How to Hygge Your Home
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Do you know how to hygge your home? Hygge (pronounced “hoo-guh”) is a Danish concept that refers to a feeling of coziness, contentment, and well-being.
Hygge is often associated with creating warm, inviting atmospheres and enjoying simple pleasures.
Hygge is all about comfort and what makes you feel relaxed and happy. It could be the sights before you and smells that bring back pleasant memories from another time.
Hygge is the sound of music and birdsong. And, quite importantly, it is also how you decorate your home.
Turn off harsh overhead lights. Use lamps with warm, low-temperature bulbs. Light candles or use a candle warmer to fill your home with scent.
Hygge is less about decorating in a particular style and more about creating a home that feels warm and inviting. It’s about slowing down and making ordinary moments feel special.
How to Hygge Your Home
1. Bring in warm lighting
Skip harsh overhead lights when you can. Use table lamps, floor lamps, candles, and soft string lights to create a gentle glow. A few glowing lamps can completely change a room’s feel.
2. Add plenty of cozy textures
Think chunky knitted throws, soft pillows, quilts, and plush rugs. Layering textures makes a room feel warm and lived-in.
3. Light a candle
Candles are practically synonymous with hygge. Place a few around your home and enjoy their soft flickering light while reading, having coffee, or relaxing in the evening.
4. Create a cozy reading corner
A comfortable chair, a small table, a warm blanket, and a good book can turn an unused corner into your own little retreat. Add a lamp with a warm bulb for evening reading.
5. Keep your colors soothing
Hygge doesn’t require an all-white or neutral home, but softer shades tend to create a more restful atmosphere. Cream, warm beige, muted green and blue, brown, and soft gray work beautifully.
6. Display things you love
Hygge isn’t about having a perfectly styled home. Display family photographs, favorite books, vintage dishes, handmade treasures, flowers from the garden, or sentimental finds. Your home should tell your story.
7. Make your kitchen feel welcoming
Keep a pretty bowl of fruit, a collection of favorite mugs, or jars of tea and coffee where you can see them. Hygge is especially wonderful when it involves something delicious simmering on the stove like a simmer pot.
8. Bring nature indoors
Houseplants, branches, dried flowers, pinecones, baskets, wood, and other natural materials add warmth and simplicity. Even a small vase of flowers can make a room feel more alive.
9. Create little rituals
Hygge is really about enjoying the everyday. Have your morning coffee in a favorite cup. Read before bed. Put on cozy socks when the evening begins. Light a candle while you cook dinner.
10. Don’t worry about perfection
Perhaps the most important part of hygge is accepting that your home doesn’t have to look perfect. A blanket draped over the sofa, books stacked on a table, or a few dishes waiting to be washed doesn’t ruin a cozy home.
Hygge is about living comfortably, not creating a showroom.
The Heart of Hygge
Ultimately, to hygge your home is to create a place where you can fully breathe.
It’s the warm lamp glowing beside your favorite chair, the smell of coffee in the morning, a quilt pulled over your lap, and an evening spent doing something simple that makes you happy.
You don’t need a completely new decorating style or a big budget. Sometimes hygge begins with turning down the lights, lighting a candle, and letting yourself slow down.
For a hygge home, a calm bedroom setup is one furniture option.
How I Like To “Hygge My Home”:
Below are some ways I like to “hygge my home.”
Quilts have always comforted me. A patchwork quilt adds coziness to a room. I have sewn and quilted many over the years. Now I have a collection of warm pieces to add decor and ambiance to my home.
Layer quilts over a couch or at the end of a bed. Hygge adds color, soft texture, and comfort to the space.
Decorating in a Danish hygge style can remind you of your grandmother’s house and childhood. Do you recall being covered with a quilt or blanket when sick?
It always feels cozier at home when you add quilts for decor or warmth.
A little bit of sweetness adds comfort. My favorite cookies are Trader Joe’s Ginger Snaps. They remind me of the Ginger Snaps of my youth. They are spicy and sweet with a bit of a bite.
Grandma’s kitchen smelled sweet as she baked pies and cobblers.
Hygge Your Home with Flowers:
Adding garden flowers to a vintage jar makes any room look and feel cozier. Go to your garden and snip a casual bouquet for a favorite jar, pitcher, or vase.
If you don’t have a garden, you can pick up reasonably priced bouquets at grocery stores or Trader Joe’s.
Fresh flowers are always a pleasant, welcome sight in any room, and their scent fills the room with nature’s perfume.
Many people find morning coffee comforting. I also like a colorful mug for my coffee. For some, hygge is a cup of tea.
This is always a comfort on cold, snowy days and a way to hygge your home.
A Stack Of Books:
Books have always been a comfort to me, from my early days in our small town library. I snuggle into bed at night and lose myself in a good novel, which lulls me to sleep.
Seeing a stack of new books on my nightstand always makes me happy. Because you can travel the world inside the pages of a book!
Hygge Is The Scent Of Candles:
To me, hygge means a table display of aromatic candles. When someone enters your home and you have a candle burning, it feels welcoming.
The scent of candles is pleasant on overcast winter days or rainy days, but it’s comforting no matter the day.
Candles make people feel more relaxed. To hygge your home is the scent and sight of them flickering in a dark, shadowy room.
The Concept Of Hygge:
Hygge is a lovely, comfy chair to sit in. Like a rocking chair on the porch to watch people pass by on the street, or a wicker chair on the patio. Both mean comfort.
Add a pretty pillow when you sit on the couch and drink hot chocolate on a blustery winter day.
And of course, hygge is tiny fairy lights after dark. I enjoy having these tiny lights on my nightstand to create a cozy winter bedroom.
When the season changes, I enjoy all sorts of cozy winter activities in my warm home.
How do you add hygge to your home?
When the Xmas decorations go away (before New Year’s), I decorate with snowmen that have mostly been gifted to me and add flameless candles. I love the ones on 24 hr timers that come on automatically and are light when we get home from work since Jan/Feb are still darker months. Gone are the greens/reds of the holidays and changed out with lighter colors, glass and sparkle!
Hi Brenda, love seeing the lovely way you make cozy and comfortable happen in your home. Love your photos. Inspiration. Hugs.
Joy
Comfort and coziness….warm throws, colorful mugs, stacks of books, candles, flowers, my cats sleeping on the couch or nearby chairs, music playing depending on my mood, homemade soup simmering on the stove.
Hygge = candles or lamplight at night, a mug of coffee, sitting on the sofa under a throw with a good book, my slippers to keep my feet warm, pretty flowers and house plants. (Those gingersnaps look really good right now).
Battery operated flameless candles (because we have kitties and I am absent minded), my electric fireplace and cozy blankets and quilts with my pup , Dixie curled up beside me! Even in Florida we have a few chilly days!
Twinkly lights are on most of the time at the house during the evening and on cloudy and rainy days. I have strings of these lights in mason jars around the house as well as tucked into cupboards and around my houseplants. I also love candles, incense, throw pillows and pretty blankets/throws. And on my grocery list each week are the items fresh flowers and dark chocolate — fresh flowers for the dining table and dark chocolate is my go to treat when I curl up to read.
I learned a new word today (hygge). I am going to purchase a book on this subject. Thank you for a wonderful post and very timely (it is a rainy, gloomy day here and this post reminded me to turn on my twinkly lights and light my candles and cuddle in with my book). A very positive way to start the week (especially when I was beginning to feel a bit moody due to the weather).
I’m glad you posted another photo of the candle in the jar with coffee beans. I have some candles that don’t fit my candle holders and I’ve been trying to think of what to put them in without buying new holders. I forgot about using coffee beans but it will be just the right thing to do, and cozy too.
I add hygge with throws in pretty plaids on my couch. A stack of pillows and a shawl on the back that I snuggle into every evening when I read. Two or three books I am currently reading on my coffee table. This is my go to place no matter how I’m feeling. When I’m happy it makes me happier and when I’m feeling sick or sad it somehow comforts me and I get my strength back.
For me it’s throws and lots of pillows, candles, and green plants. Although I have a lot of windows and skylights, I like to have several lamps on in the rooms to have a warm cozy glow.
I use energy efficient light bulbs so I don’t feel bad about doing so. I leave a light on all night and when we are away from home.
looks mighty cozy.
Snow is falling today, your photos make me cozy <3
Cozy spots in my home to curl up and read or be on my Ipad with a nice throw. Yep that is Hygge to me. Happy New Week.
This is the time of year I remember to get out the clothing that needs to be mended. I sit on the couch with an afghan over me and sew on buttons and repair rips, with a cup of tea nearby. Also, I recently discovered I can make a pretty decent cinnamon raisin bread on the Rapid Bake setting of my bread machine, so it only has to be in the machine for an hour. It makes a great addition to our breakfast oatmeal and coffee, or makes a nice treat with the tea in the evening. We have to get out and take a walk most every evening to try to keep from looking like fat chipmunks!
Brenda….your sweet home is so lovely, soft and serene. I love your photos and admire your eye for decorating…so colorful! Have a good week!
A great big dose of coziness in this post today ! 🙂
quilts and baskets and candles are my hygge 🙂
I have my “comfort” mugs – hand thrown mugs in beautiful colors that make me happy every morning. If I drink tea I may read for another mug. I have a few that I love that have been given to me as gifts. But when I have my morning coffee, I always reach for the same 5 or 6. And I love throw blankets int he family room. Reading with one is a must in winter.