Living and thriving in a more uplifting, positive environment can have a beneficial effect on your mindset, your stress levels, and your overall sense of wellbeing. But if you've lived in your house for a long time without changes, or you don't feel particularly good about your home environment, it may seem difficult to turn your home into an uplifting environment.

What steps can you take to make your home feel more positive and uplifting?

Take Inventory

First, take inventory of your current environment and observe your own feelings as you navigate this environment. When you enter a given room of your house, how do you feel? If you feel uplifted in one area, but more depressed in another, you can reliably conclude that there's one or more things in these rooms making you feel that contrast. Are there areas throughout your house that have something in common that always make you feel a certain way?

You might discover that there are specific things responsible for at least some portion of your mood changes. For example, you might notice that you're always slightly less happy when walking into your kitchen, and you might suspect it's because everything in the kitchen feels outdated. This can help you make more informed decisions when restructuring or redesigning your home to be more uplifting.

Research Modern/Recent Design Trends

Modern design trends are constantly evolving, but they tend to reflect current tastes and stylistic approaches. If you adopt some of these trends in your own home, your environment will likely feel newer, more inviting, and more invigorating. This is especially true if your current environment is suffering from outdated design elements.

Most commonly, people choose to update their bathroom or kitchen. While total renovations can be expensive, you could also make major changes to a budget, if you're willing to make some compromises and potentially do some of the work yourself. In any case, making your home feel more modern can be a step in the right direction.

Create Space

Most people feel more comfortable and happier in an environment with more space. Nobody likes to feel closed off or restricted (except in certain circumstances), so creating more open space can usually benefit you. Taking outdoors or taking down walls could allow you to literally create more physical space in your home. But for most people, it's much more practical to focus on things like rearranging the furniture and decluttering to create more space.

Update the Colors

Next, consider updating the color schemes of various rooms around your house. A fresh coat of paint can instantly make a room feel newer and more exciting, and it can make the space feel cleaner as well. Perhaps even more importantly, certain colors are more uplifting than others; painting your favorite rooms with bright, energetic shades derived from your personal favorite palettes can practically guarantee that you'll feel better in this environment in the future.

Invest in Indoor Plants

Indoor plants come with numerous benefits. They have the potential to make you feel happier. There's some evidence that they could play a role in improving indoor air quality. They can make you more productive if they're in the same room as you when you're working.

Accordingly, you should fill as much of your home as possible with indoor plants. Yes, you'll have to take care of them, but there are indoor plant varieties that require only a bit of light and occasional watering; if you follow the instructions that come with your indoor plants, you should be fine.

Improve the Air Quality

You should take additional measures to improve the air quality of your home environment, as this can make you feel healthier and happier overall. The easiest way to do this is to keep the windows open when it makes sense to do so. As we've established, indoor plants can help. And it's also a good idea to invest in an air purifier; just make sure you change the filter regularly.

Find Options to Minimize Clutter

Believe it or not, clutter can have a negative impact on your mental health. If there are too many miscellaneous objects in your field of vision, it can make you feel unnaturally burdened or depressed. Accordingly, you should find options to minimize clutter, such as better storage alternatives.

Find Things That Make You Smile (and Showcase Them)

Finally, find things that make you smile and show them off. Family photographs, pieces of art, and mementos from people you've known in the past can all serve this role perfectly.

It may take some time before you find the right combination of elements to make your home a more uplifting environment. But as long as you continue making a concentrated effort, you should eventually create a much more welcoming atmosphere.