ANITA YOKOTA

If you think home is all about a feeling, then Anita Yokota would tell you that you’re exactly right. 

 

In advance of the spring release of her second book, interior design’s “go-to home therapist,” Anita Yokota, joins ANDMORE CEO Jon Pertchik in this week’s Market Makers podcast. Together they pull back the curtain on Yokota’s approach to design through psychology. 

 

As Pertchik notes, Yokota’s story is “kinda wild” – going from 20 years in one career to pre-eminent stature in a second one. And, while most would find the two careers unrelated, the designer herself tells us that her time spent visiting home after home as she tended to the well-being of families was a natural and organic education in how space affected people. “What I really noticed is how our physical environment informs our internal environment,” relates Yokota. 

 

She likened the mundane effects of our environment to the slow drip of a leaky faucet as it wears away on our subconscious. “We don’t realize that just little changes – color, texture, natural light – affect the neuroscience of our brains and how we can function better…make better decisions…and improve overall mental health.” 

 

Ultimately, that realization is when she decided to tap into the creativity of her youthful environment to make the pivot to interior design. Like Thom Filicia last week, Yokota’s father was an architect. Before computer design programs were the industry norm, she watched her father construct models of his buildings “from toothpicks and stuff,” and served as his audience for his design pitches. 

 

At the same time, the designer and her sister were following their mother’s lead as they sketched, painted, and creatively explored their way through their school years. So, it’s no surprise that Yokota used this osmosis-like foundation when she redirected her counseling to the holistic application of design. 

 

Now nearly 10 years into her second career, the endeavor that saw Yokota first embark on her self-taught design adventure via ever-enlarging, learn-on-the-job projects has grown into an award-winning brand with features in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, and design shows like Dream Home. 

 

In every case and every space, Yokota continues to apply solutions which address the cognition that translates into happy hormones. She shares with us her unique approach to the “dysfunctions of space,’ and how she manages the five senses in each home. “When we can ignite those five senses and wake our bodies up, our perspective can change. The biochemistry literally changes and that’s where it gets really exciting.” 

 

She goes on to encourage listeners to uncover and unleash their own distinctive voice, whether they’re designers or retailers, mom-and-pops or DIYers. “Go out and do things that you don’t normally do…a lot of times we get into this cookie cutter box of limiting beliefs.” As with her professional transformation, Yokota sees going beyond those limits – the mundane four walls – not as an abandonment of the place we’re in, but an annex that transforms it. 

 

She sees the resulting place for each of us as one full of all of life’s best feelings – happiness, calm, confidence, and connection.  

 

And her role? “I help people make sense of their stories.”