Design of home can affect mood, experts say

October 19, 2007 [...] even in a real estate market driven by fear, inflated prices and a scarcity of buyers, finding that personal place of security has value that goes well beyond economics. "People's response to the physical environment and architecture and interiors and so on is primarily an emotional response," says Susan Painter, senior planner and director of research at AC Martin Partners Inc., and a principal at ForrestPainter Design, which she runs with her sister Constance Forrest. We've studied neurobiology and brain development, and one of the things that we know is that emotion and our response to the physical environment are all stored in the same part of the brain as the content of experience.

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