About
We Design for Your Nervous System
If you’re a highly sensitive person, you know all about sensory overwhelm. In stressful surroundings, you get drained, exhausted, can’t focus or make a decision.
We take that away.
At Practical Sanctuary, we work with more than just your furniture, color design and layout. We address your pain levels, your health needs, your functional needs and your relationships. We walk with you through a creative process which allows you to be more YOU than ever before.
We believe that this process should be fun, simple, and productive of insights on many levels. Our goal is to design an environment which allows you to thrive.
COMING IN 2024: Stephanie’s book, The Eccentric Genius Habitat Intervention: Interior Design for Highly Sensitive People, a manifesto and how-to guide, for using Sensory Interior Design to unleash your superpowers. Sign up to be notified when this groundbreaking resource launches, and receive our free Eccentric Genius Habitat Intervention E-Course right away. Connect with your own superpowers, with a side of creative inspiration.
Who We Are
StephanieStairs
photo by Amaris Hames
Canvas Rebel
Read Stephanie's interview with CanvasRebel
Stephanie Lee Jackson
Founder
Stephanie came to sensory design through a spiral path. For more than twenty years, she was a professional fine artist, studying at the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA Painting) and the University of Texas at Austin (BA Plan II/Studio Art). She studied massage therapy at the National Holistic Institute in California, and built a massage practice specializing in pain relief.
Practical Sanctuary emerged when her art and healing practices converged.
She founded Healing Arts Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, co-founded Three Muses Artspace in San Francisco, and spent decades striving to create paintings which charged the space around them. Along the way she came to intimately understand color, texture, visual design, space, and something that you might call ‘energy.’
At the same time, she studied the neuroscience of pain relief. Working with clients, she learned the ways in which our environment affects our nervous system, in both positive and negative ways. Having many friends and family on the autism spectrum, she became an accidental expert in psychology, neurodivergence and high sensitivity.
In 2012, clients began to commission design projects for their homes and offices. She combined her understanding of art, psychology, neuroscience and healing to create a specialized niche: sensory interior design.
Stephanie’s book, The Eccentric Genius Habitat Intervention: Interior Design for Highly Sensitive People, will be coming out in 2024. Sign up here for updates.
Dr. Kathryn Hansen
Sensory-Inclusive Design Consultant
Dr. Hansen is a licensed occupational therapist, researcher, teacher, and sensory-inclusive design consultant. She provides guidance to designers, architects, and families on how to support a person’s sensory needs and preferences through the built environment. Her work primarily focuses on children with autism spectrum disorder, as well individuals with other sensory-related conditions such as ADHD, genetic disorders, dementia, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury.
Read Dr. Hansen’s article, Sensory Integration: How to Decode What Your Child is Telling You.
Interview: Designing Sensory Accessible Spaces
Stephanie discussed sensory interior design with Joanna Craney, Special Needs Planner, Empowered Financial Strategies.
Contact
Are you an eccentric genius?
You’re in the right place, darling.
In this free e-course, you will discover:
The ONE design mistake that NEARLY ALL HUMANS make in their habitats, and how to fix it in 15 minutes. (You will roll your eyes. And cry.)
Three senses your kindergarten teacher didn’t mention. (And how they make you a NINJA.)
The design trend which created an epidemic of shut-ins. (NOT COVID-19. Some of us now know the meaning of schadenfreude.)
Why Febreze is EVIL. (There should be a warning label.)
What kinds of light fixtures will be BANNED when the establishment comes to its senses.
What color has to do with hormones. (And how to leverage it–St. John’s Wort, piffle!)
What NEVER to do, ever ever, if you do not wish to induce psychosis, extreme depression, vertigo, or actual regurgitation in guests and members of your own family. (We all love those Bad Examples.)
Practical Sanctuary, sensory interior design, specializes in interior design for highly sensitive people.
We help you create spaces which are:
