Hygge Style: What Is It And How To Bring It In Your Home

If you’ve ever wondered how those Scandinavian countries with long, cold winters (read: up to 17 hours of darkness a day for months on end) manage to be the happiest nations in the world, we have an answer for you. It’s called hygge.

Pronounced “hoo-gah,” this Danish expression is an attitude towards life that emphasizes seeking joy in the ordinary and finding pleasure in those tiny, everyday moments. Rather than dread the wintertime, hygge is about celebrating coziness, warmth, and family and practicing mindfulness — and quite honestly, we love it.

But what exactly is hygge style? Carry on as we try to unravel the definition of hygge lifestyle and mindful living. (1)

What Is Hygge Style?

Hygge style is a minimalistic interior design style, incorporating the Danish art of wellness or, in other words – the feeling of being at peace with yourself while enjoying life’s simple pleasures.

In other words, the hygge style includes warm, inviting, and minimalist home décor that puts its accent on pastels, soft, natural fabrics, cozy corners, and a soothing, heaven-like atmosphere. But this is just the surface of it all. It really isn’t easy to create such space for yourself. Do you know why? Because even though it sounds like you can achieve it by spending a whole day at Ikea, hygge is not something you can buy. It is a feeling. A state of the soul transferred to all that surrounds you. “As within, so without.”

How To Live A Hygge Lifestyle?

Living life in a world as hectic as ours can get pretty overwhelming and challenging every once in a while. We’ve all been there, and we’ve all felt what it’s like to live in the 21 century. The solution is simple. Setting healthy boundaries and creating a safe place where you can detach from the outside world and unwind are the first things you need to do on your wellness journey.

This is where the hygge lifestyle comes to the rescue. Living life the hygge way is not about lighting a few candles and then continuing with the same old, stressful routine. Incorporating hygge in your life takes time and a lot of effort. It requires ending your toxic habits, eliminating anything that brings stress into your life, and replacing your dull life routine with a new, better one. If you don’t know where to start, here are some tips on how to successfully incorporate a hygge lifestyle into your life:

•  Try to spend more quality time with friends and family
•  Avoid cluttering your daily schedule with a lot of unimportant tasks
•  Do your best to remove as many stressors you can
• Make a habit of leaving work at a reasonable time
• Refresh your wardrobe with more comfortable clothes and utilize natural fabrics like cotton, wool, silk, or linen.
• Bring the great outdoors indoors with a lot of plants
• Incorporate a softer palette inside your home simplify it with hygge decor
• Designate your very own safe place, your hygge nook

 What Is Nordic Hygge Style? 

The secret of Nordic hygge décor lies in the simple and strategically positioned details. Think in terms of minimalism. The simpler, the better.

Hygge is not about overspending on luxurious pieces. It is the opposite of extravagance. Think about softer, more delicate interior design, which gives off warm, homey, inviting vibes rather than looking over the top. To achieve that notion, you need to start bringing more light into your house. The first thing you need to do is strategically position large mirrors to illuminate the space by reflecting natural light. Second, on the list is adding warmth to your rooms by introducing pastels. Wood also has a special place in the whole hygge concept. Incorporating Scandi-inspired wooden elements will give the perfect rustic touch to the area. Add to this an ultra-soft, faux sheepskin fur rug, and you have the official definition of Nordic hygge style right here.

How Do You Make A Hygge Light? 

Did you know that Danes burn more candles per head than everybody else in Europe? (2)

This is no coincidence, nor is it an obsession with candles. It’s a way of life. Incorporating good lighting in your home and surroundings is probably the first and foremost step in your newfound hygge routine. And what’s a better light source than candles?

It’s how people lived in the past, and it is most definitely a habit that we should all adopt in present times. There is truly no faster way to hygge your place than light a few of your favorite candles. Candles, or as Danes would call them – levendelys (living lights), transform a basic room into a soothing temple within only seconds. And this is something that Danes understand thoroughly. That’s why each Dane burns around thirteen pounds of candle wax each year. Just for reference, when it comes to food, their average yearly consumption of bacon is six pounds. Crazy, right? I told you hygge is bigger than you can imagine.

Let’s talk about actual lighting. 

By now, I am sure you know that the hygge concept is nothing without good lighting. When it comes to illuminating the place that you live in, there is no compromise. And believe it or not, there is a vast philosophy behind proper, hyygelig lighting that you need to learn to incorporate the danish coziness in your home. First things first, you need to develop an electric lighting strategy. That means carefully picking out your lamps and lighting positions and creating little pools of light. The rule is simple: the lower the temperature of the light, the more hygge you incorporate into the room. If a flash camera is 5,500 K, golden hours and candlelight are 1,800K. And that right there is the hygge sweet spot you need to strive for.

There is one thing you have to remember, though… Fluorescent tubes are not your friends. In fact, that kind of artificial lighting is hygge’s greatest enemy.

How Do You Style A Scandinavian Living Room? 

 If you’ve been looking for ideas to renovate your living room and bring some light into your old apartment, you’ve come to the right place. The hygge interior design style is what you should be looking for.

Scandi hygge living room aesthetic is highly recognizable nowadays. Basically, it is one of the most searched interior design things on google and Pinterest. 

A considerable part of what hygge constitutes are earthy, natural materials. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, by 90% of Scandi interior is heavily influenced by nature. Big wooden tables, leather chairs, warm wooly blankets and carpets, hemp lamps, cotton tea towels, beeswax candles, bamboo baskets and dish racks. It’s all about becoming one with our natural surroundings. And not only because it’s soothing to the eyes. More than anything, it’s because of the energetic frequency these objects vibrate on. Research has shown that natural materials vibrate significantly higher than synthetic ones.

Next on the list is your home’s color scheme. Hygge has its own authentic color palette, of earthy, neutral, and muted tones. Due to the cold, long, wintery months in Scandinavia, hygge worshipers make sure to pick light colors for their homes in order to create a breathable, airy, and open space inside their house or apartment. This is very important when it comes to smaller spaces.

And how can we even forget the soft blankets and comfy pillows? You cannot possibly imagine the ultimate hygge experience without these two factors. Feel free to mix it up with different schemes, textures, colors, and fabrics. You definitely can’t go wrong there. Your home will only get cozier and more enjoyable. 

Add your favorite music playing in the background, a warm cup of tea or cocoa with a hint of vanilla, and your favorite dessert, and you have yourself the perfect hyggelyg setting. In a nutshell, that is the art of hygge. It’s a feast for the senses, a harmonic melody that entertains your spirit, a delightful, fragrant, warm, and inexplicably pleasant experience. It is 

building a safe place where you can be yourself, unwind and feel completely rested. What better way to describe it than that? 

How To Hygge Your Home?

We should all strive to create a hygge life and embrace comfortable conviviality in life.. And what’s the best way to do that? That’s right, only through changes. Those changes mean decluttering your physical space and clearing away the things that feel like a burden so you can let new energy into your home. A clean home equals a clean mind.

With that being said, we can move on to the details of creating your warm, cozy nest, your perfect hyggelig home.

What are examples of hygge?

Anything from cozy chairs, comfortable sofas, soft-to-the-touch pillows, warm and fuzzy blankets, wooly socks to aromatic candles, fragrant essential oils, delicious cocoa cups, soft-hued linens, pastel bed throws, light-toned interiors, etc, etc, etc.

The list goes on forever. With that being said, it is more than clear that hygge decorating style is all of these examples. Hygge exists in all of these fragments of reality and much more. It may be a feeling of content or pleasure, but it is pretty much tied to what materially surrounds us. It evolves in your heart, but pretty soon,  it grows larger and larger until it finally becomes a part of everything that surrounds you.