Have you ever walked into a space and instantly thought, “This feels like home”? Or perhaps the opposite—entered a perfect-looking house that somehow felt… soulless?
I have a confession to make. According to UK building regulations, my favourite room in our family’s holiday cottage—a converted attic with sloping ceilings where three generations gather around a small table for board games—isn’t technically a “habitable room.” It’s too small. The ceiling’s too low. The window doesn’t provide the mandated percentage of natural light. Yet it’s precisely where we feel most at home.
The Perception Gap
As someone who’s spent years studying how spaces shape our psychology, I find this fascinating. We have all these technical definitions of what makes a room “habitable”—minimum square meters, ventilation requirements, ceiling heights—but they often miss what makes a space truly inhabitable in the emotional sense.
Rory Sutherland, the advertising guru, often talks about something called “psychophysics”—the study of how our physical reality differs from our psychological one. Nowhere is this gap more evident than in our homes.
Consider this: estate agents will tell you that adding a loft conversion increases your property value by about 20%. But adding a garden room? Only about 5%. Economically irrational, perhaps. But psychologically? Garden rooms create disproportionate happiness. They bridge our primal need for shelter with our equally primal desire for connection to nature. This is what behavioural economists call “perceived value” versus “objective value.” When it comes to our homes, perceived value isn’t just a nice bonus—it’s everything.
Historical Shapeshifting
The concept of “home” has always been a shape-shifter. For our medieval ancestors, a home was a single room where everyone ate, slept, and worked together. The Victorian era brought us the specialization of spaces—the dining room, the parlour, the study—each with rigid social protocols attached.
By the 1950s, the ideal home had been neatly partitioned into spaces for “him” (the study), “her” (the kitchen), and “them” (the nursery). How quickly that changed! By the 1970s, open-plan living knocked down those walls both physically and metaphorically. And now? We’ve come full circle. Many of us live and work in what are essentially modern versions of that medieval great hall—our kitchen-living-office-gym-classroom hybrids.
The Pandemic Paradox
The pandemic only accelerated this transformation. Suddenly, our homes needed to be everything: office, school, gym, restaurant, cinema, pub. Behavioural science tells us that when contexts blur, our brains struggle. We evolved to associate different places with different behaviours. Home meant relaxation; offices meant work. When these boundaries collapsed, so did our mental frameworks.
This explains why so many of us found ourselves working from bed, then struggling to sleep in the same spot. Our brains couldn’t make sense of the contextual shift. Smart adapters created what behavioural economists call “mental partitioning”—symbolic boundaries when physical ones weren’t possible. The kitchen table that becomes a desk by day when the laptop appears, then transforms back at dinner time when it’s put away. These aren’t just practical solutions—they’re psychological ones.
The Status Paradox
Here’s where it gets properly interesting. For centuries, our homes have been status symbols. The Georgian townhouse, the suburban semi, the city penthouse—all signals of where we stand in the social hierarchy. But there’s a fascinating paradox here. Research shows that the rooms that create the most happiness are rarely the ones that impress our visitors.
The massive marble entrance hall might impress the delivery driver, but it’s the small, cosy snug with the saggy sofa where family memories are actually made. This is what behavioural economists call “signalling versus experiencing”—and in our social media age, the gap between the two has never been wider.
We design Instagram-worthy kitchens while actually living in the glow of our phones in bed. We create formal dining rooms that sit empty while we eat on the sofa. We’re designing homes for imaginary visitors rather than our actual selves.
Cultural Lenses
Our definition of “home” is also deeply cultural. In Britain, we’re obsessed with ownership. “An Englishman’s home is his castle” isn’t just a saying—it’s practically encoded in our DNA. Nearly 65% of Britons own their homes, and many view renting as somehow temporary, incomplete.
Meanwhile, in Germany—an equally prosperous nation—less than 50% own homes, and there’s no cultural stigma around renting. Their sense of belonging comes from different sources. In many Asian cultures, a truly “habitable” room must accommodate multi-generational living and ancestral connection. The Western ideal of each child having their own bedroom would seem oddly isolating.
These aren’t just interesting cultural differences. They reveal something profound: “home” is a concept we collectively imagine and reinvent, not an objective reality.
The Belonging Formula
So what actually creates that feeling of “home”? If I were to offer a behavioural economist’s formula, it might look something like this:
Home = Control + Memory + Identity + Connection
- Control is about having agency over your environment. Can you open a window when you want fresh air? Can you adjust the lighting to match your mood? Small freedoms matter enormously.
- Memory is about creating what psychologists call “autobiographical anchoring”—the familiar chip in the kitchen counter that reminds you of that Christmas dinner, or the doorframe with height markings tracking your children’s growth.
- Identity is about self-expression. Does your space reflect who you are, or who you aspire to be?
- Connection—perhaps most importantly—is about how the space facilitates relationships, both with others and with yourself.
Interestingly, none of these factors feature prominently in building regulations or property valuations. Yet they’re precisely what transforms four walls and a roof into a home.
Hidden Influence of Design
Our homes shape us far more than we realize. Studies show that ceiling height affects how we think—higher ceilings promote more abstract, creative thinking, while lower ceilings enhance detailed focus. Natural light impacts not just our mood but our immune system and sleep cycle.
Even seemingly trivial design choices nudge our behaviour in powerful ways. Open shelving in kitchens subtly encourages tidiness. The position of a sofa determines conversation patterns. The width of a hallway influences whether neighbours stop to chat or hurry past. This is what behavioural economists call “choice architecture”—how the design of an environment influences decisions and behaviours without forcing them.
The Future Home
So what does this mean for the future of home design? I believe we’re moving toward spaces that prioritize psychological habitability alongside physical requirements. Homes that are designed from the inside out—starting with how we want to feel, then creating spaces that enable those feelings.
This means:
- Adaptable spaces that can transform as our needs change
- Design that supports mental wellbeing as deliberately as physical health
- Technology that connects rather than isolates
- Sustainability that addresses our growing eco-anxiety
But most importantly, it means recognizing that a truly habitable space isn’t about ticking regulatory boxes—it’s about creating environments where we can be fully human.
The Call Home
I’d like to leave you with this thought. We are the first generation in history trying to feel at home in a world changing faster than our evolutionary psychology can adapt. We’re hardwired to find comfort in the familiar, yet surrounded by constant novelty and disruption.
Perhaps that’s why the concept of “home” has never been more important, nor more contested. So here’s my invitation: the next time you enter your living space, try this small experiment. Close your eyes for ten seconds and ask yourself: “Does this feel like home?” Not “Does this look impressive?” or “Does this meet regulations?” but simply: “Does this feel like home?”
And if the answer is no, perhaps it’s time to consider that the most important form of renovation isn’t about knocking down walls or updating fixtures—it’s about realigning our spaces with our deepest human needs. Because in the end, what makes a house a home isn’t found in building regulations or estate agent brochures. It’s found in that mysterious alchemy where four walls and a roof become the place where we most belong.