How Can Natural Stone Enhance Your Wellbeing?

Interior design is about more than making your home look beautiful. The elements you choose for your home can also affect your mood and wellbeing. Bringing nature indoors is one of the easiest ways to boost mood, productivity, and wellbeing. There are many ways to bring nature inside, including adding more plants, opening the windows, and using elements like natural stone in your design. You may have already been considering some of the other major advantages of installing natural stone in your home. For instance, natural-stone care is generally easy to manage. Here's how using natural stone in your home can boost your wellbeing. Creates a Connection with the Earth If you spend a lot of time in your home with your family, you may feel disconnected from the rest of the world. Natural-stone flooring and countertops can evoke a sense of connection with the world outside better than manmade materials like porcelain. Natural elements in your home can also help you enjoy greater tranquility and stress relief when you come home from a fast-paced and stressful day. Provides Color Therapy It's well established that certain colors can evoke specific emotions and feelings. While vibrant hues encourage communication and socialization, darker hues may create a gloomy feeling. Natural stone with warm shades like travertine can spark creativity and increase relaxation, and cooler shades often found in marble may evoke a calming sensation, which is one reason marble is so often used in spas. Gray, a common color in marble and slate, can evoke many feelings, depending on its shade. Shades of gray closer to white or silver can be lively and illuminate a space, while shades closer to black may seem mysterious. Because gray is emotionless, it can be used to add a sense of calm to a space without energizing, exciting, or stimulating the senses. Promotes Good Feng Shui Feng shui is an ancient Chinese system of science and art that governs how to arrange and orient furniture and belongings to balance energies in a room. This system divides everything into five elements: water, metal, earth, fire, and wood. Each element evokes a different mood and all should be in balance. Marble, granite, and other types of natural stone are considered earth elements. Under feng shui practices, natural stone represents stability, trust, and strength. In bathrooms, which have an overpowering water element, stone can be used to bring harmony and serenity. Natural stone can also be used in fireplace design to balance the fire element. Reduces the Amount of Toxins in the Home People spend a great deal of time in environments filled with concrete and other unnatural, manmade materials. Using as many natural elements as possible in your home can enhance your wellbeing by reducing the amount of plastic and other potentially hazardous materials you are exposed to every day. Unlike some countertop materials like laminate and stainless steel, natural stone does not always require a chemical-laden manufacturing process, nor does it require the use of harsh chemicals to maintain its beauty. However, some installers do use solvent-based sealers, so it’s best to check beforehand if this is something you prefer to avoid. If you want the full positive effects of having natural stone in your home, make sure to keep the stone clean with a specially formulated granite daily cleaner from Granite Gold®. All of our stone care products are safe to use on granite, marble, travertine, slate, and other types of natural stone. Call 1-800-475-STONE today to learn more.