Trying to make your home an oasis of calm? Architect Roisin Murphy joined Drivetime to discuss 'house hushing', the latest home interiors trend. Listen back above.
Just as in fashion, trends show up in how we decorate our homes, whether it's dopamine décor or Barbiecore. Now, there's a new trend cropping up, and one that hints at what we want to use our homes for.
House hushing, refers to making your house and quiet, serene and free from busyness as possible. Murphy, however, said it's "a move on from the Marie Kondo trend, the decluttering, which is incredibly beneficial and fun and then a nightmare, as well, at the same time".
"But the other thing that's been tagged onto this is a very worrying thing called actually 'hushing your home', which is to make it quiet." She added that she "found that one slightly disturbing".
Hushing your home, she said, involves "resetting the noises of the machines, putting new carpets and textures [in], which I get completely but the idea that a house is quiet because I think for most people, a house is full of noise and full of life and humans, essentially".
Especially for those of us who live in a city, sometimes with just a floor or a brick wall between us, noise is unavoidable, sometimes comfortingly so. Murphy said that part of living in a city is "learning to kind of tolerate each other's noises, so I think it could be very dangerous to encourage this house hushing thing".
Decluttering, however, is an "extraordinary" practice and one that can genuinely calm the mind. "But I think in tandem with decluttering, there's two things that have to go with these kinds of trends and it's something that's really important.
"You have to be cognisant of where everything is going. Everything has to go on to a second home or a buy and sell." She references how in years gone by few things were tossed out unless completely broken, or was at least reused for something else.
She added that there's "one good thing" emerging from this trend: "Your clutter, where does it go? Where is the social responsibility for decluttering? And don't buy. It's really difficult but we have to stop consuming."
As well as this, she added, is pushing back on an over-awareness of obsolescence and tossing items once we think they're gotten a bit too outdated, whether they're still working or not.
If you're looking to make one change to your home to make it seem less "noisy", Murphy mentioned how there are new paints that have microbead technology in them that can actually hush the noise of a house.
It's probably less hassle than resetting all your machine beep noises, too.
