a distinction [between the different rooms].”
Warm materials
“Touch is a big aspect of human experience that can sometimes be overlooked by architects,” says Manwell. He cites the new oak parquet floor – and its underfloor heating – as an important part of this: “It’s just really nice to have cosy, warm footfall all the way through the ground floor.” Gray and Hamdan chose a sawn timber finish for the kitchen island as a way of adding some texture to a room that was otherwise full of hard, flat surfaces, and there is a lot of warmth in the choice of materials, too, including the muted bronze of the aluminium window frames, the brass tap and electrical sockets, and the brickwork exterior.
Home comforts
Being physically comfortable at home should be a given, but cold, draughts and noise can sometimes stand in the way of being truly at ease. In this house, the uninsulated floors have been replaced by underfloor heating embedded in concrete screed; the floors and walls are also thick with insulation; and there’s a new boiler, all adding up to a significantly warmer house. Timber is less echoing than tiles on the floor, and while opening up the rooms does allow noise to carry, the ‘semi open plan’ layout that Hamdan wanted helps with acoustic control.
Hamdan adds that the uncluttered kitchen – with the separate utility room and an open feeling thanks to the lack of wall cupboards – is just as much of a home comfort. “I think that just being able to put everything away is important for wellbeing. Having that storage space in the utility room has allowed us to have the kitchen just as we want it.”
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