The Interior Barometer™ is a dialogue and analysis tool that makes visible the relationship between people’s innate preferences and the environments they inhabit. The Interior Barometer was developed to create a more nuanced foundation for human-centred interior design. The aim is to understand the relationship between: Person → Preferences → Environment → Experience, and thereby create surroundings that better support the people who will live within them.
What Does the Tool Do?
It is a person-environment matching tool.
It helps answer questions such as:
- Why do I thrive more in some places than in others?
- Why do I feel at home in certain environments?
- Why do particular colours, forms or materials irritate me?
- Why does a room work for one person but not another?
- How can an interior be designed so that the surroundings support the individual?
Who Is It For?
It is an analytical tool that can be used by:
- architects seeking to understand users before the design process begins: Why do different users respond differently to the same space?
- interior designers seeking a language for client preferences: How do we identify individual preferences rather than design trends?
- feng shui practitioners seeking to visualise the relationship between person and environment: How can element theory be translated into concrete design choices?
- coaches working with identity through the environment
- families seeking to understand why family members want different things
- companies seeking to understand why employees thrive differently within the same spaces
Within neurodesign and environmental psychology, The Interior Barometer™ can also illuminate how colours, forms and materials interact with human preferences, and how the following experiences are created:
- well-being
- identity
- belonging
- overstimulation
- calm
The Interior Barometer™ is also relevant within:
- Education: to develop an understanding of the relationship between people, preferences and surroundings
- Consultancy: to qualify decisions concerning interior design, renovation or redesign
The tool shifts the focus from the room itself to the relationship.
The usual question is:
Which room is best?
The Interior Barometer™ instead asks:
Best for whom?
The Interior Barometer™ Creates a Shared Language
Clients often say:
“I do not know why, but I simply prefer this.”
The Interior Barometer™ gives them a language because its underlying analysis creates a bridge between:
- personality
- preference
- interior design
- architecture
- experience
How Does The Interior Barometer™ Measure?
The Interior Barometer™ was developed as an analytical and evaluation tool for investigating the relationship between people’s biological preferences, the material environment and the support they experience from their surroundings.
The tool is based on two different measurements:
1. EMS: Environmental Match Score
EMS describes the relationship between:
Person ↔ Material environment
This examines how the characteristics of the environment correspond with the person’s preferences.
The analysis works with five fundamental characteristic resonance types:
- Water
- Wood
- Fire
- Earth
- Metal
Each element represents particular qualities relating to:
- colours
- forms
- materials
- atmosphere
- spatial experiences
The Barometer is used to register the dominant characteristics of an environment and compare them with the user’s identified preferences.
The personal profile describes the preferences with which the person spontaneously identifies.
The environmental profile describes the characteristics dominating the surroundings through colours, forms, materials, light, furniture, spatial function and orientation.
Element-Person Match Score
The diagram illustrates the personal profile and the environmental profile.
When the two profiles are compared, an overall score is calculated:
EMS score: 0–100%
Examples:
- 85% = strong match
- 60% = moderate match
- 35% = weak match
The EMS score describes only the capacity of the material environment to support the person’s preferences.
It does not describe how the person actually feels.
2. EWS: Environmental Wellbeing Score
EWS describes:
Person ↔ Experience
While EMS examines the characteristics of the environment, EWS examines the user’s actual experience of the environment.
The Person’s Experience Score
The example of an experienced environmental score may be assessed according to:
- calm
- focus
- energy
- creativity
- belonging
These scores are combined into an:
EWS score: 0–100%
EWS therefore expresses the support the user experiences from the surroundings.
Why Use Both EMS and EWS?
Many analytical methods stop after describing the environment.
The Interior Barometer™ goes one step further and investigates whether the environment is actually experienced as supportive.
This makes it possible to distinguish between:
- how the environment is designed
- how the environment is experienced
Comparing EMS and EWS
This is where the tool becomes particularly interesting.
High EMS and High EWS
Example:
- EMS = 85%
- EWS = 82%
The material environment matches the person’s preferences, and the person simultaneously experiences a high degree of support from the surroundings.
The analysis indicates a strong person-environment match.
High EMS and Low EWS
Example:
- EMS = 85%
- EWS = 35%
The environment matches the person’s preferences, but the person does not experience support.
In such cases, the causes may lie beyond the interior itself, for example in work pressure, relationships, health or other life circumstances.
Low EMS and High EWS
Example:
- EMS = 35%
- EWS = 85%
The environment does not appear to match the person’s preferences, yet the person experiences a high level of well-being.
This may indicate that other conditions compensate for the material mismatch.
Low EMS and Low EWS
Example:
- EMS = 35%
- EWS = 30%
Here, both the analysis and the experience point in the same direction.
The characteristics of the environment probably do not support the person’s preferences, and changes to the interior may therefore be relevant to investigate.
From Interpretation to Data
Traditionally, many interior design models and element-based approaches have depended on interpretation.
The Interior Barometer™ adds a layer of data.
By measuring both:
- Person ↔ Environment: EMS
- Person ↔ Experience: EWS
it becomes possible to compare:
- people
- rooms
- homes
- workplaces
- projects
- before-and-after measurements
over time.
The Material Environment Is Only One Layer
The Interior Barometer™ deliberately focuses on the material environment:
- colours
- forms
- materials
- light
- spatial function
- furniture
- orientation
Other conditions may naturally also influence the experience of a place.
EMS and EWS should therefore not be understood as complete explanations of human well-being. They are tools for investigating the part of the experience arising through the encounter between the person and the material dimension of the built environment.
The purpose is not to find the best room.
The purpose is to understand:
Which environment supports which people most effectively?
The tool is based on the assumption that people do not experience their surroundings in the same way.
We are attracted to different colours, forms, materials and spatial qualities. These biologically grounded preferences may influence our well-being, energy, focus and sense of belonging.
Application in Practice
The Interior Barometer™ can be used as an independent analytical tool or as part of a broader analysis of the relationship between people, preferences and the built environment.
It can, for example, be combined with other tools presented on this website.
Step 1: Identifying Preferences
The assessment Do You Recognise Your Element? helps identify the person’s spontaneous preferences concerning colours, forms and materials.
The purpose is to investigate which environmental characteristics the person immediately feels most attracted to.
Step 2: Observing the Experience
The 14-Day Self-Observation Booklet investigates how a particular environment is experienced over time.
It registers:
- focus
- energy
- creativity
- calm
- well-being
- belonging
The purpose is to create a picture of the environment’s experienced significance in everyday life.
Step 3: Analysing the Person-Environment Match
The Interior Barometer™ is used to analyse the degree of correspondence between:
- the person’s preference profile
- the characteristics of the environment
The result is expressed through:
EMS: Environmental Match Score
This describes the degree of correspondence between person and environment.
Together with:
EWS: Environmental Wellbeing Score
the analysis may contribute to investigating how different environmental characteristics relate to well-being, focus, energy and the experience of belonging.
Under Development
The Interior Barometer™ is a tool in ongoing development.
The aim is to build a broader body of practice-based experience across homes, workplaces, educational environments and other types of occupied spaces.
Interested users, designers, architects, consultants and companies are therefore invited to test the tool and contribute experiences, cases and feedback.
Blissbode develops practice-based methods that are undergoing active research development and validation, including through the Resonant Living Project™. The work complements, but does not replace, relevant medical, psychological, geological, electromagnetic or building-related professional advice.
© Bonna Ravn Thomsen / Blissbode. Mechanical, photographic or electronic reproduction of this text, or any part of it, requires written permission from Blissbode.