Space to soothe the psyche

WHEN Ran and Ronit Ever-Hadani expanded their Mar Vista home, they ended up with a long, narrow space that had a fireplace smack in the middle. Because the room was almost like a bowling alley with no natural flow, the couple didn't have a clue what to do with it. So the area remained unused, and became a nagging reminder of their disappointment with the costly remodel.

"No matter how we rearranged our furniture, nothing seemed to fit," Ronit says. "Every time we looked at it, we thought about all the money we spent."

Instead of using traditional decorators to help them make over the room, the couple contacted Constance Forrest and her partner and sister, Susan Painter, two Venice-based psychologists who are pioneers in the emerging field of design psychology, which plumbs people's emotional responses to an environment in order to create living spaces that truly feel like a home.

In this approach, the design scheme is dictated by the results of lengthy interviews they conduct to learn about their clients' environmental histories, and to tap into the fulfilling experiences and emotions that contribute to their vision of an ideal place.

Now, after months of planning, Ran and Ronit are in the final stages of transforming the oddly shaped room into a warm living and dining area that not only reflects their personal tastes but also resonates with their psyches. The rich color palette echoes the persimmon and ivory hues in Ronit's bridal bouquet and the buttery yellows of Ran's favorite shirt, while an intricately designed wooden chair is reminiscent of the furniture Ronit's father used to lovingly restore when she was a child. "I can still smell the turpentine," she says, laughing.

Tapping into such psychological underpinnings can help define a home. "We want to create spaces that elicit that feeling of 'yes!' when the client enters them," Painter says, "that instant, instinctive gut-level reaction that a place feels just right."

Though there's only a handful of design psychologists across the country, the field's basic tenets are increasingly being adopted in the design world. Interior designers, environmental psychologists and architects are paying more attention to our psychological attachments to the home, says Denise Guerin, a spokesperson for the American Society of Interior Designers and a design professor at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.