8 ms·

Modern decor may be straining people's brains

rrjjww 3mo ago
Off topic but I really hate modern web design. I found the content of this article interesting but I could hardly read it scrolling through in-article ads, banners, etc. One of the reasons I like HN is the prevalence of personal blogs that just have text for me to sit and read.
- blooalien 3mo ago
  > ... could hardly read it scrolling through in-article ads, banners, etc. Which is why you can take my adblocker from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands. Much of the modern web is largely straight-up hostile without a proper adblocker these days.
- danielrmay 3mo ago
  A clean reading experience appears to be a unique selling point these days
- Diogenesian 3mo ago
  If it's any consolation this article was written by an LLM, so reading it is a waste of time regardless. HN should just autoblock this entire scumbag domain. The paper itself is open access: https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34 https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34
- SoftTalker 3mo ago
  I use reader mode on most sites where it is possible. It makes a big difference in most cases. Readable font size and face, good contrast, and comfortable margins. I don't know why so many sites ignore good practices on this stuff.
  - blooalien 3mo ago
    > I use reader mode on most sites where it is possible. ... That's my go-to solution on mobile devices almost every single time because on small screens even a good adblocker simply isn't nearly enough to overcome the other issues you mention in your comment here.
michaelchisari 3mo ago
If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like to think they'll be expanding soon. People move jobs so often that they have a hard time feeling settled where they are, so they design for that possibility. The modern aesthetic is one of planned impermanence.
- Insanity 3mo ago
  This resonates with me. I enjoy being at my grandparents’ home. And it’s exactly as you mentioned, if I would describe all the stuff in the living room it’d be called “cluttered”. Yet it feels “homey” and I feel pretty relaxed whenever I sit there to read a book. And then on my side, for the past 15 years I moved to a new place about every 2-3 years. Never really invested in making it feel “homey” because I’m not sure how much space I’d have in the next place I move to.
- SoftTalker 3mo ago
  I think there's a lot of unappreciated benefits in "staying put." Of course if you're living in a bad situation that might not be true, and it might not be good for your career or for other material reasons, but it can be good for your mental health. My parents owned one house, and we never moved. I grew up there and I still own it. I don't live there currently but every time I am in that house I'm calm, relaxed, and comfortable almost immediately. It's nothing fancy, just a normal ranch house, but it's very familiar and full of memories.
  - tekne 3mo ago
    This explains a lot... I feel bad when I think about staying put. Forward always feels better. It's like one of the fundamental axes, I guess.
- bear141 3mo ago
  I see where you are coming from and I think this is an interesting observation. Especially when talking about companies and people moving apartments every year. I grew up in a house full of the clutter that you describe as comforting, but for me it felt smothering. I recently inherited the house I grew up in and now have it set up much less cluttered. I don’t plan to live anywhere else anytime soon, but for me the lack of clutter and clear spaces are much more comforting. I am definitely not a fan of crazy colors or patterns or bad lighting either though.
idopmstuff 3mo ago
The Limitations section at the bottom certainly has a lot of limitations: > This paper is a review, meaning it synthesizes and interprets existing research rather than presenting new experimental data. The authors themselves note that current visual tests for susceptibility to discomfort are subjective and poorly standardized. They also acknowledge that the proposed mechanism (that discomfort is the brain’s response to overwork) has not been fully tested, particularly the hypothesis that colored tints reduce discomfort by steering visual stimulation away from overactive brain areas. The relationship between the brain’s excitatory and inhibitory chemical signals and visual discomfort also remains, in their words, “unsettled.” Several key research questions are flagged as unresolved, including how to best quantify the real-world impact of visual stress on people’s lives and how to objectively measure susceptibility. Flickering lights are about the only thing I saw in here that seem like they'd be a problem in the long term. Everything else your brain just adjusts to over time and stops noticing. Maybe the first few days in an office with bright colors would be slightly distracting, but after that you just stop seeing them. I would guess that a lot of the studies they reviewed probably tested people's reactions to these things when they saw them one time, not the hundredth time.
- MajorTakeaway 3mo ago
  The article does explicitly state that the brain doesn't adapt to this. From the article: "And when the brain encounters something it can’t process efficiently, it doesn’t simply adapt. Brain imaging studies cited in the review show it generates stronger neural responses in visual areas, consumes more oxygen, and in some people produces pain, distortion, or worse."
  - idopmstuff 3mo ago
    I assume you're referring to this: > And when the brain encounters something it can’t process efficiently, it doesn’t simply adapt. Brain imaging studies cited in the review show it generates stronger neural responses in visual areas, consumes more oxygen, and in some people produces pain, distortion, or worse. If the studies are of a person's initial exposure to these sorts of conditions, then that doesn't tell us anything about whether people adapt over time (and to be clear I have not read all the studies, but given the limitations listed I'm comfortable assuming they're not incredibly robust until someone tells me otherwise). I suspect the article's use of the word "adapt" is not the same as mine; from the context when they say the brain doesn't adapt they just mean that it shows a response at the time of the particular exposure they're measuring.
excusable 3mo ago
I'm thinking about Backrooms
Doktor_IO 3mo ago
Who needs science for that?
meindnoch 3mo ago
>Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details. Wut? It's precisely the opposite. Natural patterns have infinite complexity as you zoom in, and human-made patterns (most often) not.
- SoftTalker 3mo ago
  Natural patterns are often fractal.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- VeninVidiaVicii 3mo ago
  I’m pretty sure they mean perceptible complexity at the level of the human eye. Of course, everything has quarks and leptons in infinitely complex patterning.
  - meindnoch 3mo ago
    >I’m pretty sure they mean perceptible complexity at the level of the human eye That's precisely what they're wrong about. Take a look at tree branches. A field of grass. A stone cliff. Now take a look at human-made decor: drywall, plastic, laminated boards. Which one has more visual detail?
    - kulahan 3mo ago
      Our brains evolved in the former environment, and is very good at filtering it out. I've got pretty extreme ADHD, and if I'm in a room and something on the wall is flittering about, I absolutely must look at it. If I'm in a field and a tree is full of leaves billowing in the wind, it's a nice background thing. I guess my monkey brain is too busy looking for tiger faces to be distracted by flickering leaves, flowing grass, and flying bugs for more than a half second. I dunno if I agree with their arguments in the paper (there seem to be some pretty big questions unanswered yet, which the authors acknowledge), but there's definitely something to the idea that natural environments aren't as stressful for us, even if they're objectively "busier".
jes5199 3mo ago
this is the same thing we said about offices in the fluorescent era
- Demiurge 3mo ago
  has it gotten better in the LED era?
FinnLobsien 3mo ago
I‘ve definitely noticed this over time as spaces (especially public ones like cafes, retail locations, and restaurants) started being designed as props for Instagram/TikTok. This made a big contribution because vertical short-form video feeds require extreme stimuli to get anyone’s attention - but they add nothing to the actual experience and often detract from it. This has also led to the absolutely horrific acoustics where even in non-nightclub bars and normal restaurants, you have to yell to understand each other because the decor is made of tile, tables and chairs are at odd angles that increase distance, etc. Everything now is subordinate to the visual environment because that’s what gets shared on Instagram. Not saying interior design doesn’t matter, but its point should be to create a great overall experience, not to be visually stimulating at the expense of the rest.
nilirl 3mo ago
This website is straining my brain. Ads that bounce around? Sheesh.
- drnick1 3mo ago
  It's time to start using an ad blocker, I don't see any ads on that page with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
- ejflick 3mo ago
  I can’t decide if it’s obnoxious or beautiful irony that drives home the idea of the article.
- marticode 3mo ago
  Lucky you, at least you can load it. My IP (from a generic run of the mill ISP) just seems outright blocked.
pixel_popping 3mo ago
In case you own the website: Forbidden You don't have permission to access this resource. From Singapore.
SP711 3mo ago
I don’t buy this. Feels like a non-problem or a very first world problem to even analyse and with the exception of lights, nothing else seemed plausible
- bawolff 3mo ago
  Really, you don't find it plausible that environment could affect mood? I dont know if the hypothesis in the paper is correct, but it seems clear that environment can affect mood in some cases. There is a reason why night clubs and libraries are decorated differently. From there it seems very plausible other elements of environments could have an affect (perhaps subtle) on mood.
- witx 3mo ago
  So you thibk light might affect, but something visual.. that we see does not?
- dwb 3mo ago
  Why do you think that? What knowledge/leaning do you have that would add weight to your opinion?
thelittlenag 3mo ago
I really hate lighting in modern offices. If there was one thing that folks actively worked to improve I would choose lighting. Having lights with a broader spectrum would go a long way in reducing eye strain and general fatigue, while likely allowing the lights to actually be brighter. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon.
- Demiurge 3mo ago
  I so agree! As someone into photography, light is everything. It can even turn oversaturated fabrics into more uniform and less screaming colors. The diffusion of the light flattens things, but the interesting angles create interesting shadows and shapes. So much can be done with light, but so many offices have the boring flat ceiling lights. It seems to be hard for the office space designers to invest a bit of time into islands that can have lamps. What's interesting is that many libraries seem to be more accomodating in this regard. Either way, light is everything, but it is treated like an afterthought.
andix 3mo ago
I really hate shops, malls and supermarkets. I'm not easily overwhelmed and can handle being there fine. But it's just horrible there. Way too loud, bright and often too warm. Completely full of chaos and way too many useless products. When I have to go I try to be out there as quickly as possible. I always thought that's weird, shouldn't those shops be designed in a way that makes me want to explore them, look at all the things they have, instead of just hunting down exactly what I need and leave as quickly as possible.
- bear141 3mo ago
  They make it hard to find what you want on purpose in hopes you will be distracted and buy other crap along the way. I think it must work on most consumers. I have the same reaction to it as you.
  - andix 3mo ago
    I get that they make it hard to find, so we also buy different stuff. But if I can't find what I'm looking for too often, I won't come back anymore. Sometimes I really want/need something, and I have all the stores close by. But I still decide to buy it online, and accept waiting a few days, because stores/malls are such a bad experience.
- ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
  Whenever I go shopping for a single, most trivial item, I really need to psyche myself up. Those critical moments just upon entering the store are the key. Because immediately upon walking in the door, you are immersed in a "shopping environment". Everything you smell, hear, see, touch is geared to making you spend more and purchase more and grab more useless stuff off the shelves. Even in a Goodwill or similar thrift store you are subjected to these merchandising tricks. I have found that keeping a very good household inventory on a spreadsheet is critical. If I have this spreadsheet on my phone and I refer to it, before venturing into aisles, then I know exactly what I need to purchase, and where to go to find it. Sticking to the shopping list, I can avoid the needless purchase temptations. At Costco when I'd go with my parents, it was the custom of the cashiers to ask, "did you find everything alright?" and my father would always joke, that if enough people answered in the affirmative, that was their cue to rearrange the store and shuffle everything around, so that shoppers would get lost, and not being able to find what they want, would discover more useless stuff that they would pull off the shelves on impulse. It also doesn't hurt to follow the advice of "never shop while hungry"!
hnthrow10282910 3mo ago
First pic in article looks like fucking backrooms
jdw64 3mo ago
But isn't that actually what modernism is about? I heard about Ornament and Crime in a university liberal arts class, and there really is this kind of problem. When you try to imitate natural forms, fractal structures are fundamentally difficult to mass produce, there are hygiene issues, and so the modernist approach became dominant. And as the saying goes, "form follows function", you cannot apply the artificial technologies that do not exist in nature the same way you would with old stone buildings. In the same vein, contemporary art, like a Veronica, smashes form apart, and instead of concrete imitation of nature, it moves toward abstraction, geometry, and minimalism. But does not that come with a problem? It does not enter the brain directly the way natural forms do; you have to additionally recognize what it actually is. I do not think that is an incorrect observation.
slopinthebag 3mo ago
It's not just decor but architecture as well. Look I've been to Europe, I've seen the old architecture and decor there. It's unquestionably better. I get the feeling that modernity, at least in this day and age is about cost cutting and non-offensiveness more than anything else.
- pishpash 3mo ago
  For one it's not produced by artisans but by machines or processes.
- edelbitter 3mo ago
  The degree to which an environment is straining is possibly merely coincidentally related to the decor part.. and almost entirely rooted in architecture. Buildings with terrible architecture merely tend to simultaneously also be equipped with horrible color and texture choices. I suspect besides objectively annoying flickering lights, the difference is primarily made in the immediate, subconscious and effortless recognition of ubiquitous patterns of function. Which happens in form and proportion first, and only to a lesser degree in color and contrast. * this is the floor, this is the ceiling * through there, there is the entrance / exit * this is a reception desk If it takes effort to filter out the noise, the glare to know such simple things, there is less capacity left in our brains to process other "essentially free" tasks.
ck2 3mo ago
just crazy-glue some cheap tacky Home Depot gold decor on every surface and you'll be fine, maybe even become leader of free world
gumby 3mo ago
Today’s style is a callback to the 60s, and we’re people making the same complaints then?
- seeknotfind 3mo ago
  We are?
  - gumby 3mo ago
    Autocorrect changed “were” to “we’re” and I didn’t catch it
dinkblam 3mo ago
flickering lights are not "modern decor" but a broken (and possibly dangerous) appliance
- xandrius 3mo ago
  You're confusing what they mean: it's not the flickering that you can easily notice, it's the flickering of lights "fps". To see those, you need a digital camera (e.g. your phone)
cobalt_miner 3mo ago
Similarly, one my uni professors wrote a paper arguing that the opposite - standing in nature - results in healthy neural activity. He showed people photos of geometric patterns (plain lines, basic shapes), natural patterns (fractals), and photos of nature itself (trees, animals, etc.) while reading their mental activity. The conclusion was that both fractals and nature photos cause significantly more efficient, diverse, and healthy-looking brain activity. Our brains inherently expect the world to look fractal-like, and in some ways even need it to look that way to form creative thoughts. Completely lost the link to that article; it was a good read.
- anthk 3mo ago
  Somehow we posted the same comment, I didn't even have a look on the whole HN comment list. Yes, indeed, we are used to look at leaves/branches/trees with self-similar structures (and mountains/rivers and lightnings).
andsoitis 3mo ago
> Striped patterns, flickering lights, bright glare, and crowded visual environments Those things are also just ugly.
anthk 3mo ago
The human brain it's used to the fractal details in neatures, such as branches/leaves. Geometrical design (especially the ones with grids/vectors everywhere) are not minimalistic but tiring, really tiring.
deleted 3mo ago
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fluxusars 3mo ago
The moiré effect of vertically striped wood walls gives me a headache.
- ulnarkressty 3mo ago
  The stripey wood-and-black-rubber 'sound dampening' panels are all the rage these days and I don't really understand it. Our management had the bright idea to put these things in all our meeting rooms on the wall with the TVs we use for remote calls. People started getting sea sick looking at them. Of course removing them would mean the management made a mistake, so they will stay there until the next bright idea hits.
  - TacticalCoder 3mo ago
    I cannot thank you and GP (and others in this thread) enough for these comments. I thought they looked cool (although a bit of dust-catchers) and was planning to redo my bedroom with those. I'm definitely going to do something else instead.
bob1029 3mo ago
The biggest revelation I've had regarding interior design is to stop using overhead lights. Anyone who has ever worked in the games industry will tell you that lighting is the most important element of what makes a scene look a certain way. The crazy thing about lamps is you can put them anywhere. They only use a constant amount of power regardless of scene complexity. Lighting in my GPU is definitely more expensive. When everything in your house is illuminated from point lights stuck in holes in the ceiling, you only get a visual hierarchy along an axis you mostly cannot use (Y/up/down). When the lights are positioned at vertical midpoints, you get visual hierarchy on the X-Z (horizontal) plane which is generally how we are viewing our environment. The layering of shadow and highlights across a room are a lot less stressful to interpret. You can use a lot less total light and still convey required detail in the scene.
- layer8 3mo ago
  I like this, but to play the devil’s advocate: How does that mesh with usually having just one giant overhead light (the sun) outdoors?
  - xandrius 3mo ago
    You mean one giant overhead light (the sun) during "work hours" and a soft reddish ground-level light (the campfire) during night?
  - jay_kyburz 3mo ago
    Its moves, and twice a day its nice and low like a lamp. In the middle of the day when its highest, its nice to shelter under a tree where there is dappled light filtering through the leaves.
- neop1x 3mo ago
  Lightning is VERY important. What I like is cove lightning - led strips near ceiling, reflected from the white ceiling. And it is also good to have multiple lightning sources - dimer and slightly warmer to use towards the end of day (sunset) and red (or at least warm) for the night out near floor (like a a fireplace at night). Helps maintain natural circadian rhythms and easier sleep.
daytonix 3mo ago
Oh really?? The disgusting childlike interiors the millennials put everywhere might actually be nauseating and headache-inducing? Who could have predicted that? (anyone with eyes)
jmbwell 3mo ago
One characteristic that differentiates contemporary design from all our grandparents’ houses is transience rather than permanence. Design immediately following WWI was largely about calm and comfort; the emergence of the den, cottage-cozy, spaces for reading, listening to the radio, etc — stability, calm, people wanted everything the war wasn’t. Immediately following WWII was different in different parts of the world but especially in North America there were all these industrial manufacturers wanting to sell The Future, and you get on the one hand gleaming kitchen-forward spaces and two car garages and rooms for entertaining. Less built-in bookshelves, more built-in HiFi. And on the other hand, the sort of refuge or counterpoint, more integration with nature, more natural materials, exposed timber and vaulted ceilings and giant windows, frank lloyd wright. And in all these cases, the ideas were rooted in stability and permanence. The space was designed for its uses and its inhabitants. More recently, it’s less about the buyers and more about the sellers. Design is optimized for flipping, which means fast market movement, which means generic. Yes there is always cookie-cutter, especially in postwar housing boom. Modern markets have just embraced that more fully. Offices don’t embody the tenants identity, or if they do it’s the same as all the other companies “in the space.” Everyone wants to look like Google, at best, otherwise it’s about commodity layouts, finishes, and styles… platforms for cubicles and bulk furniture purchases that can be amortized over the lease. Housing is similar… design for a family that will scatter once the kids leave home and the parents retire elsewhere. Or the inverse… design for Airbnb until the owners are ready to retire and move in or sell off. In any case the inhabitants are a secondary consideration to returns on investment. Design is a cost center to a financial concern. Unless you’re rich enough not to care about any of this, in which case there’s finally time and space and money for design, but none of it really matters
sgt 3mo ago
> Many LED systems use a dimming technique that rapidly switches the light on and off (sometimes hundreds of times per second). While this is invisible as flicker to the naked eye under normal conditions, eye movements can expose it This is what I've always felt too, but if you talk to any lighting "expert", they'll say "no that's simply not the case with LED lighting since the year... 2009 or whatever ...". Highly suspect.
- sudobash1 3mo ago
  I find it easy to detect. If I wave my hand in front of my face quickly, the movement looks choppy instead of being just a blur. I can often tell lighting is cheep LED even without doing this. Movement just feels off. It is mildly annoying, but I can mostly ignore it.
- TacticalCoder 3mo ago
  > This is what I've always felt too, but if you talk to any lighting "expert", they'll say "no that's simply not the case with LED lighting since the year... 2009 or whatever ...". Highly suspect. Way before the Internet I had games running at 50 Hz (PAL). And we fully knew the difference between, say, a 2D game scrolling at full-frame rate and a game running a 25 fps: we could tell immediately. Same for intros and demos. Yet the number of times I had armchair experts explain me, despite me literally seeing with my own eyes the difference, that "the human eye cannot discern more than 24 fps". Teachers. Friends of my parents. My parents. Later on I could tell a CRT running Windows @ 60 Hz vs 75 Hz in a split second: I simply could tell. And still: same armchair experts "you cannot detect that, your eyes cannot physically detect more than 24 fps, because science!". It's the absolute worst thing: you see something with your own eyes, other people see it with their own eyes. And yet "experts" explain to you "that is impossible". While you could fucking literally demo it to them: but they're not interested "becuz it's impossssssible". I hate LED lighting. Or at least I hate having only LED lighting. But there's IMO a simple trick to make the lighting much warmer and reduce the flicker (even if you don't consciously detect it, like 60 fps vs 75 fps: it's simply there) and still keep electricity consumption in check: just have one incandescent light bulb per room. Maybe two in the living room. This immediately gives the feeling of a much warmer place (and, technically speaking, it is actually... warmer, ah!). You can still legally, even in the EU, buy "special purpose", incandescent lamps that give a very nice warm yellowish light. Just don't forget to wait if you plan to touch one after turning it off because they really get very warm. Now of course you do that and you'll have sore people say: "even one incandescent lamp is too much, you should be 100% LED, not 95% LED, to save the planet!" followed by "we should ask the EU (and others) to ban once and for all ALL incandescent lightbulbs". Basically: go order on Amazon or whatever a few small "special purpose" incandescent light and some little lamp to put them in. Put one in each room. You'll thank me later.
layer8 3mo ago
For those running into the ad-blocker blocker: https://archive.ph/LlAfO https://archive.ph/LlAfO
manmal 3mo ago
The trend to put acoustic panels or an imitation of their pattern on _everything_ is one of my pet peeves. They create some stroboscobe effect with my (not normal) vision. The result is that they mess with my 3D perception and break my brain a bit for that reason. I’d rather not have them put anywhere.
- kakacik 3mo ago
  They are a fad, like many before, and not the best one due to copy&paste uniformity. Since its used so aggressively and so often, many places look weirdly similar like if many people bought exactly same Ikea furniture. Proper wood like oak can be very pretty in many forms but this is not. In future it will clearly mark the era of (re)construction.
shwaj 3mo ago
“Striped office floors. Flickering lights. Walls covered in repetitive geometric patterns.” Not sentences. AI slop.
psunavy03 3mo ago
So many people in this thread not understanding what a luxury and a privilege "staying put" for decades is in this era of layoffs.
Animats 3mo ago
The flicker of some auto lighting systems is annoying. The switching frequency is so low that strobing is a real issue on the red and yellow lamps. Flicker in light bulb sized white LED lamps isn't so bad, because the LEDs drive phosphors with slow response times. Come on, auto people, get those switching frequencies up to a kilohertz or so.
akomtu 3mo ago
Modern design, especially the modern architecture, is meant to simplify people's thinking, make it bland and uniform. Look at the gray cubism around you: does it inspire any creativity? Same for interior design, cars and even the so called modern art.
sirwitti 3mo ago
One aspect that is often overlooked is a room acoustics - especially reverb time. Have you ever felt cosy in a large church? Or, if you have ever been to a wedding and wondered why everybody started talking louder and louder and it's hard to understand, a room with too large reverb time is a very probable causes. This is very draining mentally. The same goes for living spaces, especially since newer homes tend to use lots of smooth surfaces like glass, tiles and concrete, which increase reverb time a lot. Book shelves, curtains and furniture will increase a room's diffusiveness and reduce reverb time, making rooms feel so much better.
- olelele 3mo ago
  So many bars & restaurants don't care enough about this.
  - gib444 3mo ago
    Given coffee shops etc hire psychologists to select annoying music to optimise revenue, I wouldn't rule out bad acoustics as a choice (particularly larger chains) Though with bars and restaurants being brutally hard to survive and turn a decent profit, I would mostly attribute it to just cutting costs
    - olelele 3mo ago
      I spent most of my adult life in Berlin and most places here it’s due to 100% ignorance. Tearing out everything and putting in euro pallets as furniture + packing the place w drunk ppl was the general modus operandi. Acoustic treatment doesn’t have to be expensive.
- bluebarbet 3mo ago
  Possibly the first convincing argument I have ever heard in favor of the materialistic accumulative American lifestyle.
  - kulahan 3mo ago
theendisney 3mo ago
A guy i know put a fancy cracked wooden floor in his rather large flat, a sofa, a coffee table, a bed, a closet for his cloths and the rest of the space was filled with the largest possible plants. Like half the size of a car. Lots of grow lamps on a 10 hour timer while he was at work. Enough green that one cant help but deeply inhale it.
badlibrarian 3mo ago
"The optic cortex is the biggest area of the brain by far. When everything is saturated in fluorescent light, as it is in small studios many times, the fluorescent light is going on and off at 60 times a second, or ideally at 120, but more roughly 60 and it’s shutting off your brain 60 times a second. The brain is kind of a fluid thing and everything is coupled with everything else, and when this happens – no matter where you take the EEG – if the subject is looking at fluorescent light, you see 60 cycles from the fluorescent light." https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/don-buchla-passing-the-acid-test https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/don-buchla-pass... I suppose it's worth double checking if the 60 Hz was just leaking into the measurement rig. Or autism, for that matter. But Don was great and I've always loved this interview, so I'm sharing.
aiNohY6g 3mo ago
A specific case of "Evolutionary Mismatch, Stress, and Competition: Making Sense of Psychosocial Problems in the Polycrisis Era" https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/5/650 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/5/650 ?
Alien1Being 3mo ago
This book by Frida Ramstedt walks through the principles of interior decor, without touting the latest trend. There are no pretty pictures in it, just text discussing basic principles. https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0593139313 https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0593139313 The Interior Design Handbook by Frida Ramstedt For our new house, I used this book along with an experienced interior designer and discussions with a number of interior designers. Far from being expensive, the designer probably saved us around 10 times her charges, by gently pointing out more practical and durable alternatives to my half baked ideas. And we ended up with a nice cozy, accessible, human friendly house. For our garden, we used a garden designer ( not a landscape designer, they just stick hard surfaces everywhere ) who specialises in Piet Oudolf's New Perennial style.
Alien1Being 3mo ago
"Modern decor" is different from contemporary decor. For instance actual lighting designers look with contempt at the kind of lighting mentioned in the article as a 1970's trend, that was in turn influenced by the 1930's Bauhaus. Modern lighting uses layered lighting to create a cozy ambience and human friendly small pools of warm illumination. See : https://talalighting.com/blogs/journal/how-to-layer-light-in-your-living-room https://talalighting.com/blogs/journal/how-to-layer-light-in...
Al-Khwarizmi 3mo ago
I don't really know what to take away from this piece. I think I might be misunderstanding something. On the one hand, "Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details" - What, isn't it just the opposite? Coastlines and many plants are famously fractal, and in general, if you zoom into nature you will see a lot of detail, while in artificial objects you will often see a uniform sufrace. On the other hand, "Repetitive grids, stark contrasts, and uniform surfaces have replaced the organic variation of earlier styles" - Okay, I get that grids are bad, but if the problem is too much detail and visual stimulation, why are uniform sources a problem? Is high complexity good or bad? The only clear ideas that I take from this is that grids = bad, and flickering LED lightning = bad (and I don't really know how to choose LEDs that don't flicker...).
- mlrtime 3mo ago
  They are difficult to find locally and expensive. Look for Waveform or Phillips Ultra.
  - rationalist 3mo ago
    FWIW: I am sensitive to high-frequency flickering lights, and the cheap LED light bulbs at Home Depot do not bother me at all.
- Diogenesian 3mo ago
  This article is an LLM-generated summary and it got a bunch of stuff wrong. Very frustrating. Here's the actual paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34 https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34
gib444 3mo ago
> People who are neurodivergent, a broad term covering autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and related conditions, are disproportionately affected I don't think this is at all a coincidence when it comes to office planning and design. It is purposefully exclusionary Modern offices are just social/business experiments about what a human will put up with to earn a wage and to optimise for the most desired employees. Most offices I've worked at have a majority of these issues: - Horrible decor mentioned in the article - Insufficient peak-time toilet capacity - Zero accounting for the sun's rays (screen glare, solar gain) - Poor acoustics - Horrible overhead lighting - Broken AC in heat waves, lack of natural air cooling in winter (yay, dried sinuses and gloves in winter!) - Meeting rooms with insufficient fresh air - Zero design to reduce spreading of viral diseases - Constant visual distractions
- OhioMan2943 3mo ago
  Starting to think I'm the normal one and everyone else is crazy...
- moi2388 3mo ago
  > “ It is purposefully exclusionary” No, neurodivergent and autistic people are just generally affected or annoyed by pretty much anything. There is no conspiracy here.
geeewhy 3mo ago
why i prefer invisible tools. screens are our environment right now. it feels like interior design of a casino these days. all the spinners and flowing streaming of text and media...
felooboolooomba 3mo ago
In addition, Sensory Processing Sensitivity/Disorder (SPS/SPD) tends to go with ADHD or people on the spectrum. Personally think those people are over represented in our line or work (IT/Tech). The headline picture in that article is pure hell for me.
mttch 3mo ago
As much as I dislike the cold light of a LED bulb it’s so much better than the horrible era of compact fluorescent bulbs we just lived through.
- mlrtime 3mo ago
  Maybe but Incandescent is still the best visually for warmth and flickering which cause headaches. You have to go very far out of your way to buy an expensive non flickering LED light. Waveform or Phillips Ultra.
Validark 3mo ago
FACT CHECKED VERIFIED
marsven_422 3mo ago
[dead]
gizmodo59 3mo ago
“ Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details.” Doesn’t it increase the details in nature due to all the imperfections vs simple patterns made by humans?
- hliyan 3mo ago
  The default visual circuits in our brains may have evolved to optimally handle fractal patterns and textures. Straight lines, geometrical figures and featureless surfaces may require activation of less optimal circuits. Anecdotally, I find being in environments made of featureless geometrical figures uncomfortable to be in.
indymike 3mo ago
A few small things (from the perspective of the suburbs in a large flyover city), as in most things design the real drivers are usually material driven, and often a byproduct of a trend. I'll sum up by saying modern interiors feel temporary, where old decor seems permanent in comparison. This leads to you feeling like a hotel guest instead of being home. You have to really work at it to make a modern interior feel like home: - Modern homes have lots of closet space and storage, so there's little need for "storage furniture like bookshelves, curios, hutches, sideboards and cabinets (you can get $5000+ china cabinets on marketplace for $200 here). When we moved in, I got rid of probably 14 pieces of (mostly beautiful) storage furniture because we just didn't need them. So it's hard to pile up the artifacts of life where they are easy to see and even grab. - Living areas are large and open, and fantastic for having guests over or a family movie night, but not cozy for a lazy night of reading a book by the fireplace. You have to make a space for this and fight the floorplan to do so. - Electronics have shrunk, a modern TV is the size of a painting on the wall, and needs only no horizontal space. Likewise, outside of my son's gaming rig, all the computers are laptops, so, out with the beautiful wood desks and in with the modern ergonomic stand-up desk. As far as the new home went, almost a year later, the areas where we've made effort to put "life on display" feel great - A huge photo wall with shelves for chotskys and nicnaks, a loft decorated with posters and props from my kid's theater productions, an office with a wall covered with photos and guitars. Life is kind of messy. I guess making home a little more like life really helps.
tsoukase 3mo ago
I live in the same house as my grandparent that was renovated twice before each subsequent generation moved in. Each one was performed with the modern standards but with respect to the previous situation. Simple natural colours, like white and brown hue, ample natural light, and functional design based on everyday living routine do not violate the continuity, still not sacrificing modern luxuries. This balance of past and future is what is missing from a cold start with radical ideas.
zzo38computer 3mo ago
I do not like much of the modern decor either, but there are some additional issues. I think that they should not need to put all of the lights inside and outside even in the day time; the window should be enough light from the sun light (so, they should ensure to have enough window to do that). (You should turn off the light in the night time too so that it is dark in the night time (especially outside).)

Off topic but I really hate modern web design. I found the content of this article interesting but I could hardly read it scrolling through in-article ads, banners, etc. One of the reasons I like HN is the prevalence of personal blogs that just have text for me to sit and read.

blooalien 3mo ago
> ... could hardly read it scrolling through in-article ads, banners, etc. Which is why you can take my adblocker from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands. Much of the modern web is largely straight-up hostile without a proper adblocker these days.
danielrmay 3mo ago
A clean reading experience appears to be a unique selling point these days
Diogenesian 3mo ago
If it's any consolation this article was written by an LLM, so reading it is a waste of time regardless. HN should just autoblock this entire scumbag domain. The paper itself is open access: https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34 https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34
SoftTalker 3mo ago
I use reader mode on most sites where it is possible. It makes a big difference in most cases. Readable font size and face, good contrast, and comfortable margins. I don't know why so many sites ignore good practices on this stuff.
- blooalien 3mo ago
  > I use reader mode on most sites where it is possible. ... That's my go-to solution on mobile devices almost every single time because on small screens even a good adblocker simply isn't nearly enough to overcome the other issues you mention in your comment here.

michaelchisari 3mo ago

If you've ever been in an home owned for generations, filled with books and knickknacks and heirlooms and family photos, despite the clutter it all feels comforting in a way that modern decor doesn't. The article doesn't touch much on why modern decor emerged as it did. It's a market response where everyone needs to (or feels the need to) pick up and move at a moment's notice. Companies are either expanding or like to think they'll be expanding soon. People move jobs so often that they have a hard time feeling settled where they are, so they design for that possibility. The modern aesthetic is one of planned impermanence.

Insanity 3mo ago
This resonates with me. I enjoy being at my grandparents’ home. And it’s exactly as you mentioned, if I would describe all the stuff in the living room it’d be called “cluttered”. Yet it feels “homey” and I feel pretty relaxed whenever I sit there to read a book. And then on my side, for the past 15 years I moved to a new place about every 2-3 years. Never really invested in making it feel “homey” because I’m not sure how much space I’d have in the next place I move to.
SoftTalker 3mo ago
I think there's a lot of unappreciated benefits in "staying put." Of course if you're living in a bad situation that might not be true, and it might not be good for your career or for other material reasons, but it can be good for your mental health. My parents owned one house, and we never moved. I grew up there and I still own it. I don't live there currently but every time I am in that house I'm calm, relaxed, and comfortable almost immediately. It's nothing fancy, just a normal ranch house, but it's very familiar and full of memories.
- tekne 3mo ago
  This explains a lot... I feel bad when I think about staying put. Forward always feels better. It's like one of the fundamental axes, I guess.
bear141 3mo ago
I see where you are coming from and I think this is an interesting observation. Especially when talking about companies and people moving apartments every year. I grew up in a house full of the clutter that you describe as comforting, but for me it felt smothering. I recently inherited the house I grew up in and now have it set up much less cluttered. I don’t plan to live anywhere else anytime soon, but for me the lack of clutter and clear spaces are much more comforting. I am definitely not a fan of crazy colors or patterns or bad lighting either though.

idopmstuff 3mo ago

The Limitations section at the bottom certainly has a lot of limitations: > This paper is a review, meaning it synthesizes and interprets existing research rather than presenting new experimental data. The authors themselves note that current visual tests for susceptibility to discomfort are subjective and poorly standardized. They also acknowledge that the proposed mechanism (that discomfort is the brain’s response to overwork) has not been fully tested, particularly the hypothesis that colored tints reduce discomfort by steering visual stimulation away from overactive brain areas. The relationship between the brain’s excitatory and inhibitory chemical signals and visual discomfort also remains, in their words, “unsettled.” Several key research questions are flagged as unresolved, including how to best quantify the real-world impact of visual stress on people’s lives and how to objectively measure susceptibility. Flickering lights are about the only thing I saw in here that seem like they'd be a problem in the long term. Everything else your brain just adjusts to over time and stops noticing. Maybe the first few days in an office with bright colors would be slightly distracting, but after that you just stop seeing them. I would guess that a lot of the studies they reviewed probably tested people's reactions to these things when they saw them one time, not the hundredth time.

MajorTakeaway 3mo ago
The article does explicitly state that the brain doesn't adapt to this. From the article: "And when the brain encounters something it can’t process efficiently, it doesn’t simply adapt. Brain imaging studies cited in the review show it generates stronger neural responses in visual areas, consumes more oxygen, and in some people produces pain, distortion, or worse."
- idopmstuff 3mo ago
  I assume you're referring to this: > And when the brain encounters something it can’t process efficiently, it doesn’t simply adapt. Brain imaging studies cited in the review show it generates stronger neural responses in visual areas, consumes more oxygen, and in some people produces pain, distortion, or worse. If the studies are of a person's initial exposure to these sorts of conditions, then that doesn't tell us anything about whether people adapt over time (and to be clear I have not read all the studies, but given the limitations listed I'm comfortable assuming they're not incredibly robust until someone tells me otherwise). I suspect the article's use of the word "adapt" is not the same as mine; from the context when they say the brain doesn't adapt they just mean that it shows a response at the time of the particular exposure they're measuring.

excusable 3mo ago

I'm thinking about Backrooms

Doktor_IO 3mo ago

Who needs science for that?

meindnoch 3mo ago

>Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details. Wut? It's precisely the opposite. Natural patterns have infinite complexity as you zoom in, and human-made patterns (most often) not.

SoftTalker 3mo ago
Natural patterns are often fractal.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
VeninVidiaVicii 3mo ago
I’m pretty sure they mean perceptible complexity at the level of the human eye. Of course, everything has quarks and leptons in infinitely complex patterning.
- meindnoch 3mo ago
  >I’m pretty sure they mean perceptible complexity at the level of the human eye That's precisely what they're wrong about. Take a look at tree branches. A field of grass. A stone cliff. Now take a look at human-made decor: drywall, plastic, laminated boards. Which one has more visual detail?
  - kulahan 3mo ago
    Our brains evolved in the former environment, and is very good at filtering it out. I've got pretty extreme ADHD, and if I'm in a room and something on the wall is flittering about, I absolutely must look at it. If I'm in a field and a tree is full of leaves billowing in the wind, it's a nice background thing. I guess my monkey brain is too busy looking for tiger faces to be distracted by flickering leaves, flowing grass, and flying bugs for more than a half second. I dunno if I agree with their arguments in the paper (there seem to be some pretty big questions unanswered yet, which the authors acknowledge), but there's definitely something to the idea that natural environments aren't as stressful for us, even if they're objectively "busier".

jes5199 3mo ago

this is the same thing we said about offices in the fluorescent era

Demiurge 3mo ago
has it gotten better in the LED era?

FinnLobsien 3mo ago

I‘ve definitely noticed this over time as spaces (especially public ones like cafes, retail locations, and restaurants) started being designed as props for Instagram/TikTok. This made a big contribution because vertical short-form video feeds require extreme stimuli to get anyone’s attention - but they add nothing to the actual experience and often detract from it. This has also led to the absolutely horrific acoustics where even in non-nightclub bars and normal restaurants, you have to yell to understand each other because the decor is made of tile, tables and chairs are at odd angles that increase distance, etc. Everything now is subordinate to the visual environment because that’s what gets shared on Instagram. Not saying interior design doesn’t matter, but its point should be to create a great overall experience, not to be visually stimulating at the expense of the rest.

nilirl 3mo ago

This website is straining my brain. Ads that bounce around? Sheesh.

drnick1 3mo ago
It's time to start using an ad blocker, I don't see any ads on that page with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
ejflick 3mo ago
I can’t decide if it’s obnoxious or beautiful irony that drives home the idea of the article.
marticode 3mo ago
Lucky you, at least you can load it. My IP (from a generic run of the mill ISP) just seems outright blocked.

pixel_popping 3mo ago

In case you own the website: Forbidden You don't have permission to access this resource. From Singapore.

SP711 3mo ago

I don’t buy this. Feels like a non-problem or a very first world problem to even analyse and with the exception of lights, nothing else seemed plausible

bawolff 3mo ago
Really, you don't find it plausible that environment could affect mood? I dont know if the hypothesis in the paper is correct, but it seems clear that environment can affect mood in some cases. There is a reason why night clubs and libraries are decorated differently. From there it seems very plausible other elements of environments could have an affect (perhaps subtle) on mood.
witx 3mo ago
So you thibk light might affect, but something visual.. that we see does not?
dwb 3mo ago
Why do you think that? What knowledge/leaning do you have that would add weight to your opinion?

thelittlenag 3mo ago

I really hate lighting in modern offices. If there was one thing that folks actively worked to improve I would choose lighting. Having lights with a broader spectrum would go a long way in reducing eye strain and general fatigue, while likely allowing the lights to actually be brighter. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon.

Demiurge 3mo ago
I so agree! As someone into photography, light is everything. It can even turn oversaturated fabrics into more uniform and less screaming colors. The diffusion of the light flattens things, but the interesting angles create interesting shadows and shapes. So much can be done with light, but so many offices have the boring flat ceiling lights. It seems to be hard for the office space designers to invest a bit of time into islands that can have lamps. What's interesting is that many libraries seem to be more accomodating in this regard. Either way, light is everything, but it is treated like an afterthought.

andix 3mo ago

I really hate shops, malls and supermarkets. I'm not easily overwhelmed and can handle being there fine. But it's just horrible there. Way too loud, bright and often too warm. Completely full of chaos and way too many useless products. When I have to go I try to be out there as quickly as possible. I always thought that's weird, shouldn't those shops be designed in a way that makes me want to explore them, look at all the things they have, instead of just hunting down exactly what I need and leave as quickly as possible.

bear141 3mo ago
They make it hard to find what you want on purpose in hopes you will be distracted and buy other crap along the way. I think it must work on most consumers. I have the same reaction to it as you.
- andix 3mo ago
  I get that they make it hard to find, so we also buy different stuff. But if I can't find what I'm looking for too often, I won't come back anymore. Sometimes I really want/need something, and I have all the stores close by. But I still decide to buy it online, and accept waiting a few days, because stores/malls are such a bad experience.
ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
Whenever I go shopping for a single, most trivial item, I really need to psyche myself up. Those critical moments just upon entering the store are the key. Because immediately upon walking in the door, you are immersed in a "shopping environment". Everything you smell, hear, see, touch is geared to making you spend more and purchase more and grab more useless stuff off the shelves. Even in a Goodwill or similar thrift store you are subjected to these merchandising tricks. I have found that keeping a very good household inventory on a spreadsheet is critical. If I have this spreadsheet on my phone and I refer to it, before venturing into aisles, then I know exactly what I need to purchase, and where to go to find it. Sticking to the shopping list, I can avoid the needless purchase temptations. At Costco when I'd go with my parents, it was the custom of the cashiers to ask, "did you find everything alright?" and my father would always joke, that if enough people answered in the affirmative, that was their cue to rearrange the store and shuffle everything around, so that shoppers would get lost, and not being able to find what they want, would discover more useless stuff that they would pull off the shelves on impulse. It also doesn't hurt to follow the advice of "never shop while hungry"!

hnthrow10282910 3mo ago

First pic in article looks like fucking backrooms

jdw64 3mo ago

But isn't that actually what modernism is about? I heard about Ornament and Crime in a university liberal arts class, and there really is this kind of problem. When you try to imitate natural forms, fractal structures are fundamentally difficult to mass produce, there are hygiene issues, and so the modernist approach became dominant. And as the saying goes, "form follows function", you cannot apply the artificial technologies that do not exist in nature the same way you would with old stone buildings. In the same vein, contemporary art, like a Veronica, smashes form apart, and instead of concrete imitation of nature, it moves toward abstraction, geometry, and minimalism. But does not that come with a problem? It does not enter the brain directly the way natural forms do; you have to additionally recognize what it actually is. I do not think that is an incorrect observation.

slopinthebag 3mo ago

It's not just decor but architecture as well. Look I've been to Europe, I've seen the old architecture and decor there. It's unquestionably better. I get the feeling that modernity, at least in this day and age is about cost cutting and non-offensiveness more than anything else.

pishpash 3mo ago
For one it's not produced by artisans but by machines or processes.
edelbitter 3mo ago
The degree to which an environment is straining is possibly merely coincidentally related to the decor part.. and almost entirely rooted in architecture. Buildings with terrible architecture merely tend to simultaneously also be equipped with horrible color and texture choices. I suspect besides objectively annoying flickering lights, the difference is primarily made in the immediate, subconscious and effortless recognition of ubiquitous patterns of function. Which happens in form and proportion first, and only to a lesser degree in color and contrast. * this is the floor, this is the ceiling * through there, there is the entrance / exit * this is a reception desk If it takes effort to filter out the noise, the glare to know such simple things, there is less capacity left in our brains to process other "essentially free" tasks.

ck2 3mo ago

just crazy-glue some cheap tacky Home Depot gold decor on every surface and you'll be fine, maybe even become leader of free world

gumby 3mo ago

Today’s style is a callback to the 60s, and we’re people making the same complaints then?

seeknotfind 3mo ago
We are?
- gumby 3mo ago
  Autocorrect changed “were” to “we’re” and I didn’t catch it

dinkblam 3mo ago

flickering lights are not "modern decor" but a broken (and possibly dangerous) appliance

xandrius 3mo ago
You're confusing what they mean: it's not the flickering that you can easily notice, it's the flickering of lights "fps". To see those, you need a digital camera (e.g. your phone)

cobalt_miner 3mo ago

Similarly, one my uni professors wrote a paper arguing that the opposite - standing in nature - results in healthy neural activity. He showed people photos of geometric patterns (plain lines, basic shapes), natural patterns (fractals), and photos of nature itself (trees, animals, etc.) while reading their mental activity. The conclusion was that both fractals and nature photos cause significantly more efficient, diverse, and healthy-looking brain activity. Our brains inherently expect the world to look fractal-like, and in some ways even need it to look that way to form creative thoughts. Completely lost the link to that article; it was a good read.

anthk 3mo ago
Somehow we posted the same comment, I didn't even have a look on the whole HN comment list. Yes, indeed, we are used to look at leaves/branches/trees with self-similar structures (and mountains/rivers and lightnings).

andsoitis 3mo ago

> Striped patterns, flickering lights, bright glare, and crowded visual environments Those things are also just ugly.

anthk 3mo ago

The human brain it's used to the fractal details in neatures, such as branches/leaves. Geometrical design (especially the ones with grids/vectors everywhere) are not minimalistic but tiring, really tiring.

deleted 3mo ago

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fluxusars 3mo ago

The moiré effect of vertically striped wood walls gives me a headache.

ulnarkressty 3mo ago
The stripey wood-and-black-rubber 'sound dampening' panels are all the rage these days and I don't really understand it. Our management had the bright idea to put these things in all our meeting rooms on the wall with the TVs we use for remote calls. People started getting sea sick looking at them. Of course removing them would mean the management made a mistake, so they will stay there until the next bright idea hits.
- TacticalCoder 3mo ago
  I cannot thank you and GP (and others in this thread) enough for these comments. I thought they looked cool (although a bit of dust-catchers) and was planning to redo my bedroom with those. I'm definitely going to do something else instead.

bob1029 3mo ago

The biggest revelation I've had regarding interior design is to stop using overhead lights. Anyone who has ever worked in the games industry will tell you that lighting is the most important element of what makes a scene look a certain way. The crazy thing about lamps is you can put them anywhere. They only use a constant amount of power regardless of scene complexity. Lighting in my GPU is definitely more expensive. When everything in your house is illuminated from point lights stuck in holes in the ceiling, you only get a visual hierarchy along an axis you mostly cannot use (Y/up/down). When the lights are positioned at vertical midpoints, you get visual hierarchy on the X-Z (horizontal) plane which is generally how we are viewing our environment. The layering of shadow and highlights across a room are a lot less stressful to interpret. You can use a lot less total light and still convey required detail in the scene.

layer8 3mo ago
I like this, but to play the devil’s advocate: How does that mesh with usually having just one giant overhead light (the sun) outdoors?
- xandrius 3mo ago
  You mean one giant overhead light (the sun) during "work hours" and a soft reddish ground-level light (the campfire) during night?
- jay_kyburz 3mo ago
  Its moves, and twice a day its nice and low like a lamp. In the middle of the day when its highest, its nice to shelter under a tree where there is dappled light filtering through the leaves.
neop1x 3mo ago
Lightning is VERY important. What I like is cove lightning - led strips near ceiling, reflected from the white ceiling. And it is also good to have multiple lightning sources - dimer and slightly warmer to use towards the end of day (sunset) and red (or at least warm) for the night out near floor (like a a fireplace at night). Helps maintain natural circadian rhythms and easier sleep.

daytonix 3mo ago

Oh really?? The disgusting childlike interiors the millennials put everywhere might actually be nauseating and headache-inducing? Who could have predicted that? (anyone with eyes)

jmbwell 3mo ago

One characteristic that differentiates contemporary design from all our grandparents’ houses is transience rather than permanence. Design immediately following WWI was largely about calm and comfort; the emergence of the den, cottage-cozy, spaces for reading, listening to the radio, etc — stability, calm, people wanted everything the war wasn’t. Immediately following WWII was different in different parts of the world but especially in North America there were all these industrial manufacturers wanting to sell The Future, and you get on the one hand gleaming kitchen-forward spaces and two car garages and rooms for entertaining. Less built-in bookshelves, more built-in HiFi. And on the other hand, the sort of refuge or counterpoint, more integration with nature, more natural materials, exposed timber and vaulted ceilings and giant windows, frank lloyd wright. And in all these cases, the ideas were rooted in stability and permanence. The space was designed for its uses and its inhabitants. More recently, it’s less about the buyers and more about the sellers. Design is optimized for flipping, which means fast market movement, which means generic. Yes there is always cookie-cutter, especially in postwar housing boom. Modern markets have just embraced that more fully. Offices don’t embody the tenants identity, or if they do it’s the same as all the other companies “in the space.” Everyone wants to look like Google, at best, otherwise it’s about commodity layouts, finishes, and styles… platforms for cubicles and bulk furniture purchases that can be amortized over the lease. Housing is similar… design for a family that will scatter once the kids leave home and the parents retire elsewhere. Or the inverse… design for Airbnb until the owners are ready to retire and move in or sell off. In any case the inhabitants are a secondary consideration to returns on investment. Design is a cost center to a financial concern. Unless you’re rich enough not to care about any of this, in which case there’s finally time and space and money for design, but none of it really matters

sgt 3mo ago

> Many LED systems use a dimming technique that rapidly switches the light on and off (sometimes hundreds of times per second). While this is invisible as flicker to the naked eye under normal conditions, eye movements can expose it This is what I've always felt too, but if you talk to any lighting "expert", they'll say "no that's simply not the case with LED lighting since the year... 2009 or whatever ...". Highly suspect.

sudobash1 3mo ago
I find it easy to detect. If I wave my hand in front of my face quickly, the movement looks choppy instead of being just a blur. I can often tell lighting is cheep LED even without doing this. Movement just feels off. It is mildly annoying, but I can mostly ignore it.
TacticalCoder 3mo ago
> This is what I've always felt too, but if you talk to any lighting "expert", they'll say "no that's simply not the case with LED lighting since the year... 2009 or whatever ...". Highly suspect. Way before the Internet I had games running at 50 Hz (PAL). And we fully knew the difference between, say, a 2D game scrolling at full-frame rate and a game running a 25 fps: we could tell immediately. Same for intros and demos. Yet the number of times I had armchair experts explain me, despite me literally seeing with my own eyes the difference, that "the human eye cannot discern more than 24 fps". Teachers. Friends of my parents. My parents. Later on I could tell a CRT running Windows @ 60 Hz vs 75 Hz in a split second: I simply could tell. And still: same armchair experts "you cannot detect that, your eyes cannot physically detect more than 24 fps, because science!". It's the absolute worst thing: you see something with your own eyes, other people see it with their own eyes. And yet "experts" explain to you "that is impossible". While you could fucking literally demo it to them: but they're not interested "becuz it's impossssssible". I hate LED lighting. Or at least I hate having only LED lighting. But there's IMO a simple trick to make the lighting much warmer and reduce the flicker (even if you don't consciously detect it, like 60 fps vs 75 fps: it's simply there) and still keep electricity consumption in check: just have one incandescent light bulb per room. Maybe two in the living room. This immediately gives the feeling of a much warmer place (and, technically speaking, it is actually... warmer, ah!). You can still legally, even in the EU, buy "special purpose", incandescent lamps that give a very nice warm yellowish light. Just don't forget to wait if you plan to touch one after turning it off because they really get very warm. Now of course you do that and you'll have sore people say: "even one incandescent lamp is too much, you should be 100% LED, not 95% LED, to save the planet!" followed by "we should ask the EU (and others) to ban once and for all ALL incandescent lightbulbs". Basically: go order on Amazon or whatever a few small "special purpose" incandescent light and some little lamp to put them in. Put one in each room. You'll thank me later.

layer8 3mo ago

For those running into the ad-blocker blocker: https://archive.ph/LlAfO https://archive.ph/LlAfO

manmal 3mo ago

The trend to put acoustic panels or an imitation of their pattern on _everything_ is one of my pet peeves. They create some stroboscobe effect with my (not normal) vision. The result is that they mess with my 3D perception and break my brain a bit for that reason. I’d rather not have them put anywhere.

kakacik 3mo ago
They are a fad, like many before, and not the best one due to copy&paste uniformity. Since its used so aggressively and so often, many places look weirdly similar like if many people bought exactly same Ikea furniture. Proper wood like oak can be very pretty in many forms but this is not. In future it will clearly mark the era of (re)construction.

shwaj 3mo ago

“Striped office floors. Flickering lights. Walls covered in repetitive geometric patterns.” Not sentences. AI slop.

psunavy03 3mo ago

So many people in this thread not understanding what a luxury and a privilege "staying put" for decades is in this era of layoffs.

Animats 3mo ago

The flicker of some auto lighting systems is annoying. The switching frequency is so low that strobing is a real issue on the red and yellow lamps. Flicker in light bulb sized white LED lamps isn't so bad, because the LEDs drive phosphors with slow response times. Come on, auto people, get those switching frequencies up to a kilohertz or so.

akomtu 3mo ago

Modern design, especially the modern architecture, is meant to simplify people's thinking, make it bland and uniform. Look at the gray cubism around you: does it inspire any creativity? Same for interior design, cars and even the so called modern art.

sirwitti 3mo ago

One aspect that is often overlooked is a room acoustics - especially reverb time. Have you ever felt cosy in a large church? Or, if you have ever been to a wedding and wondered why everybody started talking louder and louder and it's hard to understand, a room with too large reverb time is a very probable causes. This is very draining mentally. The same goes for living spaces, especially since newer homes tend to use lots of smooth surfaces like glass, tiles and concrete, which increase reverb time a lot. Book shelves, curtains and furniture will increase a room's diffusiveness and reduce reverb time, making rooms feel so much better.

olelele 3mo ago
So many bars & restaurants don't care enough about this.
- gib444 3mo ago
  Given coffee shops etc hire psychologists to select annoying music to optimise revenue, I wouldn't rule out bad acoustics as a choice (particularly larger chains) Though with bars and restaurants being brutally hard to survive and turn a decent profit, I would mostly attribute it to just cutting costs
  - olelele 3mo ago
    I spent most of my adult life in Berlin and most places here it’s due to 100% ignorance. Tearing out everything and putting in euro pallets as furniture + packing the place w drunk ppl was the general modus operandi. Acoustic treatment doesn’t have to be expensive.
bluebarbet 3mo ago
Possibly the first convincing argument I have ever heard in favor of the materialistic accumulative American lifestyle.
- kulahan 3mo ago

theendisney 3mo ago

A guy i know put a fancy cracked wooden floor in his rather large flat, a sofa, a coffee table, a bed, a closet for his cloths and the rest of the space was filled with the largest possible plants. Like half the size of a car. Lots of grow lamps on a 10 hour timer while he was at work. Enough green that one cant help but deeply inhale it.

badlibrarian 3mo ago

"The optic cortex is the biggest area of the brain by far. When everything is saturated in fluorescent light, as it is in small studios many times, the fluorescent light is going on and off at 60 times a second, or ideally at 120, but more roughly 60 and it’s shutting off your brain 60 times a second. The brain is kind of a fluid thing and everything is coupled with everything else, and when this happens – no matter where you take the EEG – if the subject is looking at fluorescent light, you see 60 cycles from the fluorescent light." https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/don-buchla-passing-the-acid-test https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/don-buchla-pass... I suppose it's worth double checking if the 60 Hz was just leaking into the measurement rig. Or autism, for that matter. But Don was great and I've always loved this interview, so I'm sharing.

aiNohY6g 3mo ago

A specific case of "Evolutionary Mismatch, Stress, and Competition: Making Sense of Psychosocial Problems in the Polycrisis Era" https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/5/650 https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/16/5/650 ?

Alien1Being 3mo ago

This book by Frida Ramstedt walks through the principles of interior decor, without touting the latest trend. There are no pretty pictures in it, just text discussing basic principles. https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0593139313 https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0593139313 The Interior Design Handbook by Frida Ramstedt For our new house, I used this book along with an experienced interior designer and discussions with a number of interior designers. Far from being expensive, the designer probably saved us around 10 times her charges, by gently pointing out more practical and durable alternatives to my half baked ideas. And we ended up with a nice cozy, accessible, human friendly house. For our garden, we used a garden designer ( not a landscape designer, they just stick hard surfaces everywhere ) who specialises in Piet Oudolf's New Perennial style.

Alien1Being 3mo ago

"Modern decor" is different from contemporary decor. For instance actual lighting designers look with contempt at the kind of lighting mentioned in the article as a 1970's trend, that was in turn influenced by the 1930's Bauhaus. Modern lighting uses layered lighting to create a cozy ambience and human friendly small pools of warm illumination. See : https://talalighting.com/blogs/journal/how-to-layer-light-in-your-living-room https://talalighting.com/blogs/journal/how-to-layer-light-in...

Al-Khwarizmi 3mo ago

I don't really know what to take away from this piece. I think I might be misunderstanding something. On the one hand, "Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details" - What, isn't it just the opposite? Coastlines and many plants are famously fractal, and in general, if you zoom into nature you will see a lot of detail, while in artificial objects you will often see a uniform sufrace. On the other hand, "Repetitive grids, stark contrasts, and uniform surfaces have replaced the organic variation of earlier styles" - Okay, I get that grids are bad, but if the problem is too much detail and visual stimulation, why are uniform sources a problem? Is high complexity good or bad? The only clear ideas that I take from this is that grids = bad, and flickering LED lightning = bad (and I don't really know how to choose LEDs that don't flicker...).

mlrtime 3mo ago
They are difficult to find locally and expensive. Look for Waveform or Phillips Ultra.
- rationalist 3mo ago
  FWIW: I am sensitive to high-frequency flickering lights, and the cheap LED light bulbs at Home Depot do not bother me at all.
Diogenesian 3mo ago
This article is an LLM-generated summary and it got a bunch of stuff wrong. Very frustrating. Here's the actual paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34 https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/10/2/34

gib444 3mo ago

> People who are neurodivergent, a broad term covering autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and related conditions, are disproportionately affected I don't think this is at all a coincidence when it comes to office planning and design. It is purposefully exclusionary Modern offices are just social/business experiments about what a human will put up with to earn a wage and to optimise for the most desired employees. Most offices I've worked at have a majority of these issues: - Horrible decor mentioned in the article - Insufficient peak-time toilet capacity - Zero accounting for the sun's rays (screen glare, solar gain) - Poor acoustics - Horrible overhead lighting - Broken AC in heat waves, lack of natural air cooling in winter (yay, dried sinuses and gloves in winter!) - Meeting rooms with insufficient fresh air - Zero design to reduce spreading of viral diseases - Constant visual distractions

OhioMan2943 3mo ago
Starting to think I'm the normal one and everyone else is crazy...
moi2388 3mo ago
> “ It is purposefully exclusionary” No, neurodivergent and autistic people are just generally affected or annoyed by pretty much anything. There is no conspiracy here.

geeewhy 3mo ago

why i prefer invisible tools. screens are our environment right now. it feels like interior design of a casino these days. all the spinners and flowing streaming of text and media...

felooboolooomba 3mo ago

In addition, Sensory Processing Sensitivity/Disorder (SPS/SPD) tends to go with ADHD or people on the spectrum. Personally think those people are over represented in our line or work (IT/Tech). The headline picture in that article is pure hell for me.

mttch 3mo ago

As much as I dislike the cold light of a LED bulb it’s so much better than the horrible era of compact fluorescent bulbs we just lived through.

mlrtime 3mo ago
Maybe but Incandescent is still the best visually for warmth and flickering which cause headaches. You have to go very far out of your way to buy an expensive non flickering LED light. Waveform or Phillips Ultra.

Validark 3mo ago

FACT CHECKED VERIFIED

marsven_422 3mo ago

[dead]

gizmodo59 3mo ago

“ Eyes and brain alike evolved over millennia to process natural scenes, forests, rivers, coastlines, open skies. These environments share a specific mathematical pattern: their visual complexity decreases predictably as you zoom in on finer and finer details.” Doesn’t it increase the details in nature due to all the imperfections vs simple patterns made by humans?

hliyan 3mo ago
The default visual circuits in our brains may have evolved to optimally handle fractal patterns and textures. Straight lines, geometrical figures and featureless surfaces may require activation of less optimal circuits. Anecdotally, I find being in environments made of featureless geometrical figures uncomfortable to be in.

indymike 3mo ago

A few small things (from the perspective of the suburbs in a large flyover city), as in most things design the real drivers are usually material driven, and often a byproduct of a trend. I'll sum up by saying modern interiors feel temporary, where old decor seems permanent in comparison. This leads to you feeling like a hotel guest instead of being home. You have to really work at it to make a modern interior feel like home: - Modern homes have lots of closet space and storage, so there's little need for "storage furniture like bookshelves, curios, hutches, sideboards and cabinets (you can get $5000+ china cabinets on marketplace for $200 here). When we moved in, I got rid of probably 14 pieces of (mostly beautiful) storage furniture because we just didn't need them. So it's hard to pile up the artifacts of life where they are easy to see and even grab. - Living areas are large and open, and fantastic for having guests over or a family movie night, but not cozy for a lazy night of reading a book by the fireplace. You have to make a space for this and fight the floorplan to do so. - Electronics have shrunk, a modern TV is the size of a painting on the wall, and needs only no horizontal space. Likewise, outside of my son's gaming rig, all the computers are laptops, so, out with the beautiful wood desks and in with the modern ergonomic stand-up desk. As far as the new home went, almost a year later, the areas where we've made effort to put "life on display" feel great - A huge photo wall with shelves for chotskys and nicnaks, a loft decorated with posters and props from my kid's theater productions, an office with a wall covered with photos and guitars. Life is kind of messy. I guess making home a little more like life really helps.

tsoukase 3mo ago

I live in the same house as my grandparent that was renovated twice before each subsequent generation moved in. Each one was performed with the modern standards but with respect to the previous situation. Simple natural colours, like white and brown hue, ample natural light, and functional design based on everyday living routine do not violate the continuity, still not sacrificing modern luxuries. This balance of past and future is what is missing from a cold start with radical ideas.

zzo38computer 3mo ago

I do not like much of the modern decor either, but there are some additional issues. I think that they should not need to put all of the lights inside and outside even in the day time; the window should be enough light from the sun light (so, they should ensure to have enough window to do that). (You should turn off the light in the night time too so that it is dark in the night time (especially outside).)