Summary and Analysis:
Keywords
View support quotes and references at the bottom of the page.
This study belongs to two connected fields: environmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, both applied to the idea of “healing environments.”
Cognitive neuroscience studies how the brain carries out mental processes (1). One of these processes is attention. When we focus hard for long periods, we experience what researchers call Directed Attention Fatigue (DAF), a kind of mental tiredness that makes it harder to concentrate (12). High-pressure situations such as war (7) a pandemic or demanding jobs like working in a hospital, can wear down our attention even faster. The COVID-19 pandemic was exactly this kind of situation, and it placed enormous strain on healthcare workers.
Environmental psychology is the field that studies how our surroundings affect our behaviour and wellbeing (2). One of its key ideas is Attention Restoration Theory (ART). This theory says that spending time in nature, or even looking at images of nature , helps our depleted attention capacity recover, because nature gently holds our focus without demanding through what has been termed “soft fascination”(8)(9)(10). This connects to another well-known idea, biophilia, which describes the natural, instinctive bond humans have with the living world (14). Research has shown that these calming effects can be recreated even through technology, such as virtual reality (11). This means it is possible to design spaces as healing environments that lower stress and help people recover their focus (13) .
This area of research still has important gaps. Firstly, few studies looked at healing environments built specifically for healthcare workers, and almost none during the treatment of severe respiratory illnesses caused by coronavirus. Secondly, because this study took place during an extreme and unusual moment (a pandemic), it is hard to know whether the results would apply to a normal, everyday hospital environments. Finally, the study relied only on self reporting. Future research would be strengthened by integrating mixed measurement assessments that include physiological markers such as heart rate variability and a group of control.
What makes this study stand out is that it was carried out in 2020, during the very first months of the COVID-19 pandemic inside a working hospital in New York City. Instead of testing a hypothesis solely in a controlled lab, the researchers built and used multisensory, nature-inspired “Recharge Rooms” designed to help hospital staff feel less stressed.
The research team tracked the effects of the recharge rooms over a 14-day period, with 496 staff members completing a short survey about their experience. The response was overwhelmingly positive: the Recharge Rooms earned a Net Promoter Score of 99.3% for acceptance of the initiative.
In short, this research is valuable because it applied a strategy grounded in Attention Restoration Theory in an active, demanding environment. It also revealed something deeper: by creating a restful space for their staff, the hospital sent a message of care. Many workers felt seen and supported, which shows that thoughtful design can touch not only stress levels, but also a sense of dignity and belonging at work.
1. Brief Exposure, Significant Impact
Just 15 minutes in the Recharge Room had a clear effect on how stressed people felt. (19)
2. A Near 60% Reduction in Perceived Stress
On average, users reported a 59.6% drop in their stress level after the experience compared to before they walked in. (19)
3. High User Satisfaction
99.3% of the people surveyed described it as a positive experience and said they would recommend it to a friend or colleague. (20)
4. Positive Qualitative Feedback
Out of 496 respondents, 207 left written comments, and every one of them was positive. People called the space things like “This is wonderful!” and “This is such a needed and appreciated space at this time. It would be great if something similar could remain when this new normal is over.” Several also saw it as a sign that their employer cared, saying “This is amazing! It’s a nice way for the system to show support for hospital employees.”(21)
Health & Wellbeing: This is the clearest connection. A short, 15-minute visit to a nature-inspired room cut perceived stress by nearly 60% for workers under extreme pressure. This shows that good design can actively help people recover. The space worked like a real tool for mental and emotional health, which supports the idea that designing for health means designing places that help people rest and recover.
Place Attachment: The comments revealed something beyond stress relief. People formed an emotional bond with the room. They felt cared for, and many wanted the space to stay even after the pandemic ended. This tells us that even a small, temporary room can become meaningful to people when it is designed with their wellbeing in mind and that this kind of attachment can be created on purpose through good design.
Joy & Recreation: The near-perfect satisfaction score (99.3%) shows that people did not just find the room useful, they genuinely enjoyed it. Calling it “wonderful” and wanting to share it with colleagues points to real pleasure and delight. This shows that recovery and enjoyment can go hand in hand: a well-designed space can help people feel better and bring them joy at the same time
1.Make restorative rooms a standard requirement in healthcare buildings or similar high-pressure buildings.
The results support the claim that calming, restorative spaces should be a built-in feature of hospitals and similar high-pressure environments, not as an optional afterthought. Design guidelines and building rules could set a minimum standard for staff recovery spaces. Use biophilic design to lower stress bringing nature into a space like through images, sounds, scents, and natural materials. The wider evidence shows these elements help reduce stress and should be treated as part of a building’s health infrastructure, not as an afterthought.
2.Plan for at least 15 minutes of use
The study shows that 15 minutes is enough to make a real difference. Restorative spaces should therefore be designed so people can comfortably spend at least that long, with attention to privacy, quiet, and an easy return to work afterward.
3.Design for all the senses, aiming for “soft fascination”
The room had the desired effect because it combined sight, sound, smell, and a sense of space, all pointing toward nature. Designers should think of restorative spaces as full sensory experiences where light, sound, scent, and materials work together to gently hold a person’s attention and support relaxation. Where possible, natural elements should remain the primary design strategy and artificial alternatives such as projected landscapes, recorded nature sounds, artificial plants and scent diffusion are only useful when natural stimuli are not available or easily integrated. (15-18)
Comments and critical observations
This study does not compare the recharge room experience against a simple, unstructured break in a standard hospital rest area. This omission makes it difficult to determine how much of the stress reduction was attributable to the specific multisensory, nature-inspired qualities of the room, rather than to the act of pausing and stepping away from work itself. Although there is significant evidence through other studies that such design strategies align to the recorded effects, future research would benefit from including a control group for comparison.
A 2026 follow-up study replicated the findings across 18 hospitals, with data collected outside the acute pandemic phase (2021-2022), suggesting the intervention is effective under everyday hospital conditions (4). The authors themselves, however, acknowledge the absence of a control group and validated outcome measures, underscoring the need for more rigorous study designs.
The Recharge Room represents a contained intervention within an otherwise unchanged hospital environment, and should therefore be considered a first step toward a more integrated biophilic building design. Real-world examples such as the Maggie’s Centres (5) demonstrate what a fully biophilic non-institutional healthcare environment can look like, where nature is integrated at the scale of the entire building.
Finally, some broader questions remain worth reflecting: could a salutogenic framework reshape how these spaces are conceived, shifting the goal from stress recovery to the active generation of wellbeing? What is the difference in effect of using artificial or natural design elements? what institutional conditions would need to be in place for this type of intervention to become a standard feature of healthcare environments? How are the designers being prepared to approach healthcare spaces through these evidence-based, wellbeing human-centred frameworks?
References
1. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Cognitive neuroscience. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved May 29, 2026, from https://dictionary.apa.org/cognitive-neuroscience
2. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Environmental psychology. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved May 29, 2026, from https://dictionary.apa.org/environmental-psychology
3. Putrino, D., Ripp, J., Herrera, J. E., Cortes, M., Kellner, C., Rizk, D., & Dams-O’Connor, K. (2020). Multisensory, nature-inspired recharge rooms yield short-term reductions in perceived stress among frontline healthcare workers. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 560833. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.560833
4. Cooke, L., Fiorentino, A., Sawyer, A., Dangayach, N. S., Sharples, S., Szabo, R., Hamilton, B. W., Cortes, M., & Putrino, D. (2026). Multisensory nature-based Recharge Rooms’ effect on healthcare workers in a multicenter study. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, Article 1706772. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1706772
5. Ruggeri, A., Nikolopoulou, M., & Watkins, R. (2022). The impact of biophilic design in Maggie’s Centres: A meta-synthesis analysis. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 11(5), 875–893. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2022.06.013
Other resources
6. Browning, W. D., Ryan, C. O., & Clancy, J. O. (2014). 14 patterns of biophilic design: Improving health and well-being in the built environment. Terrapin Bright Green, LLC. https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/report/14-patterns/
Support Quotes
7. “A recent survey found that healthcare workers at a large medical center in Baltimore, Maryland reported moral injury severity similar to that of military service members who served 7-month deployments in war zones, with particularly notable similarities in feelings of betrayal by other (Hines et al., 2020).”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
8. “The Recharge Rooms were designed by following the principles of ART (Korpela and Hartig, 1996; Sahlin et al., 2016), with a specific focus on creating natural scenes and experiences that shift users away from states of directed attention and promoted states of soft fascination (Kaplan, 1995; Kaplan and Berman, 2010).”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
9. “Directed attention fatigue (DAF) results in cognitive difficulties, poor decision making, emotion dysregulation, and performance variability during attentional tasks (Linden et al., 2005; Ohly et al., 2016). Attention restoration theory (ART) is a concept that has gained momentum in the field of environmental psychology, which postulates that DAF can be overcome by exposure to scenes depicting rich natural environments or direct exposure to nature (Kaplan, 1995).” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
10. “According to ART, a major goal of creating a restorative environment is to create scenes that encourage “soft fascination,” a cognitive state where one’s attention is held by the scene that they are taking in, but in a way that still permits reflection and the ability to address lingering, unresolved thoughts (Basu et al., 2019)”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
11. “A growing body of research indicates that virtual reality applications, particularly those that involve immersive architectural environments with visual and auditory manipulations, can directly impact emotions and their concordant psychophysiological responses (Badia et al., 2019).” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
12. “In the field of cognitive neuroscience, the ability to maintain focus on a task or set of environmental stimuli is often referred to as “directed attention” and is thought of a finite cognitive resource that can be depleted (Vohs et al., 2014; Ohly et al., 2016).” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
13. “Healing environments designed to reduce stress and increase control in patients can result in less need for pain medication, fewer medical errors, better sleep, and improved outcomes (Parsons and Hartig, 2000; Zimring et al., 2004).”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
14. “Consistent with the notion that humans are innately connected to nature, exposure to virtual environments that incorporate biophilic stimuli can lower physiological stress indicators, such as blood pressure and heart rate (Yin et al., 2019).”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2)
15. “Since soft fascination is often most easily elicited by scenes of nature (Basu et al., 2019), the resultant rooms created multisensory (visual, auditory, and olfactory), nature-inspired experiences, as these have also previously been found to confer physiological benefits (Maxwell and Lovell, 2017).”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 2,3)
16. “These environments include silk imitation plants, projected scenes of soothing natural landscapes, low lighting that is tailored in color to match the projected landscapes, high definition audio recordings of nature sounds paired with relaxing music, and an infusion of essential oils and calming scents using an essential oil diffuser.” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 3)
17. “All materials that were used for the transformation were easily sourced from online vendors. The user experience was designed to be voice-activated using Google Home, allowing visiting healthcare workers to activate the projector to screen different natural scenes on a blank wall in the room without having to interact with screens or touch any items in the room,minimizing user interaction with any surfaces.” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 3)
18. “All materials are non-porous and can be quickly sanitized after each use for infection control purposes. Yuzu, hinoki, roman chamomile, and lavender essential oils were used to create scent profiles that were associated with the visualization of different natural scenes using an essential oil diffuser in one corner of the room. These essential oils were selected based on existing literature showing their efficacy in producing stress relieving and soothing effects (Matsumoto et al., 201;4 Ali et al., 201;5 Ikei et al., 2015).”(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 3)
19. “Prior to entry into the Recharge Room, average stress level was reported as 4.6/6 (±1.1). After a single 15-min experience in the Recharge Room, the average user-reported stress level was 1.85/6 (±1.2), representing an average 59.6% reduction in self-reported stress levels (Figure 2; p < 0.001; pairedt-test).” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 4)
20. “The NPS for the experience was 99.3%, with 100% of respondents identifying as “promoters” (scores ranging between 8 and 10) of the experience” (Putrino et al., 2020, p. 4)
21. “A total of 207/496 respondents submitted qualitative feedback via the open-ended “additional comments” question. These qualitative comments were universally positive, such as “This is wonderful!” or “This is such a needed and appreciated space at this time. It would be great if something similar could remain when this new normal is over.” Additionally, several comments suggested that users viewed the experience as a gesture of institutional support, e.g., “This is amazing! It’s a nice way for the system to show support for employees!””(Putrino et al., 2020, p. 4)
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