22 Moments of Delight: Storytelling in Wellness Design
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There’s something I’ve realized over the last couple years while building Mysa Hus: you can walk through a home and feel something without fully understanding why you feel it. You can notice the quietness, warmth or texture, but unless someone tells you the story behind it, you'll never fully understand how much thought and craftsmanship went into creating that feeling in the first place.
That realization is what led to the idea behind the 22 Moments of Delight Audio Tour at Mysa Hus, and it may be one of my favorite things we’ve ever created.
Wellness Design
When most people hear the phrase “wellness design,” they immediately think about health-focused products or features: Air quality. Healthy materials. Natural light. Energy efficiency. Water quality. Saunas. And yes, Mysa Hus includes many of those things. But I think wellness is much bigger than that.
Wellness is also emotional. It’s the way a home slows you down or the way certain materials make you feel grounded. It’s a quietness that changes your nervous system or intentional spaces that create connection. Some of the most meaningful parts of a home aren’t always obvious at first glance, and that’s really what inspired this idea.
Why the Audio Tour?
Over the last four years with the Curious Builder podcast, I’ve become increasingly fascinated by storytelling. While building the Mysa Hus brand over the last two years, I kept thinking about something: Thousands of people are eventually going to walk through this house, but they’ll never know all the conversations, struggles, revisions, and intentional decisions that shaped it unless we somehow share the story behind it. They’ll see the result, but they won’t fully know the journey.
That’s where the audio tour came from. Throughout the home, there are small QR codes placed in intentional locations. Visitors can scan them with their phones and instantly hear conversations between myself, home designer Karl Adelbert, interior designer Melissa Oholendt, or sometimes all of us together talking through the story behind that specific design moment.
Some are short and fun, some are technical or emotional. But every single one carries intention. Melissa originally coined the phrase “little moments of delight” because she believes great design should surprise people in subtle ways. I loved that idea immediately.
This home was meant to be felt. Learn more here.
The Goal
One thing we intentionally decided was not to heavily advertise the audio tour upfront. We wanted people to discover it almost accidentally. A hidden moment of delight inside a house already filled with them.
Visitors can choose how deeply they want to engage. They may only listen to one or two stories while touring the home, or they might come back later and experience all of them remotely online afterward. That flexibility mattered because the point isn’t forcing information on people, it’s creating an opportunity for deeper connection.
Because when you understand why something exists, you appreciate it differently. It’s similar to watching a great movie versus hearing the behind-the-scenes story from the actors and director afterward. Both experiences are valuable, but the second one adds depth.
The Smallest Details
One of my favorite things about this project is that many of the “moments of delight” are things people could easily walk past without realizing how much thought and wellness interior design decisions went into them.
Things like:
Brass stars inlaid into wood flooring imported from Amsterdam
Hand-cut Liege tile installations
Triple-pane windows designed to create a secluded cabin-like quietness in an urban environment
Living green roof systems
Glass pantry doors
Directional arrows in the front yard
Specialized plaster finishes that create warmth and softness
Toto bidets selected specifically for wellness reasons
Every one of those details has a story, and those are the conversations the audio tour allows us to share.
My Favorite Moment
Without question, my favorite stop on the tour is the fireplace. Ironically, it was also one of the hardest decisions in the entire house.
From a strict wellness and building science perspective, wood-burning fireplaces can feel contradictory in a hyper-efficient home. There are health concerns about smoke, off-gassing, and air quality. And in a tightly built house like this, those things matter.
I wrestled with that decision for months, but Karl kept pushing me toward something deeper. He reminded me that a lifestyle of wellness isn’t only physical health outcomes, it’s also memory, ritual, and intentional living.
And suddenly I started thinking about being a little kid with my dad in the middle of winter. He’d stand outside wearing his fur hat, pulling logs on a sled through the snow, handing them to me through the window so I could stack them in the wood box. Then every night we’d start a fire together. That memory became foundational to the entire design. What people see as just a fireplace is actually a story about memory, family, rhythm, and slowing down.
Why Storytelling Changes the Experience of a Home
At the end of the day, this audio experience reflects the heart behind Mysa Hus itself: Everything has intention. Every material. Every texture. Every decision. Every space. Every tiny moment.
Without storytelling, people may still feel the impact of the house, but when they hear the story behind it, the experience becomes deeper. And maybe that’s what wellness design should really strive for in the first place.