Neuroaesthetics in Hospital Design: Can Beauty Influence Healing?

Author: Derek Yang

Editors: Linzi Yeung, Roan Aly

Artist: Helen Gong

Hospitals are for healing, but what if healing is not just medication, equipment, and monitoring? What if the very physical design of a hospital itself, the artwork on the walls along the corridors, or how sunlight pours through a patient's window can play a role in healing? This is the upcoming promise of neuroaesthetics and its revolutionary nature in healthcare. Neuroaesthetics combines neuroscience, psychology, and art to examine how aesthetics can affect a person’s health, mood, and emotions. Studies have shown that exposure to certain visual stimuli—such as natural environments, warm lighting, and calming colors—can reduce stress hormones, blood pressure, and even pain levels. The rise of neuroaesthetics has been recent yet significant.

Its neurobiological basis is in the brain's reaction to beauty. Functional MRI medical imaging within the body reveals aesthetic experiences that engage the medial orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with pleasure and reward. Engaging this system in healing environments, such as hospitals, enables a modulating influence on the amygdala, involved in processing emotions, resulting in a state of destressing. Healing environments have the potential to calm patients, thereby enhancing recovery outcomes.

Nature can also play a significant role in neuroaesthetics. According to a 2022 study in the Health Environments Research & Design Journal, surgical patients who looked out at trees needed less pain medication than those who looked at a brick wall. This technique, called biophilic design, incorporates nature into hospital environments—from indoor gardens and green walls to nature-inspired artwork—and creates an environment that soothes anxiety, reduces pain, and promotes restorative sleep, which can accelerate recovery.

Color impacts patient experience as well. Cool tones like blue and green are not only perceived as calming but have also been shown to reduce stress hormone levels, lower blood pressure, and even alleviate pain responses linked to the body’s parasympathetic nervous system. In contrast, warm colors such as red or orange can stimulate alertness, which may be helpful in some settings but overwhelming in recovery spaces.  

Notably, neuroaesthetics is not a one-size-fits-all approach. What might relax one individual may unsettle another, and this calls for the task of personalization. Interactive environments—that is, ones in which patients can engage in play with light, sound, or image—are growing in popularity. Digital murals and ambient systems are among the technologies available that provide personalized experiences tailored to patients' needs and preferences. Beyond patient care, neuroaesthetic-guided design can even benefit hospital staff. Healthcare workers who interact with visually and sound-designed environments throughout their workdays are less burned out, more focused, and more satisfied with their workplaces. A healthier workforce can deliver better patient care, demonstrating how aesthetics can have a system-wide ripple effect.

For neuroaesthetics to enhance, rather than detract from, the healing process, coordination is crucial. Clinicians, architects, artists, and neuroscientists must work together to create spaces that are simultaneously scientifically informed and human-centered. The more we discover about the brain, the more we appreciate the power of design in constructing healthy futures. Neuroaesthetics presents us with a promising vision: hospitals not as alleged medical treatment centers, but rather as specially crafted spaces wherein beauty cures. Healing, it appears, starts with what we look at.

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