How to have a Hygge House: 4 Things to Start Doing Now to Make your Home Feel Like a Sanctuary
Learn the four things you can do to transform your home into a hygge house for peace, joy and contentment.
Stop me if this sounds familiar. You spend endless hours picking up the never-ending mess that is your home and working through the continuous cycle of laundry just to look around and see a house that you’re disgusted and overwhelmed by.
All your family and friends think that you are a master homemaker with a spotless house that they wish they had only because you are great at hiding the real mess in drawers and behind closed doors.
You may even get tons of compliments on your seasonal and holiday decor and seemingly “put-together” home when you host special events and holidays.
But on the inside you feel like an imposter, because the way other people see your home is in contrast to how it makes you feel on a daily basis.
You may even feel like you are failing your family because you know your home doesn’t provide that calm sense of relaxation that they all need to leave the stress of the day behind. Or maybe you know that you can’t be at your best emotionally and mentally for your family because your home is a constant source of distress. And this makes it difficult to be the kind of mom and wife you know you can be and that you want to be.
I’m here to tell you that I’ve been there and I’ve come out on the other side! The solution that helped me finally feel a sense of peace in my home and in my homemaking role was designing a more hygge house.
Read on to learn what a hygge house is and how you can transform your house into a sanctuary for you and your family!
What is a hygge house?
Just in case you are new to the concept of hygge, let me give you a brief explanation of the hygge meaning first.
Hygge meaning
Hygge is a Danish philosophy for life that promotes coziness, connection, and contentment. The Danish people credit a hygge lifestyle for their increased levels of happiness in comparison to other countries. Hygge, pronounced “hoo-guh”, was a concept born out of the necessity to find ways of thriving during the long dark winters common in the Scandinavian countries.
Hygge activities include enjoying a hot beverage, like cocoa, in front of a warm fire. Another hygge activity is cozying up under a soft blanket with a good book . Hygge enthusiasts often enjoy a comfort meal or baked treat with their closest family and friends. Hygge is a concept that can apply to any part of your life, but begins at home.
If you want to learn more about the hygge lifestyle, you can check out my blog post here.
Taking into consideration hygge is a concept that developed out of a need to live comfortably during long dark and cold winters, then we can deduct some key components that define a hygge house.
A hygge house is a shelter
A shelter is a place that provides protection. We typically think of a shelter providing protection from a storm or cold weather. And, as I said above, hygge originated from the need to shelter down during the winter. But if we were to broaden the concept of shelter, we could see that it can provide a sense of safety and protection from anything that causes harm, stress or dis-ease.
A hygge house is a place where you can go to seek shelter from the everyday stress you encounter in the world outside your home.
A hygge house is comforting
The word comfort is linked to a sense of safety, but in a broader sense than shelter is. Things that are comforting provide us with a sense of safety, but also a sense of being supported, loved and seen. We seek comfort when we lose our sense of control and confidence. Comfort helps us ground ourselves back into who we are and what is important to us.
A hygge house is cozy
The Oxford dictionary defines cozy as:
“Giving a feeling of comfort, warmth and relaxation.”
So we can see that part of coziness is a sense of comfort. But it also denotes a feeling of being at peace and calm. When you are fully relaxed, you are able to let your guard down and be your true self. Cozy is a pleasant sensation that is invoked by a calming of your senses. Where comfort was about a mental feeling, cozy is a physical experience of peace.
A hygge house promotes connection
The word intimacy is one that can be connected to each of the above hygge house components. Shelter, comfort, and coziness bring you closer to one of your basic needs and wants.
Shelter brings you closer to your basic need for protection from stressful things.
Comfort is often provided from someone familiar by drawing you in closely for an embrace. A cozy blanket helps you feel closer to yourself.
Intimacy is a deep sense of connection. Intimacy is about a sense of familiarity and closeness. This can be connection with self, nature, loved ones, or spirituality. A hygge house provides you with a space to create these intimate connections.
The hygge house feeling
Throughout the 20ish years that I have lived outside of my parents’ home, I have been striving to feel all of these things in my home. For most of those 20 years I have gone about it all wrong. But it is through these mistakes that I was able to discover how to truly make my home a sanctuary of comfort, coziness and connection.
It all started by me asking myself how I want my home to feel. Rather than focusing so much on how it looked, I now focus solely on the feeling each space in my home gives me.
I determined that my home should feel like a sanctuary where I feel my calmest and most authentic. It should help me forget about the outside world and its many stressors. Home should provide the foundation to focus on the things that bring me the most joy and contentment. I knew that I deserved to feel a sense of pride in my home. I deserved to know that all of the work I put into it was helping to support both my and my family’s well-being.
Then I had to figure out when I felt the most comfortable, cozy, calm and connected so I could add that into my home. I also needed to understand what made me feel all of the opposite things: disconnected, stressed and overwhelmed. When I took stock of all of these, I realized all of the things I had been doing wrong, and the better, more fulfilling way to approach building a more hygge house.
My guess is that you are probably making at least some of these same mistakes. I want to help you stop wasting your time on things that are creating more overwhelm and start focusing your effort in areas that can help you find more comfort and joy.
Hygge house mistakes you may be making
Here are some of the mistakes I was making that you may be able to relate to.
Designing your home for aesthetic appeal instead of functionality
My obsession with needing an aesthetically pleasing home began back in 2013 with the airing of the first season of Fixer Upper. The show sold the dream of young families designing their perfect homes on a small budget and living happily ever after.
Over the next decade I saved thousands of pins on pinterest with ideas for how my home needed to be. Eventually this dream of a beautifully designed home turned into a need to DIY everything. This, I’m sure, was also spurred by the influx of DIY shows that popped up after Fixer Upper became popular.
The more ideas I pinned on Pinterest, the farther away from having a good enough home I felt I was. Add in the constant barrage of social media posts showing me how everyone else was creating a pinterest-perfect home and I was stuck in my world of lack and disappointment.
When I compared myself to everything that I was seeing, I fell short each and every time. My house wasn’t big enough, clean enough, or aesthetic enough. Ugh! My house simply wasn’t good enough and it was due to my own failings.
Ummmmmm….how could I ever feel at peace in a home that made me feel like that?
I’m sure you’ve heard the common saying:
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Teddy Roosevelt
Comparing myself was preventing me from feeling any sort of joy in my own home. I don’t know about you, but I am of the belief that no one has the right to tell you how or what to feel, be or do in your own home. It should be the one place where you are allowed to fully be yourself and be in complete control.
Well ladies, when you allow comparison to rule your expectations for your home, you are giving up your control and your joy.
Hygge house = Functional design
My desire to be happy and at peace in my own home was far greater than my need to live up to any standard that social media put in place for me. So I stopped obsessing over how my home looked so much, and I began to think about how it was functioning.
When I asked myself these questions I realized that there was plenty of stuff about my home that was functioning in a positive way. But there was also plenty of stuff that didn’t work for my life and how I wanted to feel. And then I got to changing the parts of my home that weren’t functioning.
One example of this was my bedroom. Because it’s a larger room with “extra” space, I would often shove things into it that I didn’t have a place for just to get it out of the way. This created a space that was difficult to relax in and that activated my freeze response whenever it came time to clean and organize. It also was NOT conducive to sleeping and connecting with my husband!
I realized that I had a space in my house where I could store these extra things If I simply reorganized and cleaned it out. Doing so allowed the extra space to function as needed storage and my bedroom to function as a relaxing space. I immediately felt more comfortable simply by changing the functionality of these spaces.
How can you enjoy the spaces in your own home by designing them for functionality?
Organizing clutter instead of Curating Valuables
Hey Mama, this is a judgment-free zone, so you can level with me on this.
Do you spend a large amount of time creating organizational systems for all of the things in your home: toys, cleaning supplies, kitchen gadgets, clothes, seasonal decor, etc? Do you spend all of this time (and most likely an equal amount of money) on organizing your home, just for it to be messy again in a week?
If you love the bin section as much as I do, then it’s time to start doing things a different way!
Organizing clutter only helps you avoid doing the thing that will create meaningful and lasting change in your home.
Clutter is not just the stuff on the floor – it’s anything that stands between you and the life you want to be living.
Peter Walsh
There are so many lies we tell ourselves that keeps us hanging on to clutter:
How often do we hang on to something because it has meaning and purpose for the lives we want to live? Most likely, not very often. If we removed all of the things that don’t support the type of life we want to live or evoked true joy, we would have A LOT less stuff to organize and take care of.
No longer having things that take up our emotional and physical resources allow us to focus on curating a life that has more purpose and joy.
Hygge house = Minimalism
I began my decluttering in the rooms that had the most functionality, like the kitchen or living room. I let go of all of the things that I was hanging on to because of the lies I mentioned above. And I only kept the things that allowed myself and my family to feel joy, comfort and connection.
Can you guess what happened? I enjoy using these spaces more and they’re 1000% easier to take care of. Actually, I would say that I even enjoy taking care of these spaces now! Can you imagine if cleaning and caring for your home genuinely added to your happiness instead of your stress?
If you need help getting started with decluttering, check out the Maximized Minimalist Podcast with Katy Joy Wells. Her down-to-earth approach to decluttering helps you feel empowered to tackle any decluttering job, big or small. Here is a list of podcast episodes she recommends if you’re just getting started.
A hygge house is somewhere you carefully cultivate only items that serve a functional purpose or bring you joy. It is a place that reduces overwhelm by reducing the amount of “stuff” you are responsible for taking care of. A hygge house, to a certain degree, is a minimalist house.
Defining your style rather than defining your atmosphere
In order to create a hygge home that provides sanctuary for you and your family, you have to get clear on how you want your home to make you feel. Instead of searching pinterest for more inspiration for a “modern farmhouse kitchen” or a “bohemian living room”, get clear on the emotions you want your home to evoke.
Meik Wiking has said this about the hygge meaning:
Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience rather than about things.”
Meik Wiking
When we get too focused on a specific design style, we worry about the things that we should be adding to mimic that style. But things and “shoulding” all over yourself, never got anyone anywhere.
The atmosphere of your home is the overall mood that it evokes. So what mood do you want to be in at home? What mood would you like to support your family in when they are home?
Hygge house = Cozy atmosphere
A hygge house is one that has an atmosphere of cozy, calm and comfort. Some of the things that immediately make me feel those things and create a hygge atmosphere are things like:
- Candles
- Fireplace
- Soft blankets & pillows
- Plants & greenery
- Wood
- Soft lighting
- Neutral colors
It is these things that I include in my hygge house decor rather than a mid century modern desk or rustic coffee table.
Design your home around a feeling rather than a style. And you will see how quickly you can transform the atmosphere for joyful living!
Creating a staged environment in place of a living home
Your home is a living, breathing thing. It grows and develops along with the people it houses and its personality is defined by its purpose.
The staged photos in an interior design magazine are just that: staged. They are not spaces that people live in. Even bloggers and influencers who post pictures of their perfectly curated homes will tell you that they don’t look like that normally! Why? Because people live in them.
It’s important to ask yourself: What is the purpose of my home? Is your home something that is meant to please the people outside of it? Or is it something that is meant to please the people who live in it?
Most people don’t purchase a home because they want to create a perfectly curated museum of things that you can only look at and not enjoy. We purchase a home to raise a family in. A house is just a thing, but a home is an experience.
Hygge house = Living experience
A home is a place for living. So why not design your home around your family’s life? What are the things that you and your family love to do? Make space for those things in your home!
- If you love to craft, create a craft room or craft cabinet.
- If you enjoy eating home cooked meals, then make sure you have a clean dining table to use each night.
- If you love to read, then make a place to display your books.
- It is the meaningful activities of living that determine what should go in your different spaces at home and how to set them up.
My living room used to be something that my family rarely gathered in. The tv sat too high and you had to angle your neck back to see it. The space was a pass through that didn’t feel very cozy. And the rug was too small leaving a portion of the couch without a soft place to put your feet.
When I visualized my family enjoying our living room, I knew what I had to do. I needed to make the space conducive to family movie nights and family gaming. It needed to be a cozy area for us to gather and do our individual relaxing activities. Designing a space around these activities would make the space so much more meaningful. So I put the tv in a centered location at a more comfortable height. I made the gaming systems more accessible and I got a better sized rug.
How can you design the different spaces in your home for living? How could your home invite people to engage in the things that they love through design?
Your hygge house sanctuary: Key takeaways
You may have noticed that all of these mistakes when creating a hygge house are superficial things. They don’t focus on meaningful activities.
If you are stuck in the place I was: designing an aesthetically pleasing home filled with design-specific furniture and decor, it may feel impossible to think about designing a home in any other way.
Home design experts say that a comfortable home is one that is aesthetically pleasing. And when everyone is posting pictures of their perfectly designed homes, it’s easy to get stuck in the comparison trap and feel like we are failing at making a nice home for our families.
But a home is more about a feeling. Isn’t that why we always say “home is where the heart is”?
When I started focusing on how I wanted my home to make me and my family feel and stopped trying to make it match some external ideal, I started to enjoy my home again.
A hygge house is about creating an atmosphere of coziness, comfort, calm and connection. A hygge house is a home that feels like a warm embrace.
