What Happens When You Let Nature Design the Room
- Sharon Lomas
- May 7
- 5 min read
There is a special type of attention that arrives only when you slow down enough to let it. Not the focused, task-oriented attention of a deadline or a brief — something older and quieter than that. The kind that notices the way light moves through leaves, the texture of bark beneath your fingers, the surprising softness of moss on stone.
It was that quality of attention we were after when Delyth and I welcomed our first guests to Rydal Hall in the Lake District for our inaugural Design with Nature day retreat. And what unfolded over those hours confirmed everything we had hoped — and surprised us in ways we had not anticipated.
What if the starting point for your next interior was not a paint chart or a Pinterest board, but a morning in the forest?
Beginning in stillness
The day began not with notebooks or design frameworks, but with the trees. Guided by Delyth — whose practice at Becoming Your True Nature is rooted in the Japanese tradition of Shinrin Yoku, or forest bathing.
Our guests were invited to simply be in the woodland. Gently guided by Delyth to walk slowly. To stop. To notice what called to them.
We are so accustomed to moving through nature with purpose — walking a route, reaching a viewpoint, ticking off the miles — that genuine stillness in a forest feels, at first, slightly uncomfortable. The mind reaches for its list. The body wants to move on.
But the guests stayed with it. They settled. Then something began to happen.
One person found themselves standing for a long time at the base of an oak, their hand against the bark, noticing the way the roots spread into the earth. Another was drawn repeatedly to the quality of light filtering through the canopy — the way it arrived in shafts and pools rather than evenly, the way it made the air itself seem textured.
Someone noticed the palette of a single patch of ground: the pewter of wet stone, the gold of fallen leaves, the deep green of lichen that seems to exist nowhere else.
These are not small observations. These are the beginnings of design.
What the forest teaches designers
The research into biophilic design - the practice of embedding the patterns and qualities of the natural world into our built environments - is now substantial and growing. Studies consistently show that spaces designed with nature in mind reduce cortisol levels, lower blood pressure, improve concentration and support emotional regulation. We are after all part of nature and creatures of the natural world. Our nervous systems know it, even when our minds have forgotten.
The fifteen core patterns of biophilic design give us a framework for understanding why certain spaces feel sustaining and others feel depleting. They are not simply aesthetic preferences. They are deeply rooted human needs, expressed in our relationship to the natural world across hundreds of thousands of years.
But the biophilic design framework is only as alive as the experience that fills it.
That is the insight at the heart of Design with Nature: that the most resonant, sustaining spaces are not designed from theory alone. They are designed from felt connection - from the specific, personal, embodied experience of a particular place in the natural world.
What is born of genuine nature connection is truly unique to each person. Design that emerges from that place carries something that cannot be replicated - you feel before you can name it.
From forest to vision board
In the afternoon, we gathered inside and explored how the biophilic design patterns can support our homes. Guests brought with them whatever had stayed with them from the morning - an image, a texture, a feeling, a fragment of memory. And they began to translate.
The biophilic design patterns became a lens rather than a checklist - not 'which of these fifteen patterns can I apply?' but 'which of these patterns speaks to what I experienced this morning?'
The question was always: how do I translate that quality, that feeling, into a design elements for a room?
The vision boards that emerged were unlike anything produced through conventional mood boarding. They were not aspirational imagery pulled from magazines, social media or Pinterest. They were something much more personal and more powerful than that. The palettes of colour, texture and material that had been felt before they were chosen. Arrangements that carried the logic of the forest floor, the rhythm of bark and canopy, the presence of water - each vision board representing something unique to each guest.
One guest built their board around the quality of dappled light they had noticed beneath the trees with translucent materials, layered textures, a palette that moved from deep shadow to pale gold. Another worked with the sensation of deep rootedness at the base of that oak, choosing materials with weight and grain, colours drawn from the earth itself. Every board was different.
Every board was recognisably itself.
Design that carries you back to being rooted in nature. Grounding and anchoring you to places, moments and memories that refresh and restore.
This is design that carries you back. - this is what biophilic design at its deepest level offers: the capacity to carry us back. Back to a specific experience of the natural world that sustained us. Back to a moment of calm, to places where we feel safe and grounded. These are treasured moments found in nature to hold onto.
A room that achieves this is not simply beautiful, it is restorative. It does something to the nervous system that beautiful rooms do not always do - it reminds the body of a felt sense of safety, spaciousness, belonging. The same things the forest offers, translated into light and material and form.
What moved both Delyth and I most deeply about our first Design with Nature day was observing that translation happen in real time. Watching guests discover that their most personal nature experiences - not some generalised idea of nature, but their specific, intimate encounter with a patch of woodland on a morning in the Lake District was a more powerful design resource than anything we could have handed them.
We did not teach them to design.
We helped them remember how to pay attention and to be open to the connections they were drawn to explore. Their design followed naturally from their
unique nature experience.
If this is calling to you
We are already beginning to think about our next gathering. Design with Nature days are kept small by intention - this work asks for a attention that is only possible in a quiet group, in a real place, with genuine time.
If the ideas in this post have stirred something in you - a recognition, a longing for that quality of connection, a curiosity about what your own nature experience might bring to your creative or design project, then we would love to hear from you.
Stay tuned for new dates being released for late summer and early autumn - join my mailing list if you want to be the first to know or find us on Instagram at RETREATS IN NATURE
Hoping you can join us for a day in nature that can inspire how you design your home.
Sharon x
LEARN MORE
Follow Sharon at A Story of Home - biophilic interiors, nature-led design, soulful living - join the monthly "Notes for a natural home" newsletter that shares inspiration and ideas on how to connect you and your home to nature each month
Delyth's practice at Becoming Your True Nature for more on forest bathing, nature connection,
