What is Wellness Design?

"The first wealth is health,” said the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1860. If recent years have reminded us of anything, it is of the poignancy of such words. At WLLW, we believe good health is the key foundation on which we build happy lives, thriving communities, and a robust economy.

Off the heels of a global pandemic, the wellness industry is booming. As of November 2023, the wellness economy was worth nearly 5.6 trillion USD – and it shows little sign of abating. As we go about our days, we brush up against this movement, with companies promoting the health of our bodies and minds like never before: think of that sleek gym in your neighborhood, or the infrared saunas at the local spa, the farm-to-table push in supermarkets and restaurants, not to mention mindfulness, meditation and breathwork studios, which are increasingly seen as mainstream.

In this wellness revolution, though, it is not just activities and what we eat that are up for a re-do: it is also the built environments where we spend much of our time. Creating indoor environments designed to improve the health and wellbeing of occupants has its own term: Wellness Design.

It involves the collaborative efforts of developers, architects, designers and manufacturers, who come together to pay close attention to how indoor spaces make us feel and behave, and how they can ultimately make our lives better.

Just how much time are we spending indoors?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans and Europeans, on average, spend 90 percent of their time indoors. When you think about it, modern life does have a penchant for hemming us into the interior world, as we rush from homes to offices, gyms to schools, and other indoor facilities.

Rich Corsi, an indoor air quality expert from Portland State University, put it in more eye-popping terms: “We spend more time in our homes than whales spend submerged beneath the surface of the ocean," he has said. "The average American lives to 79 and spends 70 of those 79 years inside buildings." If you factor in sleep alone, then we spend about a third of our lives in our bedrooms. When thought about in such terms, it should be obvious that the indoor environments where we spend most of our time would have a direct impact on our health.

Wellness design has already had an impact on modern workplaces. As employers get savvy in recognizing greater health equals more productivity, the modern worker is encountering new additions to the office: intelligent lighting, ergonomic furniture, vertical walls of plants known as green systems, outlays that encourage walking or taking the stairs, unlimited M&Ms replaced by fresh fruit and healthy snack options, sleep pods, gyms, break and meditation rooms on hand. In such environments, employees are automatically ‘opted-in’ to an environment that supports their health. Slower to arrive, but arguably even more important is the transformation of the domestic space: wellness design for the home.

Wellness design for our homes

In a post-Covid-19 world and coupled with the rise of flexible working arrangements, the home is where many of us spend the majority of our time. As of the start of 2024, it is estimated that 39 percent of the global knowledge workforce could be working in hybrid models. So, if urban planners are increasingly optimizing city landscapes for human health and wellbeing, and commercial spaces and offices are being retrofitted with it in mind, then why are we not casting a closer eye at our own dwellings?

Our homes, no matter their size, whether they are nestled on garden blocks, packed tightly in rows in the city center, or found in a skyscraper, can be optimized to help us function, feel and perform at our best.

The Healthy Homes Framework

Drawing inspiration from the WELL Building Standard V2 and the Nine Foundations of a Healthy Building, published by the Harvard School of Public Health, WLLW's proprietary Healthy Homes Framework sets out a collection of scientific strategies to advance health in the home through design interventions and operational policies.

By applying these concepts to residential spaces, a model emerges for the ideal health-oriented home – one where individuals and families can thrive. Split into 10 criteria, our evaluation of any residential project always begins with a conversation around sense of place, how the building is to be used (and by whom) and the existing architectural design.

AIR QUALITY: In the modern home, it's surprising how many toxins can exist, brought in from outdoors or swirling in the ether from household activities, furnishings and appliances, or condensation and mold, with nowhere to go but to build-up and pollute the air you breathe. As such, ensuring that a house has a healthy airflow and is as toxin-free as possible is paramount. Proper ventilation is key, with a mix of mechanical ventilation systems with high quality particle filters and natural ventilation both playing important roles dependent on the environmental factors inside and outside the home. Air purifiers, air cleaners and certain plants can also help.

WATER QUALITY: Vital to life, humans wouldn’t be here without it. When it comes to water in our homes, it is not only about having high-quality water to consume and for daily use, but also about being wise in how we treat the resource. Water quality testing is important and we advocate for the installation of home systems that purify and filter water to remove contaminants, while ensuring disinfectant levels are sufficient to control microbes. Smart systems can control usage and reduce your bills, whereas careful planning in the construction process can minimize water footprints. Considerations also involve monitoring and mitigating excess moisture from entering the home, avoiding mold and dampness, as well as preventing stagnation in pipes.

SPACE: Architectural considerations around the use of space such as internal layout, room layout, circulation design as well as the ‘feeling of home’ provide some of the most vital elements in creating healthy, liveable environments. Our homes should be flexible and adaptable, providing sufficient room to meet our daily needs, while minimizing stressors via thoughtful design solutions. The way we move around our homes can have a huge impact on our interactions and experiences of using them. All residences, no matter their size, are made up of travel routes and destinations. Understanding the difference is key to planning circulation flows that avoid irritation or disruption. The feeling of home is that wonderful je ne sais quoi that comes with finding balance in a living space over which you have full agency, and which reflects your tastes and ways of living. It is often found in design that embraces simplicity and authenticity, timelessness and elegance in natural materials. Crucially, it is about having intention for our spaces and the items in our homes.

LIGHT: Our mammalian brains are intricately in tune with natural light rhythms, so it is little surprise that exposure to light is an essential ingredient for us to thrive. The sun has a substantial impact on our moods, productivity, stress levels, and our circadian rhythms. In the home, this can be tended to by embracing lighting environments that promote visual, mental and biological health. Intelligent lighting design, together with techniques for understanding visual balance, user needs and promoting lighting control can reduce circadian phase disruption, improve sleep quality and positively impact mood and productivity. During the daytime hours, it is good to provide as much daylight as possible, without introducing glare.

FORM: Good design can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness and overall quality of life. At WLLW, when we consider form in the context of what goes into a home, we look to furniture – both fitted and loose, as well as fixtures and equipment. Designers refer to this collectively as FF&E, and it includes all the products specified to furnish and equip a home’s interior; from sofas, tables, lighting, beds, curtains, accessories, specialist joinery or millwork, casegoods and appliances. While far reaching, this category proposes enhancements to ensure the products we specify are elegant and functional, healthy and sustainable. Made beautifully and ethically to last a very long time, they often integrate modularity or repairability, and we design with material usage in mind, looking to nature for our inspiration. Considerations of physical and psychological ergonomics also play an important part. Our objective is to ensure the contents of a home can minimize environmental impact while supporting resident wellbeing.

COMFORT: Personal comfort includes a range of factors, from thermal comfort and acoustics, through to privacy and our sense of control over our environment. These factors can affect how we feel within a space and can have long term health impacts. Achieving a home environment in which all the occupants are thermally comfortable can be tricky – what suits one person may not suit another. Nevertheless, steps can be taken, from ensuring a well-insulated building envelope and keeping humidity and thermal conditions at consistent optimal levels throughout the day, to the use of soft furnishings or solid drapes to reduce thermal runaway. Sound also impacts health and productivity. Creating an inviting and peaceful auditory environment in the home could involve segmenting rooms for specific acoustic needs (for instance, you might play the piano in the living room but keep the study more protected for focused work). In each of these rooms, there would be something to act as an acoustic barrier to ensure that noise overflow is controlled.

NATURE: Spending time in nature has been shown unequivocally to improve our mental and emotional wellbeing. It reduces stress, improves our memories, and makes us more creative. Nature can be brought into the home in multiple ways. From incorporating plants into our internal and external areas, and providing views of green spaces, water (or at very least a tree), through to enacting a construction strategy that improves ecology and biodiversity. While investing in biomorphic architectural solutions is not an option available to everyone, green roofs and rooftop gardens are continuing to gain in popularity. Aside from their aesthetic and mental health benefits, they can improve the insulation of a building, clean the surrounding air and reduce the need for heating or cooling. Access to parks or gardens are also important, particularly in urban environments, as is the incorporation of biophilic design indoors, via loose and fitted furniture.

MATERIALS: It should go without saying that minimizing the presence of harmful materials in your home creates a healthier environment. Despite this, many new homes across America, constructed for expediency and under tight cost controls and outdated regulation, are failing their owners and occupants. These residences are built from petrochemically-derived materials whose extraction, production and end-of-life are not only profoundly damaging to the environment, but whose consumption (or use) exposes residents to harmful chemicals that can be released into the home’s air. Interior products and furnishings are also frequently packed full of toxic chemicals that can have negative impacts on our health. At WLLW, we champion healthy, low-impact vernacular materials and demand full material transparency from the manufacturers we work with.

BODY & MIND: Homes should be sanctuaries – dwellings that protect and nourish humans. As such, it’s important that somewhere in yours, be it a kitchen, bedroom, or a reading nook, you carve out spaces where you can feel a great sense of peace and find stillness of mind. The design, layout and appearance of homes can have powerful effects on mental wellbeing and decision making. Our goal is to create homes that support resident’s psychological health. When we think about how a home’s design and operations can support one’s body and mind, we also consider factors such as ensuring suitable good quality sleep and rest, creating spaces that encourage hydration and support a healthy approach and better access to nutrient-rich food, as well as interventions to make it simpler for residents to integrate movement and exercise into their daily lives.

COMMUNITY: The pandemic kept many of us separated from our loved ones, but as social creatures, we are hard-wired to want human connection. Social connection to others is a major determinant of health outcomes and morbidity rates, with studies showing loneliness can be as harmful to us as smoking or obesity. Homes and communities can be designed to facilitate the sort of effortless social interaction we crave and combat occupant loneliness and isolation. Embrace a dining room, informal seating areas, or a fire pit with some chairs, perhaps. Socialising, it’s good for us.

Photography: David Cleveland