By MARNI JAMESON

March 19, 2010
I am sure I would not want to know what a design psychologist would think if she came to my house. I can only imagine the diagnosis: ambivalent procrastinator, neurotic mother and scattered wife with a cloudy past.

Just knowing that design psychologists, like Toby Israel, of Princeton, N.J., exist and can tell you about your personality and past just by looking at your home makes me more nervous than sky diving naked.

It's one reason I love phone interviews. I've got Israel on the line, and though she fortunately can't see my place, I'm still biting my cuticles.

An environmental psychologist by training and author of "Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places" (Wiley/Academy 2003), Israel says the goal of design psychology is to create an emotionally fulfilling fit between people and their places.

"But what's personality got to do with, say, window treatments?" I want to know.

"I'm at home in a room with expansive, uncovered windows," says Israel, "because I'm an extrovert. But my introverted daughter feels uncomfortable with all that exposure."

Someone who operates on reason and logic (scientists and engineers), she adds, will lean toward utilitarian, minimalist environments. Someone who runs on feelings (actors and writers) wants comfortable surroundings that evoke emotions.

OK, please pass the faux-fur throw.

In her book and home therapy workshops, Israel guides people through a handful of tests, including a personality test similar to the Myers-Briggs test. (If you've never taken this, do it. It explains everything, including why some people must always rearrange the furniture.)

Her test determines shrink-like stuff, such as whether you're an introvert or extrovert, a thinker or a feeler. The results not only explain why you became a robot programmer instead of a lion tamer, but also why you thrive in chaos, while your mate craves order.

"This helps couples understand that the reason they have conflicts around issues of home design is because they're hardwired differently."

Now she tells me.

I decide to test the theory. "So if my husband's an introverted thinker and I'm an extroverted feeler, does that explain why, when we tried to share a home office, we had restraining orders issued on each other?"

"I could have seen that coming," she says. "What are your work spaces like today?"

"Separate!"

I describe our home offices to her, and soon see she's scary right. Dan's office is sequestered in the non-public basement. It has folding tables covered in gadgets and equipment and not one decoration — not a plant, not a photo. His wall art consists of a large white board covered with flow charts penned in black marker.

My office is on our home's main floor, and has a huge window overlooking the street. My walls are covered in textured wallpaper that resembles aged alligator, and the space has accessories: oil paintings, bronze figures, books, family photos and plants.

"Sounds like a textbook case," she says, then pauses and asks, a little note of concern in her voice: "How do you reconcile that difference in the rest of your home?"

"Uhh, we don't."

An Emotional Fit

Understanding your personality and drawing from your past are keys to creating a home that's an emotional fit, says Israel, whose website is at www.designpsychology.net. Here are some ways to tap into that:

• Look in. When people start decorating, they usually turn to TV design shows and magazines. Those resources are great for ideas and tips, but people need to look out less and in more to create a home that's an authentic connection between them and their dwelling.

• Reach back to your past. Recall your favorite childhood places: grandma's warm kitchen, the neighboring woods. Ask what about those places conjures positive associations: an old rocking chair, the scent of a wood fire. Then bring art objects, furniture, colors or aromas that represent those good memories into your current living space. One of Israel's clients has fond associations of the barn on the farm where she grew up. Painting her suburban home's wood siding barn red rekindled that connection. "Reaching back, even generations back, to bring our past into our present, helps bring that feeling of attachment we crave from a home," she said.

• Focus on the positive. High positives are moments we remember with good feelings — weddings, travels, accomplishments. When decorating, choose items not only because they look good, but also because they mean something.

• Look to your roots. Israel's roots go back to Hungary, so she feels at home with the color of paprika, a spicy hue that dominates that country's food and her office walls.

• Factor in your personality. Know where you and those you live with fall on the four continuums of personality: introvert/extrovert; thinking/feeling; sensing/intuitive; judging/perceiving. That will help you understand why some people you live with like the blinds open and others like them closed, and why you need to try to make your home work for all the personalities that live there.

Such awareness also may spare you the agony of sharing an office with your design opposite.

• Marni Jameson is the author of "House of Havoc," and "The House Always Wins" (Da Capo Press). Contact her through www.marnijameson.com.