What Is Biophilic Design?

Are you familiar with the term biophilia? Despite the ominous name that may make you think it’s a disease, it’s an innate human tendency. Defined, it means the tendency of humans to want to connect with nature based on many thousands of years of evolution.

In northern California, we have many opportunities to interact with nature, given our mild climate and abundance of natural beauty. But the reality is that our hyper-busy modern lives have us spending as much as 90% of our time indoors. Biophilic design is a relatively recent trend aiming to design living spaces that bring the outside in. In other words, if we are forced to spend time indoors, we can at least continue to satisfy part of our innate desire to commune with nature. As a result, home designs, especially in the Bay Area, are including more indoor/outdoor spaces, large windows, atriums, and other elements that help connect natural features to the indoors.

One of the most exciting new trends in biophilic design is the use of smart technology to bring a more natural and healthier lifestyle to home interiors. In this blog, we’ll touch on three of the latest ways homes are being equipped for improved wellness.

Keep reading to learn more!

Air Quality

When the air quality is unhealthy outdoors, you feel it. But did you know indoor air quality can also have a significant impact on your health? Ultrafine particles can lead to lung disease, allergies, and reduced blood flow. An air purification system can cure many of those ills by eliminating up to 99.9% of airborne particles, including dust, mites, and mildew.

Air filtration systems are not necessarily new technology. What is new is the smart technology that can help you use these systems more effectively as well as make them work with other smart home functionality to create a healthier environment. Today’s air purification systems can bring in outside air intelligently and filter it to desired levels. When air purification systems are paired with smart climate control systems, humidity, temperature, and purification all work together to create the ideal environment for you.

Wellness Scenes

We’ve written before about smart home control and automation, which enables the coordination of various intelligent features in the home. With the typical stress of daily life, the home should be a place where you can decompress and relax. Smart technology makes it easy to set the right ambiance and mood.

Our senses respond to sound and temperature, among other things. With smart technology, you can set your preferred relaxation scenes. Easily make it cool or warm and hear your preferred music to help you unwind. If you have a water feature outdoors, you can include that in your automation, creating a calming background sound. Once you have your preferences dialed into your system, it’s easy to activate the scene with a push of a button or a voice command to your voice assistant of choice.

Virtual Windows

One of the most exciting recent applications of technology in biophilic design is virtual windows. If you have a space that is deprived of windows to the outdoors, or perhaps does not have the best view, you can create your own. LED technology now makes virtual windows cost-effective and realistic for your unique home spaces.

A virtual window can be created by mounting customized flat panels in window casings and using programmable software to create natural scenes. One of the most advanced features is the ability of the scene to move naturally as you walk across your window, creating a form of virtual reality. Your smart home system can vary the view according to your preferences, changing automatically throughout the day for further realism.

You can even implement virtual windows with special ceiling treatment to simulate the sky. If you are familiar with the treatments of indoor spaces like the virtual sky at the Grand Canal Shops at the Venetian resort in Las Vegas, today's LED technology makes it possible in your home.

Let BRAVAS show you how to enhance wellness at home with the latest in biophilic smart technology. We proudly serve the Bay Area and beyond from Atherton, Woodside, and San Francisco to Napa and Walnut Creek. Click our chatbox below to be quickly connected to one of our specialists or contact us here. We look forward to working with you.