An article caught our eye in last week’s Times newspaper confirming what we at AluK already knew – that beautiful surroundings are one of the keys to human happiness.
It was actually a report of a study published in the journal Science Advances which tracked the happiness of 15,000 people over three years and found that just being in attractive surroundings had a positive impact on their mood.
Apparently, travelling to a beautiful area produces the same uplift in mood as people get from listening to music or watching TV and more than they get from cooking, eating and reading. At the same time, travelling from somewhere beautiful to somewhere ugly has the same negative impact as commuting.
The researchers had minutely mapped the whole of England and asked visitors to a website called ScenicOrNot to rate photos of each area according to how beautiful they thought they were. They then tracked the 15,000 participants as they moved around these areas and asked them twice a day to say how happy they felt.
Significantly, the results showed without doubt that it isn’t just green areas which make people happy – built up areas can achieve that just as well as long as they have beautiful, characterful buildings within them.
That’s music to our ears. We put a huge amount of effort into the aesthetics of our products and our technical team work alongside leading architects and developers to deliver fenestration solutions which enhance the look of both new build and refurbishment projects.
We all recognise how important efficiency, security, durability and value are of course, but we also recognise that aesthetics can never be overlooked.
