Investigating impacts of Interior design variables on employee’s wellbeing in the UK workplace.

A workplace's environment has a profound impact on mental health and wellbeing. Over the past decade, wellbeing research has grown in importance as it contributes to a person's well-being, re-duces stress, and increases performance by reducing costs for business. Further, because of globalisation, short-term contracts, outsourcing, and mergers which have ravaged the workplace to date, employee psychological wellness levels were adversely affected. As a consequence, interior design has gained tremendous importance. It is now more important for interior designers to design environments aimed at fostering both physical and psychological wellbeing. The purpose of this pa-per is to explore the extent to which the physical environmental variables (e.g., layout) affect employees psychological wellbeing reporting on the findings of methods which included a systematic literature review, field observation, and an online survey. (25) participants who were chosen upon criteria of inclusion (i.e., UK worker) and exclusion (i.e., working remotely) in an open-plan office layout. Findings show participants responding positively to open layout; however, this may have negative effects in terms of privacy, control, and noise. Natural materials and elements were found to be a demand by employees as the majority claimed that nature affects their wellbeing positively.