Spiritual Corner in Your Newly Renovated House
People express their spirituality in different ways, but regardless of what their religious or spiritual practice is, everyone needs a quiet corner in their home where they can unwind, relax, and find their center. If you want to learn how to design this space in your home, keep reading.
In the next paragraphs, we’ll give you all the information about what your meditation or prayer room needs to be a spiritual safe haven for you. We’ll talk about what items you may want to include in this room, what you can do without, and what is essential.
Creating a Spiritual Corner in Your Newly Renovated House
Even though creating a serene space where you can put your spirituality into practice in your house may seem like a daunting task, it really isn’t. To create a space where you can pray, meditate, chant, or do breathing exercises and ceremonies, you just need to analyze your current space, make a plan, and follow our tips below.
Choosing the Appropriate Space
The first step towards creating a spiritual corner in your home is choosing the appropriate space. You want to pick a room that has enough space for you to create a shrine (if you’re practicing Buddhism, for example), an icon corner located to the east (if you’re a practicing Christianity), a prayer corner directed towards Mecca (for people practicing Islam), or another type of corner for your specific spiritual needs. Each spiritual practice has characteristic details when it comes to sacred spaces, so do your research before you start planning yours.
If you don’t have adequate space or a spare room in your home but you have the necessary space outdoors, you can create one in your backyard. Japanese zen gardens, for example, are quite popular as they bring peace and serenity while adding beauty to the space.
The Color Palette
Next, you should consider the color palette of your spiritual corner. You should opt for a more natural color palette and go with colors that make you feel relaxed and calm. Instead of using dark and vibrant shades, go for pastels and neutrals. However, if darker colors make you feel soothed, go with those. Since this is your room, it should reflect your specific tastes and preferences. For more information on color trends, check our article on using Pantone shades in your renovations.
Minimalism
Apart from the calm color palette, it’s also important to keep the clutter to a minimum because this needs to be a place where you can unwind and relax after stressful days. A spiritual room should only contain essentials; a rug to make the room cozy, a small pillow for prayer or meditation, your preferred spiritual books and other literature, and a small corner table for the shrine or icons. Check out our article on design trends if you want more information on how to incorporate different design trends in your home.
Silence and Calm Music
Since one of the main reasons for having a spiritual corner in your home is to have a calm and serene place, it’s a good idea to make it soundproof and isolate it from the rest of the house. This can be especially beneficial if you live in a particularly noisy part of town where there are a lot of traffic sounds that can make it hard for you to relax.
And if music, like meditative or classical music, or natural sounds, like rainfall, birds chirping, waves, and other sounds relax you, you can also add a small speaker inside the room.
Have Good Ventilation
Having a well-ventilated room in which clean and fresh air can circulate improves our mood, health, and focus. If you opted for having your spiritual corner outside, you’ll have plenty of fresh air, but if it’s located inside, choose a room with at least one window that you can open to let the fresh breeze in.
If there isn’t natural ventilation, a good idea would be to have an internal ventilation system or even add a simple ceiling fan. Another option would be to consider adding an air purifier to filter the air, just make sure that it doesn’t produce noises that will disturb you as you’re meditating/praying/relaxing.
The Calming Effects of Aromatherapy
Together with the calming sounds and the fresh air in your spiritual corner, burning some candles, adding essential oils to a diffuser, or even burning some incense can help you get into a more relaxing mindset. Choose soothing scents, such as peppermint, lavender, orange, chamomile, jasmine, rose, bergamot, or whichever scent you prefer. Aromatherapy isn’t just used because it smells pleasing, but also because it can boost your immune system, reduce your stress levels, and stimulate brain function.
Add Plants to Your Prayer Room
It’s well-known that nature and looking at greenery relaxes and soothes the mind, so adding plants to your room will be just as beneficial. Prayer and meditation partly intend to connect people with divinity and nature, so bringing nature into your spiritual corner sounds just right.
Choose flowers or plants that will give the room a nice scent, such as roses, jasmine, or whichever scent is your favorite. You can also decide to add a vase with freshly cut flowers if you don’t want to take care of potted plants. And if you opted for the outdoor prayer room, you’ll definitely be surrounded by a lot of greenery and nature.
Have Appropriate Lighting in the Prayer Room
A spiritual corner should have abundant natural light and the more it has, the cozier the atmosphere will be. Add window treatments to diffuse the light if it’s a particularly sunny day outside.
If the room lacks natural light, it should be well-lit with artificial light, but not overly lit so it feels like a kitchen. Choose a number of different types of lights with various intensities to create a comfortable atmosphere that complements your mood the moment you enter this sacred space.
For outdoor prayer or meditation rooms, make sure that you have some shade (you can incorporate an outdoor umbrella), so you aren’t completely exposed to bright sunlight as you’re praying. It’s also a good idea to add some sheer curtains around your prayer spot to keep you out of direct sunlight.
Avoid Technology in Your Spiritual Corner
Apart from your music player and speaker, you don’t need any additional electronics in your spiritual corner. This is a place for you to unwind, relax, and get away from the hustle and bustle of your everyday life, so this is no place for a cell phone, a laptop, a TV, or any other device that can distract you or stress you out.
Make the Space Your Own
Last but not least, add your personal touch to your spiritual corner to make the space your own. You can do this by adding some decorative pieces, or even some sentimental objects that help you calm down. This can be a favorite piece of art that creates a serene atmosphere in your spiritual corner, wind chimes bought during your last vacation, healing crystals, bells, and any other object that can help you get in a serene mood.
Just remember not to overcrowd the space if you do decide to introduce additional objects. As we’ve mentioned above, it’s essential that you keep this place clean and uncluttered, so you can focus on the reason why you’re in that room, which is praying, meditating, or relaxing.
Final Thoughts
While we may have included a lot of information about how you can go about creating a spiritual corner in your room, only you know the purpose of what you are trying to create, so choose accordingly. The essentials when it comes to designing this type of room are based on minimalism and having an uncluttered space, reducing the noise in the room, bringing in nature, introducing pleasant smells, and making the space serene and calm.
And in the end, you can even transform a piece of your backyard into a space for prayer, contemplation, meditation, and relaxation. You just need a bit of creativity and you’ll easily create a space to satisfy your needs.