How architecture and interior design can help an ADHD mind

It has led her to the conclusion that the way in which we design and decorate our homes could be making it harder for people with ADHD.

She believes that understanding the challenges will allow us to explore how architecture and interior design can help to make a home a calm environment for a neurodiverse mind.

When she was growing up, she says: “To say my bedroom was sparse is an understatement. All I had was my bed, a desk with nothing on it, a couple of small shelves with two candles and some incense, which I never burned because I hated the smell. Unlike all my friends, there were no boy-band posters on my walls or polaroid pictures of my friends.”

Intuitively, in her teens, she had realised that she was easily distracted. “My walls were the same pale grey as the rest of the house and it would have never occurred to me to ask to have them painted a different colour.

“I moved to London when I was 22 with just two suitcases. I lived on my own and my lovely flat was a larger version of my bedroom at home. I then lived in a couple of flat shares and never accumulated much more than I could fit in a small IKEA wardrobe.”

It was only when she married and had two children and a dog that she began accumulating “stuff”.

“As I explored the impact of ADHD on my day-to-day life, I realised that the spaces I inhabit have a big influence on how I feel.”

She and her husband are both architects and designed their house when their daughter was a toddler so the whole ground floor is open plan so they could keep a close eye on their child and also have a party space.

Now, 10 years on and with another child and a puppy, open-plan doesn’t seem like the best solution.

“The thing with open-plan is that stuff travels and it travels particularly well when there is not a clear place for things to be,” she says.

Her children love crafting and their work goes up on shelves together with vases, wedding gifts and souvenirs from travels.

“When I am downstairs at home I find it hard to relax. The things I see are visual information that my brain somehow has to process and it is over-stimulating, distracting and exhausting,” says Maia. “I’m not saying that open plan and neurodiversity don’t go together, but we need to be mindful that too much open plan might be overwhelming for some of us.

“I would like the spaces I inhabit to help foster the creativity of my ADHD brain and that creativity feels harder to access if there is too much visual noise around.”

Through her thinking, some initial questions that XUL now uses to help frame a brief for ADHD home design are: Do I need a space to retreat? How much do I want to see? Do I find particular items distracting? What could go behind doors or even glass cabinets? Are you sensitive to light? Think of your home’s orientation and how you mitigate the ingress of direct sunlight at different times of the day.

Are you sensitive to noise? Think of acoustics and providing the right noise insulation for different functions. You might want to add additional acoustic insulation on walls and floors. Think also about materials and surfaces i.e. squeaking noises from furniture moving around on hard floors.

Are you sensitive to smell? This might have an impact on open-plan kitchens, for example. Choose artificial lighting carefully as flickering artificial lights can be problematic for some people.

XUL also stress that everything should have a place and you need to make it clear to everyone what that place is, adding that it may help to think of “a day in your life” and about how things move around as your day goes by.

Finally, they suggest you choose your colour palette carefully, though this is where Maia is torn as her creative brain pushes her to choose bold colours that might not have a calming effect.

If this is the case she suggests that accents of colour might work better than lots of colour and clashing patterns. For flooring and other finishes, you might want to choose something that doesn’t have a very heavy pattern. *Visit www.xularchitecture.co.uk