The Case Against Waiting to Feel at Home

There is a sentence I hear constantly from people in transition: “I’m not really going to set anything up until things settle.”

The new job might not work out. The lease is only a year. The city is a maybe but not certain. So the mattress stays on the floor, the boxes become furniture, and the apartment stays in a state of suspended animation. It feels practical and just easy to forget about.

Your brain experiences it very differently. It’s constantly scanning for signals of safety and comfort, even before you’re consciously aware of it.

An under-furnished space is not neutral. It is a form of sensory deprivation, and your nervous system responds to it the way it responds to any environment that offers nothing to land on: with low-grade, discomfort. Bare walls give your eyes no resting place. Hard, empty rooms create the kind of echo that feels cold. There is no chair that means rest, no table that means gathering, no lamp that means evening has arrived. We are always looking for sensory signals even if we don’t even realize it. The good news is that even small, intentional additions can shift that experience quickly.

Research on aesthetic experience shows that ordinary encounters with beauty, the kind woven through daily life rather than saved for vacations, measurably lift mood and lower arousal. A home with nothing in it generates almost none of those encounters. You are not saving anything by waiting. Design approaches rooted in nature can amplify these everyday moments, even in temporary spaces.

The assumption is that feeling at home requires permanence. It does not. It requires sensory depth within our spaces. Your body has no idea whether you own the sofa. It only knows whether the sofa exists, whether the light is warm, whether the room offers texture and enclosure and a place where your body can finally just be still. A fully furnished space on day one is not a luxury or a shortcut. It is the fastest available route to a regulated nervous system in a new place. The person who walks into a complete room their first night in a new city has handed their brain every signal it needs to begin the work of belonging.

So if you are in a temporary chapter, furnish it anyway. Fully, warmly, and with intention. Choose the real bed, the chair by the window, the table that makes dinner an event instead of a transaction. Temporary is a fact about your lease, it does not have to be a fact about your life.

You are allowed to feel completely at home in a place you will eventually leave. In fact, your brain is craving that comfort no matter how long you are there.

About the Contributor

Jennifer Walsh is a wellness leader, biophilic design expert, and founder of Beauty Bar. Her work focuses on nature-inspired approaches to modern living, with an emphasis on how environments influence health, sustainability, and overall well-being.