Designing with Mental Health in Mind

Photo courtesy of: Lively Scout / For The Los Angeles Times

Designing with Mental Health in Mind

by Jessica Handy
October 26, 2023

Design exerts a monumental influence over our well-being. We spend most of our time inside buildings that have been designed; designed with important physical life safety and comfort features such as smoke and fire detection, heating and cooling, and adequate egress. But what about mental health safety? Designing for mental health has been around a long time. But maybe it was the relatively recent advent of the “creative office space”, combined with the sustainability movement, that has brought to light the connection between architectural choices and mental well-being. Designing with mental health in mind includes affording exposure to natural light, one of the hallmarks of sustainable design; access to the outdoors and fresh air, another sustainability greatest hit; enabling social interaction and a sense of community through open floor plans and large common areas, a foundational concept of creative office space. Physical health can also benefit from mental health considerations. For example, access to fresh air provides more oxygen to a space, displacing concentrations of carbon dioxide. CO, the cause of “sick building syndrome.” Conversely, physical health can be harmed by mental health design techniques. For example, the trend of open-plan, high ceiling restaurants, has resulted in the decibel level of dining going up to unhealthy levels. Many restaurants now operate at an 85-100 decibel level. The Hearing Health Foundation says that long term exposure to noise over 70 decibels is harmful and can lead to hearing loss. Limiting excessive noise while keeping on trend can be accomplished through design. Shiny polished-concrete hard floors reflecting noise waves back into earshot? Install a ceiling made of sound absorbent material. Lots of windows bouncing sound waves back onto eardrums? Install sound absorbing panels on the walls. One design element that we believe has an impact on our mental health is color. “Color psychology” is presented often in marketing and design materials, but surprisingly little actual research has been done on how color affects our mental health. According to the literature at Verywell Mind, “the mood-altering effects of color may only be temporary. A blue room may initially cause feelings of calm, but the effect dissipates after a short period of time.” What is new in designing with mental health in mind, is designing actual mental health institutions with mental health in mind. Architecture can not only help maintain a person’s healthy mind, but perhaps it can also help mend a broken one.