Delight: The Alchemy of a Home

Creating moments of magic

Homes with a real sense of home don't follow a simple recipe. They're thoughtful on many axes at once, some subjective and some objective, and no single choice explains the feeling you get when you walk in. The Joyful by Design Framework is my attempt to give those axes structure through four pillars: Identity, Function, Wellbeing and Delight. I've written about the first three. This is about the last one, and the most elusive – the pillar that resists a formula: Delight

Delight is so subjective. One person's delight might be another's weird. Delight can be found in art, personality, silliness, memory, ritual, and so many other places. It follows no logical structure, so it's frequently forgotten as part of the design process and our homes are worse off for it – bringing intention to this element is what gives spaces magic, makes us wonder, and completes the soul of the home.

When Good Design Isn't Enough

You can get almost everything right: The finishes are considered, the fixtures are beautiful, the layout supports the way you live, and the home can still feel a little sterile. Well designed, but flat.

When a room feels this way, our instinct is to reach for decor. Something for the shelf, the wall – perfect imperfection that makes it feel lived in. That instinct isn't wrong, but it's exactly where a lot of homes – eager to officially wrap things up – lose their way.

The "Faux-Interesting" Trap

Many owners and designers want to create a space that feels collected, and rightfully so. "Collected" homes have good vibes – they solve the "flat" problem, and give feelings of nostalgia and intrigue. The problem is if they don't spend time to curate and collect authentically, they may resort to buying what I think of as the "faux-interesting" – mass-produced nostalgia. Bowls made to look like Greek relics. "Abstract art" chosen by filtering a home-decor site for the right size and color. Objects designed to look like they have a story, without actually having one.

There's a place for this. It works when you're staging a house for sale, or dressing a restaurant that needs to feel like somewhere in particular. In a home though, too often it reads as performative. I'd argue filling your home with this type of decor is worse than no decor at all, because I believe people can feel when you're faking it.

There's a second, subtler trap: the pressure-bought souvenir, marketed as a piece that will make your home feel "collected." My favorite example is the inlaid stone tile sold at the end of the Taj Mahal tour. I have one. My parents have one. At least three of my clients have one. And not one of us loves it as much as we were told we would.

The inlay itself is extraordinary art, and I don't want to take anything away from it. The problem is how it came home. A good, high-pressure sales job told us how we'd use it before we'd decided we loved it. (I have a similar story about Murano glass.) Pieces like this end up in an awkward middle ground: too close to regular decor to be unexpected, not chosen with design intention, and not authentically discovered either.

What Delight Actually Is

In the framework, Delight comes down to one question: does this evoke in us that unmistakable feeling, where nostalgia meets pleasure meets giddy? It can't be scientifically formulated, yet it's unmistakable.

Delight can come from anything, and many times it's personal. I believe it often evokes emotion because of an association with a person or an experience: a grandchild's art, a shell from a scuba diving trip on your honeymoon. It's sensory, too: the scent of your grandmother's home, the woodworking detail on the dining table where you celebrated Thanksgiving dinner. Celebratory moments, cherished memories and the sensations you felt amidst them.

It lives in our rituals. In my home, it's tea. A wooden Japanese tray, a chawan and some matcha tools, some collected on trips to Japan and some bought online, turn a daily habit (I want to make tea) into something I look forward to. A glimpse of them while I'm rushing out the door reminds me of the ritual that awaits me when I return. They hold memory because I asked them to accompany me, years ago.

And it lives in what we inherit, or are given: the hotel notepad where I scribbled down my wedding vows, the flash cards my sister used for her maid-of-honor speech, a batik Ganesha from my husband's grandmother, a cat-icorn my daughter painted for my birthday, and a handbag she made me out of printer paper and painter's tape because she "knows how much I love shopping."

So why does delight get skipped? Because it doesn't scale. It takes intimacy and time: knowing someone well enough to know what stops them in their tracks. It's far easier to drop in pieces that match the moodboard and make for a nice project photo. But a home isn't a photograph.

How to Find Yours

Some people are naturals. They hold on to things and know exactly what they love. Others are less nostalgic, and I pull them along as we figure it out together.

Collections are an easy place to start. Whether it's magnets, stamps or shells, displaying a collection is a surefire recipe for delight. Many in a set is far more intriguing than one on its own, as long as it's authentic to the person.

If you collect while you travel, watch for the biggest mistake I see. Standing in the shop, people stop looking at the object itself: the material, where it came from, what makes it unlike anything else. They start thinking about how it will look in their home instead: where it will go, whether it will match. But the goal isn't matching. If it were, we'd buy it where we buy the sofa. The goal is to tell a story, and we can always find a way to showcase it.

And if you don't know what delights you? You're not alone. I'm working with a client right now who can't articulate what brings her joy. She chose white everything; she's a minimalist. So we run lots of ideas by her, tell her the stories behind the pieces, and look for anchors for the decor of her home. It's honestly hard for some people. I think it's worth spending the time, doing something close to therapy, to help someone understand their own tastes. I'm still figuring out what works best for clients like her, and I'd rather say so than pretend there's a formula.

How to Give It a Place

Using too many of these objects too haphazardly certainly risks visual chaos, but that's not a reason not to work them in. We just need to choose the right moments. Find a space on a bookshelf, a mantel or a wall that's sized just right for the scale of the object. Framing, or taking care in the way a piece is displayed, is also a good way to keep it from venturing into feeling like junk. Quirky pieces often work best in unexpected places. Not always, though. It's a judgment call.

What I Can Tell You

I can't tell you what delights you. But I can tell you what I've found carries enduring delight, in my home and for my clients: objects tied to a memory, the tools of a ritual you love, the things the people you love made or gave you, and collections that are authentically yours.

If you'd like more on designing a home that feels like yours, sign up for The Letter, my monthly note on design, makers and what's happening at the gallery. If you're looking for ritual pieces, a few of my favorites are here, and we carry many objects from independent makers at LSD Gallery. And if you'd like a second eye on the judgment calls, book a virtual consult.

For me, delight is the first thing I see when I come home. When my daughter was two and my son was just six weeks old, we took a maternity-leave trip to Spain. In Barcelona we took a mosaics class, using cheap tiles to make little 10-by-6-inch mosaics: my husband and daughter working together on one board, my six-week-old son and me on the other. I had custom frames made and hung them at the private back entry of our home, so we see them first thing on arriving home. It's wonderful to get to revisit that memory so often.

That's delight. Not something you buy to finish a room, but a moment you make room for. It's the fourth pillar, and it's the one that makes the other three feel like home.