My home at night is when I feel the most relaxed.

I did a daytime version of this mini house tour and promised a night time version, so here it is.

Someone called the daytime version a ‘cosmic cupcake’ and I love that description, and it made me realise that it’s actually night time when it’s in true cosmic cupcake form in all its glory.

Night time (and when the light starts fading in the evening) is my favourite part of the day, and when I think my house really comes alive. I love the layers of different colours of light, galaxy projection lights, Miffy lamp, lamps in general, just really happy pockets of life. My partner Nabil says it’s trippy. I say it’s comforting and happy. I get a lot of joy from it.

It’s not to everyone’s tastes - I know some people would find this too dark - Nabil is a bit like this sometimes so i understand. And some people love having the dreaded BIG LIGHT on… but that I don’t understand!! But it’s perfect for me, as someone with a lot of sensory processing issues, particularly light sensitivity, a weird thing happens to my brain when it goes dark… my mind feels calmer, And it’s not a small switch, it’s a DRASTIC change. I will have dizziness and head pain (all part of my chronic migraine) all day, and then suddenly it starts getting darker and my head hurts less, feels happier, and processes better. I even get less car sickness at night. I can’t fully explain it, I just know it happens. I am a vampire.

I think having a lot of sensory issues makes you extra attentive to details. So the reason for the obsession with decorating and lighting stems from that. There’s not a single place I walk into where I don’t ‘feel’ the lighting and its effect on me. And then I enjoy analysing it and explaining to Nabil how that lighting could be better! He gets very bored by it, but he understands me now.

Many people say to me - but doesn’t the colour and pattern give you sensory overload? And weirdly, it doesn’t. Only when the kitchen is messy or things are out of place, but that would be the same anywhere. Moving patterns do give me issues (like driving past a fence with exact gaps between the posts and it gives this strobe effect) - but lots of pattern is fine as long as it’s still. It’s really just the light for me!

I wish I didn’t have the light issues because it really isn’t just a fun quirk, it actually causes me a lot of problems and makes it hard to enjoy a lot of things. But sometimes I do wonder, if I didn’t have the light sensitivity, would I get the same joy from seeing all my lights? I don’t think so.

Oh and all the lamps come on and off automatically at certain times, they have plugs and they’re connected to an app where I can manage the timings!

Hope you enjoyed the night time mini tour - and I do need to do a longer tour and some more peeks into upstairs and other bits - there’s lots of decorating projects I’m still working on!