How Your Home Affects Your Health (And What to Get Right Before You Build or Renovate)
We design carefully considered eco homes and luxury holiday homes that perform well, age gracefully, and make long-term financial sense. RIBA Chartered Architects.
Introduction
Have you ever considered that your home might be making you tired — or even ill?
A north-facing living room that never gets direct sun. Windows that don't open properly. Rooms sealed in synthetic materials quietly off-gassing into the air you breathe.
In Birmingham, close to where I live, Five Ways Tower was abandoned in 2005. It was found that the building was making its occupants physically ill. Sick building syndrome; poor air, poor light, dark spaces. A building that made you feel physically terrible.
The same principles apply to homes; most people just don't notice because they've lived with it for years.
In this article, I'll explain things that should be considered when designing a new home or renovating an existing space. Get them right, and your home can actively support your health and wellbeing.
Five Ways Tower, Birmingham. Abandoned in 2005 after the building was found to be making its occupants ill. Poor air, poor light, and sealed environments, the same issues that affect many homes today.
Natural Light
Natural light is one of the most important factors in how you experience your home. But you can have too much of a good thing, particularly as global warming has been making summers increasingly hot. Lighting is a careful balancing act between too little and too much.
On top of that, you need to consider room orientation. My home office, for example, faces east, and I get the morning sun as it rises, which makes a lovely space to work in and is a great way to start the working day. The bedroom faces west, catching the evening light as things wind down.
A 2017 study by Harvard and SUNY Upstate Medical University found that people working in buildings with better daylight and air quality scored 61% higher on cognitive tests. They slept better. They reported less stress. Not because they were working less, but because the building was working better.
At the same time, a lot of modern homes go too far the other way — large expanses of glazing that look great in photographs but cause the spaces to overheat in summer. Thermal gain is a real problem, and it's getting worse. I have previously written on the importance of nature and lighting within your home.
Deciduous trees and pergolas are one of the simplest ways to manage solar gain. In summer, the canopy shades the glazing and keeps the interior cool. In winter, the bare branches let the low sun through when you need it most. Good design works with the seasons, not against them.
Air - “The airtight trap”
Modern homes are increasingly airtight, and that's the right direction; it prevents drafts, reduces heat loss, and improves energy efficiency. But airtightness without proper ventilation creates a different problem.
Many of the materials used in modern construction — engineered boards, synthetic insulation, paints, sealants, and even some flooring- release low levels of chemicals into the air over time. This is known as off-gassing. In a draughty older house, those chemicals dissipate through gaps in the building fabric. In a well-sealed modern home, they have nowhere to go. You're breathing them in, day and night.
This is why ventilation strategy matters as much as insulation strategy. A well-designed home balances airtightness with controlled airflow — whether that's through mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), passive ventilation, or a combination of both. Simply opening a window works, but it's not a design solution for synthetic materials.
Materials - “You are what you breathe”
If airtightness traps what's in the air, then the materials you build with determine what's in the air in the first place.
Natural materials: timber, clay plaster, lime render, cork, do something that synthetic alternatives don't: they breathe. They absorb and release moisture, helping to regulate humidity without mechanical intervention. They don't off-gas. They age well. And they create interiors that feel different to be in, warmer, calmer, more grounded.
Compare that with a typical new-build interior: MDF skirting boards, vinyl flooring, synthetic paint, and engineered board behind the plasterboard. Every one of those materials is releasing something into the air. Individually, the levels are low. Collectively, in a sealed home, they add up.
The reality is, these early choices have a big impact on our experience of the home for many years to come, even if the initial outlay of more synthetic materials might be cheaper.
Speak to Peter the Architect
Book Your Free 20-Minute Project Call
If you're planning a new home, an extension, or a renovation, the decisions that affect how your home feels to live in — light, air, materials — are made early. A quick call can help you get them right before you commit.
We'll look at whether your plans account for orientation and natural light, how to avoid the common ventilation and overheating mistakes, whether your material choices support or undermine the space, and whether your ideas are workable for your site and budget.
What you can actually do about it (the architect's perspective)
Winston Churchill once said that we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us. He was right.
The decisions that determine how a home feels to live in, where it is situated on a site, which rooms face which direction, how air moves through the building, and what the walls and floors are made of, are all made in the first 10% of a project. Get them wrong, and you're living with the consequences for decades.
Don't be taken in by the glossy marketing of new-builds that look impressive in the brochure but are built with synthetic materials in sealed, poorly ventilated spaces. And don't assume that more glazing automatically means a better home; without proper consideration of orientation and solar gain, it can make things particularly uncomfortable.
Light, air, and materials. Three things. Get them right, and your home actively supports how you live. Get them wrong, and no amount of interior design will fix it.
