The Psychology of Everyday Aesthetics: Why Your Surroundings Shape How You Feel
Welcome back to PsyberSpace. I'm your host, Leslie Poston. Recently, I talked about the psychological benefits of tiny pleasures, little micro joys. This week, we're talking about a somewhat related topic, Why that cafe with the plants and the sunlight makes your latte taste better. You know the one I'm talking about.
Leslie Poston:Maybe it's got warm wood, gentle lighting, plants hanging from the ceiling, soft music in the background, or live music. The coffee probably tastes the same as it does at the gas station down the road, but somehow it feels better. You're more at ease. You might even have a great idea while you're sitting there, so you linger and you feel good. That's not marketing.
Leslie Poston:That's not a trick. That's your brain responding to environmental cues in ways that genuinely change your experience. Today's episode explores the psychology of everyday aesthetics. Not just art museums or fancy architecture, but the ordinary visual and sensory details that shape our emotions, our focus, and our sense of well-being. I'll dig into the science behind our response to beauty, the role of color and light, how form and texture affect cognition, and why design either supports or disrupts our ability to regulate emotion.
Leslie Poston:This isn't about aesthetics as luxury, It's about aesthetics as psychology. So let's get into it. Let's start with something familiar. You walk into a cafe. Maybe it's that cozy spot with soft chairs, warm lighting, and plants in the windows I just mentioned.
Leslie Poston:Or maybe it's a Turkish coffee house with ornate tiles, copper pots, the smell of cardamom. Maybe it's a hip hop cafe like Deadstock in Portland where sneaker culture meets community building, art covers the walls, and the music pulses with intention. The specifics vary, but the effect is the same. Somehow you feel better. The drink tastes better, and you want to stay.
Leslie Poston:This isn't the placebo effect in the traditional sense, it's perception. Your environment genuinely changes your experience of flavor, comfort, and emotion. Research shows that ambient light, color, temperature, and sound all influence how we experience what we eat and drink. Your brain is constantly absorbing cues from your surroundings whether you consciously notice them or not. When those cues signal safety, warmth, and care or vibrancy, immunity, and identity, your nervous system relaxes.
Leslie Poston:Your sensory systems become more receptive. This phenomenon extends beyond coffee shops. Think about how different you feel in a well lit office with plants versus a windowless cubicle farm with flashing fluorescent lights. Or how a cluttered beige waiting room makes time feel slower and your anxiety sharper. The spaces we inhabit don't just provide shelter.
Leslie Poston:They actively shape how we think, feel, and function. And that's what this episode is about: the hidden psychological power of aesthetics in our everyday lives. And here's the thing. You don't need a degree in interior design to understand this or use it. You just need to pay attention to what your nervous system is already telling you because your body knows when a space feels good.
Leslie Poston:It's been tracking safety and comfort through environmental cues since you were born. The question is whether you're listening. I got the idea for this episode from a cultural shift in language on TikTok. I noticed that some of the offered generations were starting to use the word aesthetic as a verb or as a descriptor, like that's so aesthetic or let's get aesthetic. And I was so intrigued by that that I wanted to dive into the psychology of aesthetics.
Leslie Poston:When most people hear aesthetics, they think of art galleries, museums, or beautifully designed homes featured in magazines. But in psychology, especially environmental psychology, aesthetics means something broader and more ordinary. It's about the sensory impact of design choices in all the places we actually spend our time. Everyday aesthetics includes how your bedroom is arranged, the way the sunlight hits your desk in the morning, the color of a cereal box on your table, the sound design in an app you love, the font on a street sign, the graffiti on a street sign, the texture of the chair you're sitting in right now. These are not neutral details.
Leslie Poston:They're constantly influencing how safe we feel, how alert or relaxed we are, and how much cognitive energy we have available. That makes aesthetics deeply psychological even when it doesn't feel profound. Everyday aesthetics also doesn't mean expensive taste or curated minimalism. It means the small accumulated visual and sensory experiences that shape our mood, condition, and behavior. A child's brightly colored bedroom, a cluttered kitchen counter, a hospital corridor, or a subway station are all aesthetics.
Leslie Poston:These details might not register consciously, but your brain reacts anyway. Your heart rate shifts, your cortisol levels change, and your intention span expands or contracts based on what you're seeing, hearing, and touching. This is why two people can have completely different emotional responses to the exact same space. What feels calming to you might feel sterile or boring to someone else. What feels cozy to one person might feel claustrophobic to another when a minimalist meets a maximalist.
Leslie Poston:It can be interesting. Aesthetic preferences are shaped by culture, memory, neurodivergence, trauma, and individual sensory processing. But across all that variation, there are some consistent patterns in what helps people feel grounded, safe, and capable of focus. And that's what environmental psychology studies. There's a field called neuroaesthetics that studies how our brains respond to beauty.
Leslie Poston:When we perceive something as beautiful, whether it's a painting, landscape, or even a well designed object, specific areas of our brain light up. One of those areas is the orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making, reports processing, and emotional regulation. Another is the insula, which integrates sensory information with emotional states. The visual cortex obviously plays a role too, but it's not working alone. What's fascinating is that aesthetic pleasure isn't just abstract or intellectual.
Leslie Poston:It's embodied. It shows up in your heart rate, your cortisol levels, your attention span, and even your immune function. Research by neuroscientists Zechi and others has shown that when people view art or beauty, their brains respond in ways similar to when they eat good food or listen to music they love. Dopamine gets released, and the default mode network the part of your brain involved in daydreaming, self reflection, and meaning making, becomes more active. This is why beauty can feel nourishing.
Leslie Poston:It activates systems designed to promote well-being, connection, and rest. Even fleeting exposure to beautiful or calming imagery can reduce stress and improve cognitive performance. One study found that patients recovering from surgery healed faster if they had a view of trees from their hospital window compared to patients who just looked at a brick wall. Another found that office workers with access to natural light reported better mood, sleep, and focus than those in windowless environments. And remote workers report high levels of satisfaction in part because they control their own working environment.
Leslie Poston:Your brain treats beauty, or at least certain kinds of beauty, as a signal that you're in a safe, resource rich environment. And when your brain gets that signal, it allows you to relax, think more broadly, and engage more creatively. That's not frivolous. That's survival. Because humans evolved in environments where beauty often correlated with safety water, greenery, shelter, and community.
Leslie Poston:We're still wired to respond to those cues even when they show up in a cafe or your living room. Let's break down some of the specific ingredients that make up aesthetic experience. Light, for example, is one of the most powerful environmental variables affecting mood and cognition. Natural light regulates circadian rhythms, which control sleep, alertness, and hormone production. Exposure to daylight during the day improves sleep quality at night and reduces symptoms of depression.
Leslie Poston:Warm, dim lighting in the evening signals your brain that it's time to wind down. But harsh overhead fluorescent lighting? That can increase anxiety, reduce focus, and even trigger headaches or sensory overload, especially for neurodivergent people. Lighting isn't just about visibility. It's about tone, mood, and nervous system regulation.
Leslie Poston:This is why a softly lit room feels intimate and a brightly lit office feels sterile. Your brain is reading the light and making assumptions about safety and social context. Color also matters, although it's more culturally variable than we sometimes assume. Studies have shown that blue tones can promote calmness and focus, which is why so many hospitals and schools use blue in their design. Red and orange tend to raise arousal and alertness, which can be useful in short bursts but exhausting over time.
Leslie Poston:Green is often associated with creativity and restoration, perhaps because of its connection to nature. But individual and cultural differences mean there is no one size fits all color palette for well-being. What feels energizing in one cultural context, like the vibrant yellows and magentas of a South Asian celebration or the rich golds and reds of a Chinese New Year, might feel overwhelming in another. The key is alignment with your own nervous system and cultural identity, not adherence to some universal aesthetic standard. Texture and form are equally important.
Leslie Poston:Soft fabrics and organic textures like wood or stone tend to increase comfort and reduce tension. Smooth, sleek surfaces can feel modern and clean, but they can also feel cold or impersonal if they're overused. Even the shapes of furniture and architecture matter. Research shows that people generally find curved edges and rounded forms more pleasant and less stressful than sharp angles and harsh lines. This is probably because angular, jagged shapes signal a potential threat.
Leslie Poston:They look like weapons, clips, predators. Our brains are always scanning for danger, and design cues can help us decide whether we're safe or on edge. We don't just react to beauty in the moment. We encode it. Beautiful or emotionally resonant environments create stronger, more detailed memories.
Leslie Poston:The cozy bookshop with the string lights and the smell of old paper might become a comfort anchor you return to in your mind during stressful times. A sterile, disorganized office might be remembered as cold, alienating, or even traumatic if you experience something difficult there. The way a space looks becomes part of the story we tell about it. Aesthetics help shape our narrative memory, which is a big part of identity formation and meaning making. This is especially true for children whose early memories are often encoded alongside vivid sensory details, The color of their favorite blanket, the pattern of wallpaper in their grandma's house, the way light looked through a certain window.
Leslie Poston:These aren't just background details. They're part of how we understand who we are and where we're from. Aesthetic elements also serve as emotional anchors. When you're feeling anxious or overwhelmed, familiar sensory cues can help you regulate. This is why people create comfort spaces.
Leslie Poston:A reading nook, a favorite cafe, a particular playlist paired with dim lighting. These rituals use aesthetic consistency to signal safety to your nervous system. For me, when I'm feeling anxious, I bake some of my grandma's cookies because it brings me right back to her kitchen, which is a comforting place to me. Your brain learns, when I'm in this space with this light and this texture, maybe these smells, I can relax. And that learning is powerful, and it could be intentionally cultivated.
Leslie Poston:In trauma therapy, there's a concept called environmental anchoring, where therapists help clients create or identify spaces that support nervous system regulation. This might involve changing the lighting in a bedroom, adding soft textures, or removing clutter that triggers stress. The goal isn't to make things pretty in a superficial way it's to make the environment legible and safe to the body. Because when your surroundings feel chaotic, your internal state often follows. Now let's talk about the opposite.
Leslie Poston:Poorly designed spaces don't just look unpleasant, they create psychological friction. Offices with no windows at all, beige walls, overhead fluorescence, and loud HVAC systems create low level chronic stress. This kind of stress isn't dramatic or acute, it's subtle. But it accumulates. Chronic exposure to aesthetically harsh or chaotic environments makes it harder to concentrate, regulate emotion, and stay motivated.
Leslie Poston:It also makes it harder to think creatively. In hospitals, sterile and overly clinical environments have been shown to slow patient recovery and increase reports of pain. In schools, classrooms with poor lighting, no natural elements, and high visual clutter contribute to distraction, behavioral issues, and lower academic performance. In workplaces, those windowless offices we talked about are linked to higher rates of burnout and lower job satisfaction. This isn't about being too sensitive or needing everything to be aesthetically perfect.
Leslie Poston:It's about cognitive load. When your environment is constantly sending signals of discomfort, threat, or overstimulation, your brain has to work harder just to maintain baseline function. That leaves less energy for the tasks you're actually trying to do, whether that's learning, working, healing, or connecting with others. We live in a culture that often separates function and form as if they're independent variables. But when form actively harms cognitive and emotional function, that separation doesn't hold.
Leslie Poston:Bad design isn't just ugly it's disabling. And the people most affected are often those who are already people with sensory processing differences, people recovering from trauma, people living in under resourced environments who don't have the option to leave or to redesign their spaces. There's a growing movement to design spaces that actively support emotional and physical health. This includes trauma informed architecture, which considers how design choices affect people who've experienced trauma Things like visibility, controllability, predictability, and sensory modulation. It includes biophilic design, which brings natural elements like plants, natural light, water features, and organic materials into our built environment.
Leslie Poston:And it includes frameworks like the well building standard, which integrates mental health into design metrics by focusing on air quality, light levels, noise reduction, and spatial layout. Research by environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich and others has shown that even small aesthetic interventions can have measurable health effects. Patients with a view of nature heal faster. Workers with access to daylight report better sleep and mood. Students in classrooms with natural light and warm colors perform better on tests.
Leslie Poston:These same principles hold true in our homes, schools, hospitals, and workplaces. Design is never neutral. Every choice affects someone's nervous system, attention, and emotional capacity. This doesn't mean every space needs to look like a wellness retreat or a Scandinavian design magazine. It means paying attention to the impact of design choices on the people who use those spaces, especially people with different sensory needs, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences.
Leslie Poston:That means recognizing that accessibility includes sensory accessibility and that mental health support can be built into the walls, lighting, and layout of a room. User experience design follows similar principles. Good UX reduces cognitive friction and helps people feel calm and in control. Bad UX creates frustration and fatigue. The stakes might seem lower than hospital design, but the psychological principles are the same.
Leslie Poston:Design either supports or disrupts regulation. And since we spend hours a day staring at screens, digital aesthetics matter just as much as physical ones. So what does this mean for your life? You don't need to live in an architectural masterpiece. You don't need fancy furniture or a perfectly curated home.
Leslie Poston:What you do need is awareness and alignment. Start noticing which environments help you think, feel safe, or rest. Notice which ones drain you, distract you, or make you feel tense. Notice if it's the lighting, the clutter, the color, maybe a sound. Is it the lack of softness?
Leslie Poston:Does it need more greenery? If you work from home, think about your setup. Can you move your desk closer to a window or add a lamp with warm light instead of relying on an overhead fixture? Maybe bring in a plant or piece of fabric that feels good to touch. And here's the thing.
Leslie Poston:Almost none of this requires money. You can rearrange furniture you already have to improve flow and light. You can take cuttings from a friend's plant and propagate them in water. Swap a harsh overhead bulb for a softer one from another room. You can hang fabric that you already own, a scarf, a sheet, or a piece of clothing just to soften a wall or filter light.
Leslie Poston:You can move objects that matter to you into your line of sight. Libraries often have free passes to museum and botanical gardens if you need beauty outside your home. Parks are free, and walking through neighborhoods with architecture or gardens you love costs nothing. If you live in a space you don't fully control, like a dorm, an apartment, or a shared house, carve out a sensory corner just for yourself. Maybe it's a chair with a soft blanket, a small shelf with objects that matter to you, photos, postcards, or art printed from free online museum collections, a playlist that pairs with a certain kind of light, string lights or candles, if they're allowed, can completely change how your space feels for just a few dollars.
Leslie Poston:Even cleaning and decluttering, removing things that stress you out, creates aesthetic and psychological relief without cost at all. This isn't about perfection or Pinterest aesthetics. It's about creating alignment between your environment and your nervous system. Your brain is constantly asking, am I safe here? Can I rest here?
Leslie Poston:And can I focus here? And when the answer is yes to all three, everything else gets easier. Your body relaxes and your mind clears. You have more emotional capacity for things that actually matter. And if you're neurodivergent, chronically ill, or recovering from trauma, this work isn't optional.
Leslie Poston:It's survival. Because when your sensory processing is different, when your nervous system is more reactive, when your baseline stress is already high, your environment becomes even more important. You're not being difficult. You're not being high maintenance. You're responding to real sensory input that genuinely affects your ability to function.
Leslie Poston:Advocating for spaces that support you isn't self indulgence. It's self preservation. I'll close by saying aesthetics aren't frivolous. They're functional. They shape your energy, clarity, and resilience.
Leslie Poston:They help you build a life that feels livable, so pay attention. Notice what helps you. And then as much as you're able, start building more of that into your world because you deserve to move through spaces that make you feel good. Not someday, not after you've earned it, right now. Thanks for listening to PsyberSpace.
Leslie Poston:I'm your host, Leslie Poston, signing off. As always, until next time, stay curious, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and maybe send this to a friend if you think they'd enjoy it.
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