benefits bringing nature inside home design

It’s Winter, which, in New Mexico, means we have beautiful clear blue skies, snow capped mountains and we can have some pretty darn cold, freezing days! So many of us may be spending a bit more time indoors instead of out.

Even with the season keeping us more indoors right now, we, at Lee Michael Homes, are working on some unique custom home building projects that have us focused on the benefits of bringing the outside, in!

Benefits of Using Green Building in Your Home

Before you begin to decorate the inside of your home, you might first consider how your home’s exterior and interior framework is built. Considering the use of natural materials and green building techniques for construction or remodeling projects has many home benefits. Not only can you gain personal benefits but you are helping the environment as well.

With a push for everyone to be more environmentally responsible, the green building techniques we use in our home and building construction at Lee Michael Homes offer benefits in many ways including:

  • Preserves the Environment
  • Works to Reduce Building Waste
  • Promotes & Incorporates Recycled Products & Materials
  • Considers & Uses Local Indigenous Products
  • Helps with Energy Efficiency & Unnecessary Energy Use
  • Increases Water Efficiency
  • Improves Building & Indoor Air Quality
  • Enhances General Home Performance
  • Makes a Local & Global Impact

For more about our green building & solar designs in our custom homes, see: What’s Green About Lee Michael Homes

Benefits of Plants in Your Home

With many of the popular areas of New Mexico located in the high desert regions with very dry climates, hard mineral dirt, and difficult-to-grow conditions, it brings a different set of considerations for outdoor planting and gardening than for many other places in the US. So, why not consider bringing plants and vegetation inside the house. Plants hold some great benefits for inside the home.

So many types of vegetation grow easily indoors, require minimum care, and work with any home décor. Some researchers suggest that interior landscaping can play an important role in providing a tranquil, pleasant and healthy home environment. Some benefits to bringing plants into your home include:

  • Plants can help your mind, body & overall health. Does being close to greenery make you feel relaxed? It has been suggested that interior landscaping can dramatically affect your well-being and help with stress. Even in the office or work-place, studies show that employees with plants around them make fewer mistakes, take fewer sick days and are more productive. Even patients in hospitals have shown to benefit from having plants around and in their rooms. Students have shown better attendance and performance in classrooms if their environments featured live vegetation. So why wouldn’t you want to bring those benefits into your home too?!
  • Plants can improve air quality. Many scientists agree that plants improve indoor air quality. Plants are known to be useful for keeping air temperatures down, reducing airborne dust levels, increasing humidity, reducing carbon dioxide levels and clearing levels of certain pollutants and toxins, including nitrogen dioxide and benzene, from the air. Plants are considered nature’s air purifiers.
  • Plants can reduce noise. Plants and their leaves reflect, diffract or absorb sounds. They can help to reduce background sounds and other noises, thereby making your home or environment more comfortable. Because a lot of homes and buildings in New Mexico incorporate stone, tile, bricks in flooring, walls and in home designs, and can generally have many hard surfaces, plants can work nicely to quiet these “acoustically live” rooms and spaces.

Benefits of Sunlight in Your House

In case you didn’t know, the sunshine really is a “300 days per year” thing here in New Mexico. Needless to say, that makes solar and solar power easy to obtain for us and for incorporating into our construction and building techniques. While other areas in the US might overlook this natural element, for us it is one of the easiest, and most socially conscientious ways that you can enhance your home.

Not only is sunlight safe and economical, it offers several psychological benefits as well. Studies show that natural sunlight creates an energetic environment conducive to productivity, and while your home might not be your workplace, it is an area that could likely benefit from your positive energy and attitude.

Also, natural sunlight is healthy! Implementing windows strategically in your home design will offer year-round benefits. The sun is a natural heating element and with south-facing windows, it directs the heat to come inside during these cold winter months. Then, this piece of nature in your home can reduce the production of harmful organisms and bacteria that grow in any house. In other words, not only is the sun a natural heater, it is a natural disinfectant too. A few other health benefits of sunlight include:

  • Boosts energy;
  • Strengthens organs;
  • Helps to balance your hormones;
  • Increases red and white blood cell counts;
  • Boosts your immune system;
  • Improves circulation;
  • Improves digestion and stimulates appetite;
  • Helps to improve your complexion;
  • Increases both vitamins B & D for the body.

There are a number of ways to add more natural sunlight into your own home, including converting solid exterior doors to doors with glass windows, having south-facing windows, adding solar tubes, or investing in energy-efficient sliding glass and French doors to transform a tired, dull room into a lively, bright living space. With our custom home designs, we carefully consider room orientations, home placement on the home site, and window locations with every design we create, to make the highest advantage of the sun and solar gain.

Lee Michael Homes New Courtyard Custom Homes

Plants, sunlight, and green building techniques have always played a part, both inside and outside, in the design concepts and considerations of a custom home built by Lee Michael Homes. You will see all of this in our newest, first-of-its-kind showcase home we are currently building in Las Colinas, a North Valley area of Albuquerque, NM.

The Las Colinas home design incorporates a private interior designed courtyard that separates two master suites – perfect for a studio, home office or multi-generational living. The Courtyard concept will provide private living in an outdoor environment, allowing homeowners a unique ability to incorporate their own personalized interior gardens, plants, herbs & vegetables into the green-built exteriors. This in addition to implementing innovative green building techniques makes this model a true showcase home not to miss.

To find out more about this project and our custom home design and building services throughout Albuquerque, New Mexico, please see: