Carol W. Cisco of Signature Design + Studio and Designing for Veterans to be Featured on Close Up Radio

LAWRENCE, KS, UNITED STATES, September 5, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Signature Design + Studio, in collaboration with the non-profit organization Designing for Veterans, is proud to announce pioneering advancements in Wellness Design. This initiative emphasizes the profound impact that well-conceived interiors can have on health and wellness, addressing the impact of design from a holistic perspective including physical, emotional, mental, and overall well-being within the built environment.

Understanding the Importance of Wellness Design

"Interior design is more than aesthetics," says Carol Cisco, Principal of Signature Design + Studio and founder of Designing for Veterans. Based on years of providing designed environments to severely disabled veterans, her research in this work discovered how design can impact one's life. While there are the standard interior design elements there are others not identified until now. Those need careful application in designing a home or any built environment by looking through a new and holistic lens.

In support of this Carol feels is important to understand that "…every design choice, every color, texture, spatial arrangement, every detail employed; whether for function, aesthetics or psychological benefit has a therapeutic purpose and value." This is an aspect of interior design not conceived of or not fully realized until now. It is the future of interior design.

The Unknown Core Elements for Wellness Design

While professional designers know the basic elements of interior design and apply them each and every day for their clients' homes to beautiful results, Ms. Cisco's research discovered other core elements not generally known. While there is more to be said about each of the standard design elements and their impact on lives much more can be said of the impact of unknown core elements.

She asks all to consider these questions: Is your home creating triggers? Are you unhappy, angry, sad, depressed, worried, and more stressed than ever before? Is your home giving you headaches? Are you having trouble breathing? Do you feel irritated, restless, hopeless, or unstable? The interior design of your home can have impact on your overall health and frame of mind. It can be subtle without you knowing, such as a room painted red, has been proven in evidence-based design to raise a person's blood pressure and can lead to other health issues over time. Or it can be as blatant as the formaldehyde in your new wall to wall carpet giving you headaches.

The most important thing to know is your health and wellness is not just affected by toxins in your environment but details of design as well. And what those specific details are exclusive only to you, your family and your home. Designing for your health & wellbeing can change your life.

What Are a Few of These Unknown Elements?

Triggers:

The mind contains all our memories and experiences in life. At times it can be triggered to a bad experience. If it does, the mind will not think logically nor see the environment in the present moment. Subconsciously, the person will have reactions such as feelings and physical reactions that do not make sense at that time. Often the individual will respond and take action that is not what the present moment demands.

A design element can "trigger" these triggers. For an example, a lovely piece of art over the fireplace with brilliant flashing reds and oranges can trigger a memory of a helicopter crash the veteran experienced. The veteran enters the living room and becomes upset and argumentative without understanding the cause for the outburst. Once removed and replaced with a calming and peaceful image he is willing to enter the room and no arguments ensue. A designer needs to do thorough interviews to find all the details in a client's life whether a veteran or not.

Mood Lines:

"How you use mood lines can affect a person's health and well-being. Further, it can affect their ability in times of illness to heal and recover," offers Carol.

Mood lines have been used for years in landscape, set and graphic designs.

When used for interior design as in this one example, a designer can make a person feel unstable by placing toss pillows on their tippy corners.

Likewise a person can feel stable, strong when toss pillows are placed in the traditional way on their flat edge; creating a stable line. Try it, particularly with elders. Imagine lines in the environment that can drive you into a depression and keep you there. That is possible too.

Fully Understanding Color:

As an illustrative example that highlights the importance of wellness design consider this published by the Paralyzed Veterans of America. They discovered the intense impact of color on health when veterans visiting a healthcare facility experienced elevated blood pressure due to the red-colored walls in the waiting area. Now just imagine the potential for a misdiagnosis. On the other hand, a veteran sitting in a room with neutral or even pale green or blue walls had a normal blood pressure reading. This scenario exemplifies how nuanced design choices can have significant health implications.

One with Nature Inside and Out:

Planning and designing access to nature is critical in interior design. Carol does this by making sure windows are a part of the built environment. Sometimes enlarging them or adding where they do not exist. She believes that nature is vital to healing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Nature brings joy to life.

Twenty-Five Senses – Really?

From the time of Aristotle and our education in elementary school we have known that there are five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. While the number of our senses has been debated over the centuries research continues today with neuroscientists trying to identify the actual number.

Even in the fields of architecture, interior design and civil engineering the idea of more than five senses is being embraced.

How a person senses and feels the environment impacts their lives. Designing for Veterans offers twenty-five at this point of research. Most informative of these are: an environment that creates a feeling of self-worth, a sense of quality in design and furnishings creates uplift, ownership of a space brings meaning to life, and its interior is healing, feeling normal (normalcy), and aesthetics through art, music, nature, whatever is beautiful in the eyes of the beholder can overcome stress and discomfort.

Carol Cisco: A Lifelong Passion for Design

Carol Cisco's journey into interior design began as a child. At six years old, she built a house out of cardboard and intuitively understood the concept of scale. When she placed her creation outside and saw the grass that had grown around it, she realized the proportion was off and asked her father for smaller grass seeds. This innate understanding of space and proportion set her on a path to becoming a visionary in interior design.

Designing for Veterans: A Mission of Healing

Carol's non-profit organization, Designing for Veterans, seeks to improve the lives of veterans through a therapeutic design perspective. This mission was sparked by her belief and desire to build an environment that will aid in their recovery and not be a constant reminder of their disability. She wanted to build environments that heal.

Ms. Cisco believed the built environment could have a tremendous impact on the physical and psychological life experience of disabled veterans when returning home from war. As a result, Carol went about to isolate those triggers and research through an evidenced-based design process what those elements were. What she discovered was revolutionary not only for veterans but all humankind.

A Commitment to Holistic Well-Being

Through Signature Design + Studio and Designing for Veterans, Carol Cisco demonstrates that interior design is far more than arranging beautiful spaces. It is about creating environments that support physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, fostering a sense of peace and comfort in those who occupy them.

"By blending health & wellness with design, we can create spaces that heal and nurture," says Cisco. "It's about looking beyond aesthetics to understand how our surroundings impact our lives every day."

Close Up Radio will feature Carol W. Cisco of Signature Design + Studio in an interview with Jim Masters on Monday, September 9th at 2pm EST

Listen to the show on BlogTalkRadio

If you have any questions for our guest, please call (347) 996-3389

For more information about Carol W. Cisco and Signature Design + Studio and Designing for Veterans, please visit https://www.signaturedesignstudio.net/ and https://www.designingforveterans.org/home.html

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
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