Integral neuroarchitectural renovation
The full journey for a whole home. Layout, natural light, acoustics, air and materials redesigned around your routines, from the first sketch to the final light fitting.
MERCHAN NeuroStudio
Neuroarchitecture and emotional interior design for homes in the Netherlands.
Some spaces hold us. Some transform us. I design homes that do both: rooms that lower your pulse the moment you close the door behind you.
Book a free consultation
30 minutes, online, no obligation.
We walk through life guided by the spaces around us. Some hold us, others transform us. There are places that bring us back to calm, that embrace us without words, that remind us who we are when the world outside moves too fast.
At MERCHAN NeuroStudio we design homes that breathe with you. Spaces that regulate, support and illuminate. Architecture born from science, shaped through emotion.
My work is to listen to what your life needs: the light that wakes you gently, the order that frees your mind, the nature that balances you, the atmosphere that carries you. A home is not renovated. It is felt.
Architecture to live better. Architecture that regulates, inspires and transforms.
The studio, the person
Laura Merchan is an architect and the founder of MERCHAN NeuroStudio. She has lived and worked in India, Spain and the Netherlands, and each place left a working principle behind.
India taught her that architecture is spirituality, community and color. Europe taught her precision, light and the beauty of the essential. Years in large scale urban planning taught her the mechanics behind the poetry: human cycles, ventilation as health, nature as balance, light as emotional well-being.
Today she designs through neuroarchitecture. Spaces that regulate, soothe and inspire, blending science, sensitivity and a Mediterranean sense of warmth.
I am an architect, yes. But above all, I am a creator of places that are felt.
- Practice
- Architect, studio founder
- Background
- Large scale urban planning
- Lived and worked
- India, Spain, the Netherlands
- Languages
- English, Spanish, Dutch
Ways we can work together
Five services, one method underneath. Every project starts with how you want to feel at home, and ends with something you can build, buy or measure.
Emotional interior design
Rebalancing rooms without moving walls. Color, texture, light and arrangement tuned to change how a space feels within weeks, not months.
Spatial well-being consulting
Focused advice for one stubborn room or an entire floor plan. You receive a written report with concrete changes, ordered by impact and cost.
Children's regulating spaces
Bedrooms and play corners designed to help young nervous systems settle. Better evenings, deeper sleep, calmer play.
Neuro home staging
Preparing a home for sale so viewers feel at ease within the first seconds. Emotion sells square meters better than square meters do.
Book a free consultation
30 minutes, online, no obligation.
How a project unfolds
The same five steps, whether we redesign one room or a whole house. You always know where we are and what comes next.
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Emotional briefing
A long conversation before any drawing. How you sleep, where you argue, what overwhelms you, what a good morning looks like. You talk, I map.
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Sensory audit
I visit your home and read it like an instrument: daylight at different hours, noise paths, air flow, sightlines, the corners you avoid without knowing why.
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Neuroarchitectural moodboards
The findings become atmospheres. Palettes, materials and light scenarios chosen for the state they induce, not only for how they photograph.
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Design, plans and materials
Technical drawings, a lighting plan and a complete material list, ready for your contractor. Every choice traceable back to the briefing.
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On-site guidance
I stay close during the works. Regular site visits make sure what gets built is what was felt in the plans.
Atmospheres and a concept study
The studio is young and says so out loud. While the first commissions are on the drawing board, this gallery shows the atmospheres I design toward, and one concept study shows the method applied end to end.
Placeholder photography, credited in the repository. It will be replaced by built work as projects complete.
Concept study: the home of the light sleeper
An apartment of 84 square meters in Utrecht, for a couple. The brief, translated from feelings to architecture: she wakes at every sound, he works late, mornings are tense.
The design answers with a sleeping room moved to the courtyard side of the building, a wardrobe wall that doubles as acoustic mass, curtains in two layers so morning light arrives gradually, and a kitchen reorganized so the first ten minutes of the day need no decisions.
Small moves, measurable outcomes: fewer awakenings, softer mornings, one source of friction removed. This is what neuroarchitecture looks like on a floor plan.
Book a free consultation
30 minutes, online, no obligation.
Questions, answered honestly
What is neuroarchitecture?
Neuroarchitecture applies findings from neuroscience and environmental psychology to the design of buildings. Light, acoustics, air, proportion, color and material all shape how your nervous system behaves at home. We use that knowledge deliberately: to design rooms that lower stress, support sleep and make daily routines feel lighter.
How is this different from regular interior design?
Interior design usually starts from style. We start from how you want to feel, then work backwards through evidence: where light should come from, how sound should behave, what your eye should rest on when you walk in. Style is the result, not the starting point. The outcome still looks beautiful, it just works on you as well.
Have you completed built projects as a studio?
The studio is new, so honestly: not yet under its own name. The method behind it is not new. It comes from years of professional practice and large scale urban planning, where human cycles, ventilation, nature and light were daily working material. The images on this site are placeholders and concept work, and will be replaced by built projects as they complete.
Where do you work?
The studio is based in the Netherlands and takes on projects across the country. Consultations and emotional interior design projects can also run remotely, worldwide, with a structured process of video calls, plans and material samples.
What languages do you speak?
English, Spanish and Dutch. Projects can run fully in any of the three.
How long does a project take?
A spatial well-being consultation takes one to two weeks from visit to written advice. An emotional interior design project typically runs six to ten weeks. A full neuroarchitectural renovation depends on permits and contractors, but design work usually takes two to four months before building starts.
How do you handle budgets?
Transparently. After the free consultation you receive a written estimate with a fixed fee for the design phases, before any commitment. Construction and furnishing budgets are defined together at the start and respected through material choices, not surprises at the end.
How do we start?
Book a free consultation. It is 30 minutes, online and without obligation. You tell me about your home and how you live in it, I tell you honestly what I can do for it, and you decide from there.
Let's listen to your home.
Tell me where home is and what it should give you back. The first conversation is free, and often already useful on its own.
Book a free consultation
30 minutes, online, no obligation.
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