{"id":27739,"date":"2026-05-19T15:15:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T22:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roryc.ca\/blog\/?p=27739"},"modified":"2026-05-18T13:11:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T20:11:53","slug":"the-difference-between-a-house-therapist-and-an-interior-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roryc.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-difference-between-a-house-therapist-and-an-interior-designer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Difference Between a House Therapist and an Interior Designer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There has been an increased interest in a holistic approach to interior design in recent years. Perhaps you&#8217;ve heard the term &#8220;house therapist&#8221; or similar professional titles and wondered how the role differs from a traditional interior designer. The pandemic highlighted the importance of the home and its enormous impact on our lives. Besides considering aesthetics and function, as is the norm in interior design, house therapy delves deeper to understand an individual&#8217;s needs and create a home that&#8217;s a true haven.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To learn more about a holistic approach to interior design, we chatted with designer Olga Naiman. In her new book Spatial Alchemy, Naiman writes, &#8220;Your home is a tool for personal transformation and positive change.&#8221; If you&#8217;re ready to transform your home and your life today, Naiman shares how to get started, what the process involves, and why it&#8217;s truly effective.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>The Difference Between a House Therapist and an Interior Designer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The key difference between a house therapist and an interior designer is the holistic approach a house therapist takes when designing a home. Before discovering what she has coined &#8220;Spatial Alchemy,&#8221; Naiman had a flourishing career as a residential and commercial interior designer for many years. &#8220;I spent my days working on beautiful homes, but began to realize that even while spaces could be exquisite, if a deeper understanding of the inhabitant wasn\u2019t addressed, their potency would be limited,&#8221; Naiman explains. She began using a holistic approach that combines science, psychology, spirituality, and design, and realized that interior design could be a tool for personal transformation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When designing a home, Naiman&#8217;s goal is to create a space that aligns with what you want to bring forward in your life. &#8220;It&#8217;s about becoming aware of the unwanted patterns and outdated identities that you live with, removing them, and designing new patterns of self-worth into your life,&#8221; she says. Instead of the main focus being on function and aesthetics as is the case in traditional interior design, Naiman aims to help people deepen their awareness of who they are becoming through their home. &#8220;We see how we can refine and reposition what they already own, to meet their current needs and desires more easily; In this way, you can move from wanting something in the future to creating a sense of already having it,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>The Process of Transforming Your Life by Shifting Your Home<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If you&#8217;re ready not just to redecorate your home but to transform your life in the process, Naiman says it all begins with articulating your desires. &#8220;To create clear and concise intentions for yourself, the first step is to look around your home and identify where your home is supporting that Future Self energy\u2014and where it is sapping it,&#8221; she says. The designer notes this will likely not be a quick or easy process, but it&#8217;s both necessary and worth it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To disrupt old patterns in your home and life and replace them with new ones, you first need to know what&#8217;s serving you and what you need to let go. Naiman emphasizes that this is a process, not a one-time activity. If it feels overwhelming, don&#8217;t give up; It&#8217;s the starting point for creating a space that supports the life you long to live. &#8220;When you cultivate a relationship with the energy you want to embody, through your home, you start to see more of it coming into your life, in profound and often unexpected ways,&#8221; Naiman says.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>4 Basic Principles for Taking a Holistic Approach to Designing Your Home<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">1. Know Yourself<br \/>\nWhile the famous phrase &#8220;Know thyself&#8221; was not originally used in the context of home design, Naiman says self-awareness is a key starting point for a holistic approach to designing your home. She notes the importance of viewing yourself objectively and says, &#8220;When you learn to see your patterns neutrally, you can release them to shed old identities to plant and cultivate new ones.&#8221; As a result, your home will reflect conscious choices rather than unconscious ones.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">2. Incorporate Small But Mindful Changes<br \/>\nWe often think that only a dramatic makeover or full-scale renovation can change the way we live and feel in our homes. Not only are big-scale projects not always feasible, but they&#8217;re also not actually necessary for your life to begin to shift. &#8220;Trust that small moves lead to bigger, more quantifiable results,&#8221; Naiman says. She is a big believer in mindful upgrades and deliberate pattern-creating, which she says creates a spiral progression rather than a linear one.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">3. Recognize the Impact of The Things Around You<br \/>\nYour surroundings have a bigger impact on your emotional and physical being than you may realize. Holistic home design brings this to awareness and invites you to take inventory of the things around you. How does the paint color in the entryway make you feel when you come home after a long day? Does the living room sofa feel cozy and inviting, or is it actually so uncomfortable that you can never fully relax? Using your home as a tool for personal transformation, Naiman believes it&#8217;s important to recognize the energy around you and mold it. To do this, the designer says it&#8217;s key to learn to identify physical things as expressions of specific energy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">4. Allow Your Home to Help Achieve Emotional Regulation<br \/>\nIdeally, our homes are our havens and places of both comfort and rejuvenation. Naiman says it&#8217;s key to learn to rely on your home to support emotional regulation. &#8220;Using the three pairs of emotional opposites\u2014stability and fluidity, activity and passivity, and connection and privacy\u2014in design creates deeply nourishing havens that increase our odds of experiencing an overall state of comfort, balance, and fulfillment,&#8221; she explains.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bhg.com\/what-is-a-house-therapist-11758103\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What is A House Therapist? The Latest Home Trend That Helps You Feel More at Ease<\/a> by Maria Sabella | Better Homes &amp; Gardens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been an increased interest in a holistic approach to interior design in recent years. Perhaps you&#8217;ve heard the term &#8220;house therapist&#8221; or similar professional titles and wondered how &hellip; [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.roryc.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-difference-between-a-house-therapist-and-an-interior-designer\/\">read more<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-lifestyle","category-real-estate"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Difference Between a House Therapist and an Interior Designer &#8226; Rory C Real Estate | Oakwyn Realty<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.roryc.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/the-difference-between-a-house-therapist-and-an-interior-designer\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"The Difference Between a House Therapist and an Interior Designer &#8226; Rory C Real Estate | Oakwyn Realty\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"There has been an increased interest in a holistic approach to interior design in recent years. 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