How Lesley Ray Is Merging Music, Wellness, and Design With BrainHome™

Lesley Ray is done with homes that just look good. With BrainHome™, the luxury interior designer and former rock violinist is building spaces that work with your nervous system, not against it. Think scent, sound, light, temperature, and air calibrated in real time to help you sleep better, think clearer, and actually feel well inside your own walls.

This isn’t your average smart home. BrainHome™ merges sophisticated interior design with neuroscience and AI, transforming houses into personalized wellness environments. The goal? To create homes that are not only beautiful, but biologically attuned; responsive to your unique sensory needs, mood, and health goals.

Design That Thinks Differently

BrainHome™ isn’t just about smart lighting and voice commands, it’s about building environments that actively support your body and mind. Using neuroscience-backed research and artificial intelligence, every element is fine-tuned in real time to align with your sensory profile. The system adapts as you do — responding to stress levels, sleep cycles, even shifts in air quality.

To ground this approach in scientific rigor, Ray is partnering with Dr. Rachel Herz, a world-renowned neuroscientist and leading expert on the psychology of smell. Her research brings powerful data into the design process, including the fact that consistently engaging our sense of smell reduces the risk of cognitive decline and increases our longevity potential. That insight is at the core of BrainHome’s scent technology, which is designed not just to evoke emotion, but to support longevity and cognitive health.

Meanwhile, soundscapes are curated with the same precision, informed by Ray’s musical background and real-time data collected from occupants. Together, these sensory tools work to regulate mood, reduce cognitive fatigue, and support the brain’s natural rhythms.

Ambient Wellness, Powered By Tech

As climate stressors and overstimulation creep into daily life, BrainHome™ is designed to protect you from the inside out. Smart windows adjust temperature and light throughout the day. Air systems filter out pollutants and allergens. Sound and scent calibrate to lower cognitive load and help you recharge. The goal isn’t just comfort, it’s preventive health, embedded into your walls.

To bring this vision to life, Ray teamed up with Jason Wright, a systems technologist known for building many advanced, privacy-first residential tech systems. With his expertise, BrainHome™ quietly integrates environmental feedback into the home’s design, allowing it to adapt in real time without compromising security. The goal isn’t just comfort, it’s preventive health, embedded into your walls.

A New Era Of Tech Startups Led By Creatives

While the tech world has historically been dominated by engineers and traditional management, BrainHome™ is helping to rewrite that narrative. The company is part of a growing trend where creatives, artists, designers, musicians, are no longer just consumers of technology but leaders in shaping it. By merging neuroscience, design, and cutting-edge AI, BrainHome™ is creating a blueprint for a new kind of tech company: one where the imagination of creatives fuels the direction of tech innovation.

Ray’s ability to seamlessly integrate art with technology is setting BrainHome™ apart in the tech space. As more artists and creatives step into the world of tech entrepreneurship, BrainHome™ is leading the charge, proving that creativity and innovation can, and should, go hand in hand. This is the next wave of startups: where technology is driven not by traditional engineers alone, but by a broader, more diverse group of visionaries.

The Road To BrainHome™

Ray’s interest in design started early. At eight, she took an extracurricular class in architecture and declared her profession as an interior designer.

Around this time, she also began playing the violin. As a teenager, she studied under renowned conductor Liza Grossman and performed with iconic rockstars.

At 17, everything shifted. After rehearsal for a concert, she received devastating news that a close friend had just passed away unexpectedly. This painful loss was life-altering, and the experience ultimately informed her view of the world.

Music, once just an artistic outlet, became a coping mechanism. In the years that followed, she began to question why certain songs could trigger memories and emotional states so vividly. That curiosity became the first spark in what would grow into her deeper exploration of sound, neuroscience, and the built environment.

Not Her First Rodeo

BrainHome™ is the next step in Ray’s 13+ year journey, which has taken her from large-scale commercial projects in Ohio to luxury residences and tech offices in Silicon Valley. Early in her career, she worked on complex projects like Easton Town Center (a $1.5 billion, 2.9 million-square-foot lifestyle village) and a ground-up, Net-Zero community center.

After moving to San Francisco, Ray transitioned into high-end residential design, after making her mark on multimillion-dollar office renovations for some of Silicon Valley’s most influential tech companies. But her mission has always been the same: to design spaces that support both the mind and body.

As a college student, Ray helped launch the first Emerging Professionals Group in Central Ohio with the U.S. Green Building Council, providing young designers with the tools they need to create sustainable, eco-conscious spaces. Her leadership in the field earned her a “Rising Rockstar” nomination from Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Silicon Valley.

Continuing To Make Her Mark On The Industry

BrainHome™ isn’t just another smart home — it’s the future of living. These spaces go beyond aesthetics and basic comforts, focusing on experience. Powered by AI and rooted in neuroscience, BrainHome’s adapt in real time to support your wellness; from the quality of the air to the sound in the room to the way light shifts with your circadian rhythms. It’s the perfect marriage of art and science, designing homes that don’t just look good but actively enhance your mental and physical well-being. Living in a home that meets your emotional, mental, and physical needs is no longer a pipe dream, it’s the next frontier of design.

Inspired by the pioneering artists she performed with, Ray is excited to be at the forefront of this shift. She sees BrainHome™ as a vital part of the future of home design, helping reshape how we think about the spaces we inhabit. As BrainHome™ expands, Ray is also launching a range of products that bring this vision to a broader audience, making intelligent, wellness-optimized environments accessible to more people.

Healthcare disclaimer:

This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, please consult a medical professional or healthcare provider.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.