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Creating your Smooth Home Sanctuary with Downtown

Let us help you to create your own perfectly peaceful home sanctuary. Take a look at some simple ideas to bring that blissful sense of sanctuary to your living space…

 

Now, more than ever, we need our homes to be a sanctuary; a safe place which provides protection and peace. The perfect home is a refuge, a sanctuary, a place that hugs us when we walk through the door. Downtown, the home style experts and Smooth Sanctuary, who know all there is to know about unwinding with the most relaxing music of all time, have teamed up to create your perfect sanctuary…

Let’s look at some simple ideas to bring that blissful sense of sanctuary to your living space…

Listen to the most relaxing playlist

Every evening, 7pm to 10pm, discover three hours of relaxing music on your stylish Roberts Radio, to help you unwind at the end of the day in the Smooth Sanctuary at Seven.

Taken from the top 100 of Smooth’s All Time Top 500 for 2022

  • George Michael - Careless Whisper
  • Ed Sheeran - Perfect
  • Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You
  • Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
  • Otis Redding - Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay
  • Eagles - Hotel California
  • Shania Twain - You’re Still The One
  • Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
  • Robbie Williams - Angels
  • 10CC - I’m Not In Love
  • John Legend - All Of Me
  • Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
  • Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me
  • Spandau Ballet - True
  • Adele - Make You Feel My Love
  • Lionel Richie - Hello
  • David Bowie - Life On Mars
  • Barbra Streisand - Woman In Love
  • Carpenters - Close To You

Discover your cosy colour

Colour can create a mellow mood and welcoming atmosphere; it can shift your emotions and even improve your wellbeing. A carefully curated colour palette can warm up a north facing room and cool a south facing room. The colours we’ve selected for the Downtown Smooth Sanctuary room are by the Little Greene Paint Company who use the finest natural, organic and safe synthetic pigments, the water-based paints far exceed all legislation on VOCs with a VOC content of virtually zero, which means you don't need to worry about solvent contributions to the atmosphere or the smell; they are virtually odourless, keeping your oxygen clean and unpolluted. 

Dark colours are synonymous with creating cosy rooms, as they allow our minds to relax and create a sense of end-of-day.  Consider a Mid Bronze Green, from the Victorian era, which connects the room to the view beyond the window without being obviously green. For a cooler approach, paint walls and woodwork in Basalt. We’ve painted our walls in Tracery II, this very sophisticated colour favoured by architects, can be used with great style to off-set limestone, marble and granite, its cool green-grey picks up on the background of the stand-out wall paper used on the feature wall.

Panelling is an effective way to create cosiness and character in any room. Create panels as a foil behind your sofa and paint them in Scree, a light-absorbing delectable grey, which becomes more intense in the shadows of the panelling. 

There is no better colour than green to cool the mind and calm the spirit. Drift away surrounded by walls painted in Ambleside, inspired by the legendary children’s writer Beatrix Potter and the beautiful part of the world where she lived and farmed. 

Natural scents

Never underestimate scent – it can evoke profound shifts in mood.  The ancient Greeks believed that beautiful scents were a means of contacting the gods and the right perfume can certainly make your home feel like a temple.

Start with natural fragrances – flowers, herbs and aromatherapy oils and naturally scented candles not only provide delicious scent but also bring the fire element into your home. Our Downtown Smooth Sanctuary features a large WoodWick candle with the fragrance ‘Fireside’, its rich scents of amber, vetiver and musk perfectly captures the essence of a relaxing evening by a warm fire and the exclusive, patented wooden wick, creates the sound of a crackling fire. 

Add aroma and gentle hydration

The addition of an aroma diffuser and a few drops of fragrance oil can elevate daily activities into therapeutic self-care rituals. At the touch of a button, your room can be filled with fragrance or essential oils via a fine mist of heatless, scented vapour which, unlike a candle, can be left to fragrance the room. The Made by Zen Mercura Ultrasonic Aroma Diffuser featured in the Downtown Sanctuary room is designed as a stunning piece of home décor, its mottled glass dome emits a soft glow, bathing your room in ambient light as the diffuser delivers the relaxing fragrance and moisture to the air, improving the quality of the air you breathe, by hydrating and moisturising without condensation.

Bring in the natural world

Houseplants are good for your health — and not just for their visual beauty, releasing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide. This not only freshens up the air, but also eliminates harmful toxins. Studies have also proven that indoor plants improve concentration and productivity, reduce stress levels, and boost your mood.

Indoor plants serve a practical and aesthetic purpose and will enhance your life.

Growing plants indoors doesn’t have to be complicated, choose a range of plants to group together and they’ll not only create a calming environment, but they also help keep your atmosphere clean. The English Ivy is really easy-growing and is particularly effective at reducing airborne particles making it the perfect air purifying plant, studies have shown that ivy can also help combat mould levels in the home. Provide your ivy with generous watering and four hours of direct sunlight a day, and it will return the love to you with clean, detoxified air.

Another easy-care option is the Snake Plant or Mother-In-Law's Tongue this yellow-tipped succulent releases oxygen at night, leaving your lounge fresh the next morning. It is one of the best plants for filtering the air of formaldehyde, xylene, benzene, toluene, and trichloroethylene. For those of you who are houseplant newbies, the resilient spider plant is the perfect choice. It will quietly battle toxins including carbon monoxide and xylene, a solvent used in the printing and rubber industries. If you have pets, this is one of the few houseplants that is non-toxic to animals. 

For an amazing feature consider the beautiful Kentia Palm — also known as the Thatch Palm — is a species of flowering plant that comes from the palm family Arecaceae. Perfect for those who live in flats, they are incredibly resilient, elegant and air-purifying. The Kentia Palm prefers bright, indirect light but will tolerate shade. Visit our Garden Centre to see our huge collection of house plants and lovely containers.

Bringing greenery into your home blurs the distinctions between you and nature. It puts us in touch with Mother Earth and this creates a calm feeling within you and your space, build on this ambience with further natural elements – the Kelso wooden furniture, stacked with fossils, beautiful pebbles and stones as paperweights, wool throws and handmade baskets. 

Check out some of the products featured in the Downtown Smooth Sanctuary below:

Posted by Ellie Allen
29th June 2022

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