A home is a place where you can let your guard down and still feel safe, almost like a sanctuary. Joining Susi Vine in this episode is Tiffany Nguyen, to share her knowledge on creating your own healing sanctuary in the comfort of your home. She shares her insights on why you shouldn’t think twice about making a space that’s dedicated solely for you. They also touch on achieving a feng shui balance as Tiffany gives away some tips on what to look out for when redecorating your home. In addition, they go into the details on choosing the right materials and patterns that won’t only provide relief to your budget, but support the environment while still looking aesthetically pleasing.

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Watch the episode here:

The Power Of A Healing Home Sanctuary

Tiffany is a wife, mother, and Interior Designer & podcaster. With all of that, she still finds ways to cultivate calm and support others in doing the same! Together we explore ways to help your home feel like a healing sanctuary.

I’m glad you join me for this fun conversation I had with Tiffany Nguyen, a fellow podcaster, Creator of Return to Calm, avid meditator, a practitioner of EFT tapping, mompreneur and interior designer. I got to go down one of my favorite topics, discussing interior design and how to optimize your home space. We dig into how you can go about creating your healing home sanctuary, whether that’s a few updates to your home office space or talking about renovations, we explore it all. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

I would also love to give you a little heads up on some exciting things that are coming down the line as we step into 2021. Be sure you visit our website, HappifiedLife.com, to be up to speed on all the breaking developments as I roll out a brand-new opportunity to join the community as a member of Velocity. We make it easier to integrate healthier habits and up-level your lifestyle to support your maximum resilience. Go ahead and check that out on HappifiedLife.com and other updates as they become available. It will always show up there on the page.

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Thank you, Tiffany, for joining me. I am excited to return the favor. I had such a great time being your guest on your podcast. What’s the name of your podcast for our readers?

Return to Calm.

That’s beautiful. That’s your handle on Facebook and Instagram too. You’ve got such wonderful things. After you fall in love with Tiffany, follow her, @ReturnToCalm, on all the social channels and podcast. Tiffany Nguyen is a wife, mother, interior designer and podcaster. As a survivor of a toxic relationship and conscious of raising strong children of integrity, she’s committed to sharing her journey and tools in her podcast, Return to Calm, and her book, Discovering The Treasures Within.

She found her healing and calm through spiritual practices through journaling, yoga, meditation and EFT tapping. She then ultimately found her true inner self and treasures she had lost along the way on her spiritual journey. Her goal is to bring you inspiration and a guide through her story and tools to inner peace. As a parent, she wants you to know you are not alone in this. We can enjoy life to its fullest and raise and inspire a conscious generation to build our world up, not tear it down.

It’s easy to see why I’m excited to have this conversation because we could go down many different rabbit holes, many different topics of conversation. I am passionate about the support that people can find through EFT tapping. I’m a shopgirl. I love to share tools from the toolkit that people can use to help heal and restore themselves. That’s one of the amazing tools. I have been able to do an interview on that. We won’t go there but perhaps another day. I’m excited. Tiffany, thanks for agreeing to chat with us a little bit about creating a healing home sanctuary. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me. I’m happy to share all of my wealth of knowledge in the design realm but more importantly, not just the aesthetics of it. It’s more so about creating that sanctuary.

I love that concept. When I was looking over your website, I saw that you use that as well. When you think of it that way, sometimes we get a little matter of fact about our home space. There’s so much that demands our time, attention and energy, that upgrading or paying attention to how we feel in our home might not stay in front of mind but it’s important.

It’s where you reboot. It’s where you feel safe. Even though we’ve evolved so much, we still have that primal instinct of needing that. It’s like, “I have a space that I don’t have to worry about, fighting or flighting.” That’s what our home is. If you have a lot of things or it’s in disarray or the energy is feeling off, it’s important to get those things cleared out, aligned, rearranged. Working with the energy in your home so you are feeling the most peaceful as possible.

First of all, let me start at the beginning. You’ll have to dive into the middle. How did you get started in the world of design? Is that the first thing that you felt drawn to do?

I had zero guidance. I was not at all thinking about what I was going to do after high school. I thought I was over high school. I wanted to just be and understand why. Knowing more about myself, that was such a grind. There was so much to do. I was in all these AP classes and I wasn’t sure for what other than I was supposed to be. I was supposed to please everyone. I’m supposed to get straight A’s. I led worship and was musically inclined back in high school. I was like, “I’m going to go to school for music.” I was there at a private Christian school in California for two weeks before school even started. The choir got to school before school started. In two weeks, I was like, “I hate this. I don’t see myself doing this in the future. What am I going to do, be a piano teacher?” I couldn’t envision it. It’s like, “What am I going to do with this?” It didn’t feel aligned.

I looked around my dorm room, which I was all by myself, which was amazing. My roommates hadn’t arrived yet. I had decorated it. I had always fresh flowers and vases. I was like, “Maybe I should look into interior design. This is what I’ve been naturally doing.” I went to the Interior Designers Institute for a certificate class to try it out and see if I liked it. I loved it so much. It came naturally to me. I kept on going through and I got my Associate’s and I got my Bachelor’s. I started work in the middle of getting my Bachelor’s. I’ve been doing it ever since.

There’s always been some part of me in designing, even after stopping to work for a corporate company. I was drawn to doing it on my own and started my own business. It’s natural. My parents are always like, “You are such a natural at it. You need to do it.” Every time I feel like I need to quit, they’re like, “Give it time.” They were like, “I’m happy you’re doing it. You’re good at it.” I’m like, “I know.” It’s like breathing for me. That’s why I need another challenge. That’s why I always find myself getting distracted and trying on new things.

You have a lot on your plate. You were raising two children. My hat is off to all of the parents. I always tell people, “I’m an auntie several times over and I love it.” I’m a stepmother. My beautiful stepdaughter was grown when I arrived on the scene. I can’t claim any credit to her fabulous self, although I’m blessed to have her as part of our family. Now she’s married too. My friends give me a hard time. Maybe I get to fast forward to the grandparenting stage. We’ll see what’s in the future. You do it all with grace and balance. Maybe that’s why people love to say, “Balance is an illusion.” I’m working to find a way to make it not a myth. We can find a way to make it a reality. Parenting is its own special grace. My hat is off to all of the parents, especially with everything that we’re juggling.

I was talking to a friend and she’s like, “How do you tackle all of it, having your own business as well as all this marketing and social media of your business and then your kids and home?” You have to be present in every moment and not worry about what needs to get done in an hour. Maybe set a timer on your phone so you don’t have to worry about what’s going to come next and be present. Do lightning speed. That short time will feel forever or fast or aligned. It depends on your focus.

I like that. Thank you. Being present in what you’re doing and not always on that mental list of, “What else is waiting around the corner?” We’re in this moment where we have the most power rather than worrying about how far through the rest of our list we’re going to be able to get. You want to make the most of these special moments because time does fly by.

I have kids. I’m continually reminding myself, “Breathe, sit and color with them and they will leave. They always transition.” If I force myself to sit and be present, they’ll be like, “We’re done. We’re going to go jump on the trampoline now.” I then can go off and do whatever is pressing in my head to do.

I’m a big advocate of play. It’s important to get at least fifteen minutes of every day to release and relax and give space for that curiosity. Problem-solving percolates and does its own solutions while you’re playing. How perfect is that built-in opportunity?

I love doing crafts with them. They always ask me to go jump on the trampoline with them. I love jumping on the trampoline. It’s fun. If your kids asked you to play, take that as an invitation to enjoy it. It’s a great therapy for yourself because we’re always working constantly as adults. Especially when work is at home, how do you separate your zones and your energies?

That’s where I was going to go. If they weren’t working at home beforehand or things have come together ad hoc, they’re working on the dining room table or in the living room, do you have any tips on making a little more peaceful homework space?

Like what they told us when our kids started school, make a space dedicated for yourself and your work. Set it up to where it is your office and decorate it however feels good to you. When this whole thing started, the stay at home, I already had a desk. I rearranged my office. I put up this mural behind me. It was like, “No big deal. It’s not real wood. It’s a beautiful tapestry.” I got the moons because I love the moons. I made this space special. I wanted to be in here and it didn’t feel like a grind.

I love the quick transformation of a wall tapestry. It might be designed but in my first massage space, that was my solution. I got a reasonably priced beautiful full wall-sized print of a beautiful lagoon. You can do textures like brick walls or wood panels. You can let your creativity go. A beautiful mandala creates a little Zen space that you’re looking at behind your computer monitor. You can have a little bit of calm. It’s powerful.

Make sure you have things organized as best as you can. Piles of papers appear, so have a certain scheduled day as well to get those papers organized into certain spaces. It depends on every person. It doesn’t bother everyone. In a sense, it does feel like the walls are closing in if you don’t get order of your piles. That’s another good one. Subconscious anxiety starts to build.

I find that to be true. I am a visual list maker so the piles start to add up. I had a podcast interview with Mel Robertson. She released a book on breaking free of clutter. She does tremendous work. She brings out that whole realization. It’s true, it’s been set for thousands of years. As within so without. When you make a little time with some meditation, taking even 1 to 2 minutes to focus and get centered, it’s easier to keep those piles from building up. When you think you don’t have time to get yourself together for two minutes, those piles add up much faster in my own experience.

You can get pretty boxes. You can get pretty magazine holders. The container space is great for that. Even Target has some great stuff. The trash can is always great for most papers, most of the things we don’t need. You could even have a trick like, “I can’t throw this away. What if I need this?” Maybe make a voice memo on your phone of that note and then you can throw it away.

I was working on a new presentation. I tend to have a Word document over here and a Google document over here. I sat down. I read it into a voice memo for time. I set it up in front of the Word document and let it transcribe the whole thing for me while I was folding laundry. There are great tools that we have available to us. I love the idea of getting some containers and using things that you enjoy working with. Treating yourself a little bit so you enjoy the space where we spend hours of our lives. What are some other tips that you have throughout the house for fostering that same peace and calm so that we feel restored when we’re in our home?

The other one I love is creating a space dedicated to meditation, an actual space that you habitually go to every day. It could be an altar or a cabinet with whatever your favorite things are. I have something where I have a beautiful Buddha statue. I have pictures of monks and a waterfall above it. I have two pictures of my husband’s ancestors and my ancestor. It’s my ancestral shrine if you will. I have a place where I can burn my incense or light a candle. I say a prayer every day. It can be in a multi-task room and that’s your corner. Maybe you do yoga in that room where you sit and you do meditation.

If you have a dedicated space and if you want to know exactly the ideal space for your home, it’s the middle right or the bottom left of your entry. If you’re looking at your house on a bird’s eye view and your front door is in the bottom middle, there’s always something in the middle. That’s why there are two optimal. If you’re looking at your front door to the left, let’s say maybe it’s an office space or something, that’s the most ideal to harness the energies of contemplation and deep thought or it’s the middle right. Let’s say, your front door is on the left of your house then it would be the middle right space of your house.

What are some other tips that you find are pretty easy for people to come back to, to bring a little bit of that Feng Shui balance? What are some general tips that you find to help people feel more at ease with Feng Shui?

It’s more so about the placement of your furnishings and your space. Once your house is established, you can’t help that unless you’re building from the ground up, which is rare. Finding things, let’s say, in your bedroom, you don’t want your bed to be facing your entry door. That’s creepy. It’s creepy in one whole thing but then it’s not good Feng Shui. You want to have it not be right near the door. The other thing is the flow of energy. At your entry door, you don’t want a mirror. You want to have some type of artwork or something. Once your door opens, the energy bounces against the mirror and then bounces back out. That’s bad energy.

Having different flows of different colors is also something that helps with the energy in the space with Feng Shui. In the dining room, orange is a weird color but ideally, the Feng Shui, orange is the color of prosperity and abundance of food. They like orange. Green and red are a more palatable color for the eye. Each color you pick, you want to have it not be a primary color, which is for obvious reasons. You want it to have some complexity and depth. Most of the time, I pick out colors that have a gray undertone to them. It creates a Zen and calming palette with that gray undertone. Not a cool gray but a warm gray.

I was feeling that Earthy way that they all come together.

The Sherwin Williams 2021 color palette has some gorgeous colors but they all have that warm gray undertone. They’re beautiful.

2021 is a great year to go pick out some new colors.

It’s not all white and beige and gray. They have some inspiring colors.

Since we’re spending all this quality time at home.

Painting is the easiest way to completely transform a space.

It’s powerful. Everyone has different tastes. It’s great to have color in the room. We have rugs that have a graphic print. We took out the carpeting and painted the cement and brought in some area rugs, which is great but we already have a lot of patterns. We need to calm down the other color so that we don’t have so much friction.

You’ve got to balance your patterns. You probably want some bigger grid-type patterns, big-scale patterns with your small-scale patterns. Solids are great too. Let’s say you have something bold like your carpets, maybe everything else is pretty much somewhat solid but you mix textures like a luscious throw blanket with some chenille pillow covers. Even mix with a linen pillow cover. That could be pretty. It’s depending on what your style is. I’m even envisioning the African mud cloth and all those textures.

Something we don’t always think about is the texture of things in our homes. When we shop online, it can look good in photos but then it comes and it might be synthetic or somehow disappointing. It’s nice when you can explore. Read reviews when you shop online because people are honest, “This carpet has no density to it. This carpet wears well with traffic over six months.” We love to post reviews. Get people’s feedback because those pictures are staged. Things look great online and then it arrives in your home and it’s like, “That doesn’t make me feel the way I thought it would.”

You can look at the details and the materials of something if it’s a fabric. Avoid polyester. Avoid rayon. Those look dollar-store pillowy.

I studied Residential Design and I love kitchen and bath. I love the fixtures and the products that were coming out, the safer products like PaperStone counters and recycled glass tile. I was like a kid in a candy store. We get in this frame of mind where we want to shop a deal because it can be expensive if we’re updating a lot of things at the same time we’re doing a renovation. We have to recognize that we need to choose surfaces that are healthier in our homes. Vinyl flooring tends to off-gas for a pretty significant time. Sometimes these new sofas and things come with flame retardants. Those synthetic foam, it off-gases. If we don’t have good air circulation in our homes, that can become a problem.

It’s interesting you mentioned kitchen and bath. My husband is a kitchen and bathroom remodel manager. We tag team. Our customers can get the wholesale prices because I have my team of sellers. It’s quite amazing that all those products, the off-gassing, and everything is too much. It’s a lot. Honestly, I started on a quest and I was like, “Where can I find a company that doesn’t use all these things?” Honestly, they all do.

When I was in Seattle, there was a terrific showroom that featured more green building supplies. I haven’t found one like that down here in Southern California. When I moved down, it was after I had studied Design and I thought, “I would get into project management or something on the back end.” I didn’t feel like sales was my jam. I love putting things together. I haven’t come across something like that here. It would be tremendous. The market is more than ready for it.

One of the things that I tell people when I’m talking about environmental toxins because these are the little things that sneak in that we don’t realize are taking up our capacity is to be resilient at these little stressors that add up. The EPA recognizes that indoor air quality is one of the primary health concerns. The more we can pay attention to not bringing toxic things into our home, the less we have to worry about trying to clean the air with filters and everything else. Proactive instead of reactive.

They have the whole LEED-certified ability to be that too. Even if you’re LEED-certified, it comes down to like, “Show me the products that pass that.”

When I was studying it years ago, before my reincarnation, bamboo is a big thing. Hemp hadn’t gotten the green light. Now that agricultural hemp is clear, that’s a tremendous opportunity for sheet stock, textiles, and many different things. I’m excited to see what starts to come out of that.

That would be great. When you were talking about materials, bamboo popped into my head. Everyone loves the wood emboss tile, which is great for the forest because it’s not real wood. It’s a tile. With the technology now, other than the feel underneath your feet, it looks very much like wood.

I’ve noticed a lot of people are using that. You’re talking about ceramic.

Ceramic tiles that are wood embossed. I love those because it’s my pet peeve. Much of California homes have great rooms. The kitchen is one hard material that’s not wood and then the wood is in the family room and dining room. This is not Zen. Let the whole flooring be the same please. In my designer head, I’m like, “Let it all be wood. What are the chances there’s going to be a water leak?” Everyone’s like, “I’m not paying twice for my flooring.” They always go for the safer option. That’s why wood emboss is perfect, you can have the look of the wood all throughout and it’s safe.

It’s super durable.

It’s great for the environment.

Zero off-gassings. It’s beautiful. If you’re worried about it feeling cold underfoot, get the radiant floors and save on the home heating costs.

Wear slippers.

Wear your house shoes and don’t wear your outdoor shoes inside. I aspire to be a shoes-off home. My husband works from home outside and so he’s in and out all day long.

It’s a little tricky.

He’ll grow up into that. It’s hard to keep them in.

We’re a shoes-off home.

It’s huge. People became aware of it too when we started being mindful of everything we walk through. We don’t want to bring any germs into our home. We do all the time. Think about the parking lots we walk through. What’s maybe on the floor in our garage? If you’ve been on the fence about keeping your shoes off in your house, even though I can’t live the life, I’m an advocate. It’s a huge improvement. In Canada, they think that we’re all animals that we would even consider wearing shoes inside the house. When you’ve got weather, everybody’s trained to leave their shoes at the door.

The intense weather, it’s true. When you got snow and you got mud and water, that’s obvious. They have actual mudrooms. They’re like, “We keep our shoes in the mudroom.”

Are there any other tips that you think people fail to consider or might find surprising in terms of upgrading their home space, things that they can do on their own or calling a designer?

You had mentioned earlier about not skimping or wanting to shop for home improvements, I was going to mention that when you remodel your kitchen or bath, as you probably know, the resale of your home value increases. What you get back from your investment is 90%. There’s an actual survey from the real estate board. A high percentage of how much money you put into your remodel, you will get back on the resale of your home.

Don’t skimp on the materials. Don’t skimp on the labor. You’re going to pay double or maybe triple if you skimp on the labor. It might be someone who didn’t prep the surfaces correctly, who didn’t follow through, who didn’t slope something properly. It is a nightmare. The grout and the tiles are starting to chip away after maybe seven years or something like that. It’s important. It’s something that you don’t do every day. It’s not like you can buy a new pillow. Invest in your home. It’s like the energy you put into yourself. Invest in yourself and you will get that back. Giving to others, you will receive that back. It’s the same thing.

That’s a great bit of insight and information. People get a big sticker shock, the kitchen and the bath in particular because it’s generally a pretty intensive project. The payoff in having it done right should certainly last more than seven years.

It should last until you want to blow it up again.

Any of those wet surfaces, you have to be mindful of. I went on a tangent when you were talking about making sure things are sloped right. More bathrooms are embracing that zero-threshold shower and that thing, which then leads me to think about accessible design. When I was working as a move manager for seniors, I became aware of that whole mindset. If you’re going to make improvements to your home or if you feel like you’re going to age in place in your home or if you want to make more of the resale value, anytime you’re updating anything in your home, have a mind to that accessibility.

Anything can happen. I can be 44 and break my leg and be in a wheelchair for a month or two. Can I get through the doorway to my bedroom? Can I roll into the bathroom? You can make decorative handrails if you’ve got a step or a little level change in your home. You can make a decorative handrail that’s weight-bearing so that it can prevent somebody’s fall. Little things like that are a good reason to work with a designer who’s got an eye for this and got the training and recognizes the value of it. Never underestimate the resale value of a kitchen and bath done right. Think about how you can plan ahead if you get to stay in your beautiful home for as long as you dream of. I worked with people who’d been in their homes for 40 and 50 years. Even that resale value, it’s great potential and a great reason to invest in things that are worth it.

Either they change out something to a California bath, which is a shower attached to a bathtub, or a party shower. It’s 50/50. It depends on the preference. The party showers, you blow out the bath and the shower and you make one big shower with two nozzles. When they’re bigger like that, that lends you for the slope and it lends you for the accessibility much easier.

You get great comments from the friends when you come over and show them your new bathroom and they’re like, “You can have a party in the shower.”

They’re impressed.

“Check out the therapy lighting that we installed as well.”

Have a hot sauna. We go into that hot sauna and there are clothes over here. That’s my ideal home.

Let those ideas start flowing. Tiffany, thank you for joining me. This has been a fun conversation. I’m sure we will reconvene to talk more things about bringing more Zen and balance into life with all of these amazing tools to get centered and calm. I enjoyed this little expedition and exploration. Thanks so much.

Thank you for having me.

Important Links:

• Return to Calm
• Guest – Susi Vine on Return to Calm Podcast
• @ReturnToCalm on Facebook
• Discovering The Treasures Within
• Mel Robertson – Past episode