What is a healing environment?

A healing environment is a care setting designed to reduce stress and support recovery through things like daylight, views of nature, comfortable furnishings, privacy, quiet and clear wayfinding.

Is there evidence that room design affects recovery?

Yes. A widely cited 1984 study by Roger Ulrich found that surgical patients whose rooms looked out on trees had shorter stays and fewer negative nurse notes than patients facing a brick wall, and later studies link nature in waiting areas to lower anxiety.

How does photography relate to healing environments?

Families and patients often judge a facility from photographs long before they visit. Images that show daylight, views, calm rooms and well-kept details communicate the same sense of safety the design was built to provide.

Residence among the pines at All Points North Lodge, Edwards, Colorado, photographed by Architectural Storytelling

Healing Environments: Why the Room Matters in Healthcare Design

Commercial PhotographyHealthcare Photography

October 1, 2026

Words by Architectural Storytelling

Every healthcare space I photograph makes a quiet argument before anyone says a word. The light, the view out the window, the chair someone will sit in for an hour on a hard day: all of it tells a person whether this is a place where they can get well. Designers call this a healing environment, and there is real research behind the idea.

All Points North Lodge residence among the pines in Edwards, Colorado — All Points North Lodge, Edwards. The setting is part of the program.

The window that started it

In 1984, environmental psychologist Roger Ulrich published a short paper in Science with a simple setup. He looked at records for 46 patients recovering from the same gallbladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Half had rooms facing a small stand of trees. The other half looked out on a brown brick wall.

The patients with the tree view went home sooner, an average of 7.96 days against 8.70, and needed fewer strong pain medications. Nurses also wrote far fewer negative notes about them, about one per patient compared with nearly four. (The Center for Health Design summarizes the study here.) It was a small study, and it has been debated ever since, but it opened a field. Hospitals began to treat views, daylight and nature as part of the care.

Courtyard and exterior at All Points North Aurora campus — All Points North, Aurora. Outdoor space you can see from inside.

What a healing environment looks like now

Today the idea goes by several names: evidence-based design, salutogenic design, biophilic design. They share a handful of ingredients that show up again and again in the treatment centers and clinics I photograph.

Daylight and views. Windows sized for the view, with seating turned toward them.
Nature, inside and out. Plants, wood, stone, natural textiles and images of the landscape.
Home-like rooms. Lamps instead of only overhead light, soft seating and fewer visible signs of the clinic.
Control. Places to sit apart from the group, doors that close, light a person can adjust.
Quiet and order. Calm palettes, clear wayfinding and nothing out of place.

Great room with stone fireplace at All Points North Lodge — A great room built for gathering, with a fire and a view.

Nature lowers anxiety, even while you wait

The effect is not limited to hospital rooms. In a 2023 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, researchers Jisun Lee and So-Yeon Yoon placed participants in virtual emergency department waiting rooms with and without natural elements. Plants, nature images and natural materials all lowered anxiety and improved how long the wait felt, and the combination of all three worked best. (Read the abstract.) Less anxiety led to better ratings of the care itself.

Lounge with fireplace at All Points North Dallas-Fort Worth — All Points North, Dallas-Fort Worth. Warm materials in a brand-new building.

Why this matters for photography

Most families choosing a treatment center, and most patients choosing a clinic, meet the building first on a phone screen. If the photographs are dark, crooked or cluttered, the healing environment the designers worked so hard to create never reaches them. My job is to carry it through the lens: balancing windows so the view stays visible, keeping lamps warm and whites clean, and composing at the height a person actually sits.