Where the Heart Is

If home is where the heart is, why do we neglect our domestic lives?

Amid unattainable interiors trends and a growing housing crisis, it’s unsurprising that one in three people don’t feel at home where they live, and only 56% experience joy there. Worse still, our feelings about home have a significant bearing on how we feel about ourselves.

The good news? Nothing has to change in our homes for them to feel like a completely different place.

Since 2017, Katie McCrory has led the annual IKEA Life at Home Report, identifying eight universal emotional states that create the ‘feeling of home’. Blending personal experience with this global research, and through clear advice and simple strategies, Katie shows us how to cultivate comfort, control, security, accomplishment, belonging, nurture, enjoyment and aspiration – whether we rent or own, live solo or are growing a family.

From reframing our expectations to creating domestic ‘zones’ that help us accomplish our goals, this clarifying and compassionate roadmap empowers us to rethink our relationship with home, in order to transform our life.

Author Biography

Katie McCrory is a researcher and storyteller. As the Life at Home Leader at the global headquarters for IKEA in southern Sweden, since 2017 she has led the largest and most distinctive piece of international research into home: the annual IKEA Life at Home Report.

She has written and spoken extensively about life at home, ranging from media articles to longform essays and keynote talks.

Katie has lived in the UK, US and Denmark, having moved home upward of 25 times. Today, she lives in Copenhagen with her husband, two young children and their enormous housecat.