Five designers, one showroom, and a conversation about the rooms that call us higher, and the ones that quietly pull us down.

Think about the last room you walked into that felt off. You may not have been able to name it. Maybe the scale was wrong, or the light was flat and cold, or nothing in the space had any texture to rest your eyes on. But your body knew before you did.

That instinct sits at the center of neuroaesthetics, and it's why we filled our Dallas showroom during Dallas Design Week for Change Your Light, Change Your Life: The Designer's Guide to Color, Mood, and the Spaces That Shape Us. Moderated by Crystorama TasteMaker Antonio DeLoatch, the panel brought together four women who approach wellness from four very different directions:

When Antonio asked the room for a show of hands, only a few went up. So let's start with his definition:

"Neuroaesthetics is the study of how our brains and bodies respond to beauty and the spaces around us. It explores how things like color, light, texture, sound, scale and even nature can influence how we feel, think, focus and connect with one another."

— Antonio DeLoatch, Antonio DeLoatch Designs

It's a field with real academic roots (organizations like the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture have been bridging brain science and the built environment for more than two decades). For designers, it offers something useful: language for the choices you've always made on instinct.

Ginger opened with a line she repeats to her own team and clients: our environments are never neutral.

"Your environment is either calling you higher or it's quietly pulling you down."

— Ginger Curtis, Urbanology Designs

A room with poor scale, no layering and harsh light can quietly keep the body on alert. A space full of natural pattern and texture does the opposite. That's the brain's reward system at work. Over a decade, over a lifetime, those small daily responses compound.

Nina added a detail that stayed with the room. We register a space unconsciously in roughly the first three seconds, well before we form an opinion about it. "Historically, the focus has been on building performance," she said, "and much less about the human performance within the building." That's why she asks what every object in a room is contributing, not just what the room looks like as a whole.

Clients know their homes affect them. They just don't always have the words. Nina's approach is to keep asking why. When a client says they never use a room, is it the lighting? Uncomfortable seating? No cozy nook or window seat, no sense of refuge? She borrows the idea of a gap analysis from biophilic design pioneer Bill Browning, co-author of 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design. The question isn't only what's present in a room, but what's missing.

Ashley takes discovery even further. Muse Noire rebuilt its client intake form (with a few questions borrowed, she admitted, from her own therapist), and clients routinely tell her it feels therapeutic. She also has one unusual request before a consultation:

"Please do not clean your home. I need to know exactly how you live in this space, so I can show you how design solves all of these problems."

— Ashley Hughes, Muse Noire Interiors

Sometimes the answer is as simple as noticing where the kids drop their things at 3 p.m. and putting a good-looking hamper right there. Her larger point is that the home should respond to the life being lived in it. "Every living room is not a sofa, two accent chairs, some Crystorama lighting, some Sherwin-Williams paint and two lamps," she laughed. "It does not have to be the home your mom raised you in."

Ginger shared how that level of listening changes outcomes. After a mother opened up about her son's sensory needs, the team was able to describe a bedroom designed to be his exhale: a sunlit corner, a book, shoulders dropping the moment he walks in. "What are we doing if we're not having these conversations?" she asked.

If anyone could hand out a universal color formula, it would be someone with Ashlynn's background. She won't.

"Different people respond to color differently. Be more open to allowing people to express their personalities through color, rather than being prescriptive."

— Ashlynn Bourque, Sherwin-Williams

Saturation is where she draws a practical line. Crayon brights don't belong in a room meant to calm someone down. For bedrooms and workspaces she leans toward desaturated, tinted neutrals like pale blue, soft green and sage. Her favorite discovery tool is the client's closet, because what someone wears tells you what they gravitate toward.

Nina showed what that looks like in practice. An aging-in-place client, an avid gardener, dreaded her small, dark primary bath. Burgundy was clearly her favorite color, but painted on the walls it made the room darker and less safe. Nina moved the burgundy into natural stone and marble, added green mosaic floors and a flower-shaped green pendant, and gave the client the garden she'd asked for. Not long after, the client sent a text:

"This bathroom feels like a dear friend. I am motivated to care for it daily, just the way it cares for me."

— Nina Lichtenstein's client, as shared on the panel

She added that it had become the safest room in the house.

Why is lighting still so often the last specification on a project? Ginger's answer: most people have never been taught that color temperature can be "wildly offensive or wildly soothing," and that the body reacts either way. We've all walked into a beautiful home where everything glows orange, or one so cold and blue you want to leave.

"As designers, we're sort of like the conductor of an orchestra, and lighting is the music."

— Ginger Curtis, Urbanology Designs

Recessed cans alone won't get you there. Ginger layers task lighting, pendants and wall sconces, and pays close attention to height, because light at eye level plays a role in supporting the circadian rhythm. That rhythm drives sleep, and sleep affects mood, focus and cognitive function. "Do you know the look on our clients' faces," she asked, "when we tell them we're thinking about the placement of their wall sconces so they can sleep better at night?"

Ashley also shared the story of her windowless jewel-box room at Kips Bay Dallas, titled Sit Lux, Latin for "let there be light." She wrapped a Gordon Parks photograph in light so that guests had to literally step into the light to face a difficult chapter of history. It's a reminder that lighting can do more than make a room pleasant. It can shape what people pay attention to.

Ashlynn was careful to separate trends from fads. Biophilic design gained visibility around 2019 and 2020, she said, but "now it's kind of like how the vehicle replaced the horse and buggy. It's not a trend, it's actually a basis of design." She noted that homes built with better indoor air quality, low- or no-VOC materials and circadian-supportive lighting can command a higher sale price. Families are also asking more openly for spaces that support neurodivergent kids and loved ones.

Ginger expects that within three to five years, clients will arrive asking for neuroaesthetic design by name. Until then, designers are the educators. She pointed to fractal patterns, the repeating, scale-shifting forms found in leaves, branches, flames and mountain ranges, which physicist Richard Taylor's research at the University of Oregon links to stress reductions of up to 60%. "Who doesn't want more fractal?"

Nina took the idea furthest. Her healthcare hardware collection, created for behavioral health settings, overlays nature imagery and fractal patterns onto door hardware. It turns one of the most clinical objects in a room into a small window to the ocean, the forest or the sky. "You really need to think down to the smallest object," she said. "How can this object improve people's health and well-being?"

"We've been doing this since the beginning. We just didn't have a word for it. Now the research has caught up, and it's okay to be profitable at the same time."

— Ginger Curtis, Urbanology Designs

Ashley put it even more plainly: "I'm not just a pretty designer." Every renovation is an investment, and designers who can explain why a room will help someone sleep, focus or feel at home are adding value the client can feel for years.