6 best practices for trauma-informed design
As awareness of trauma-informed care grows across healthcare, education, and community settings, designers are increasingly being asked to translate clinical principles into physical space.
With the release of Architecture of Healing: Trauma-Informed Design, HMC Architects and Bassetti Architects—now a Design Studio of HMC—offer a framework that moves beyond theory—providing designers with concrete strategies that can be applied across building types.
Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution, the guidebook positions trauma-informed design as a lens through which architects can better understand how space affects stress, regulation, dignity, and human connection. Below are key takeaways and best practices drawn from the guidebook that design teams can begin applying today.
1. Design for Psychological Safety—Not Just Code Compliance
Safety in trauma-informed environments extends beyond physical security. While access control, sightlines, and crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) strategies remain essential, designers must also consider how layered security measures are perceived by users who may already be hypervigilant. Welcoming entries, predictable circulation, and clear wayfinding help reduce anxiety while maintaining secure environments.
Best practice: Balance openness and control by designing spaces that are visible but not overwhelming, secure without feeling institutional.
2. Create Areas of Refuge Within Active Environments
Highly stimulating spaces—waiting rooms, corridors, learning commons—can overwhelm individuals experiencing stress or trauma. Trauma-informed design emphasizes the importance of refuge: small, quieter spaces where users can retreat, regain composure, and re-engage on their own terms.
Best practice: Integrate nooks, alcoves, window seats, or adjacent quiet rooms into larger public spaces rather than isolating refuge areas entirely.
3. Prioritize Human Scale to Reduce Institutional Feel
Large, anonymous spaces can heighten feelings of vulnerability. Breaking down scale—through neighborhood models, smaller clusters, varied ceiling heights, and tactile elements—helps users feel known rather than lost.
Best practice: Design circulation, furnishings, and adjacencies at a human scale, especially in healthcare and residential settings where stress is already elevated.
4. Offer Choice and Agency Through Design
Agency is a cornerstone of trauma-informed environments. Spaces that allow users to make choices—where to sit, how much light or sound they experience, whether to engage socially or privately—support emotional regulation and restore a sense of control.
Best practice: Use adaptable lighting, flexible furniture, and layered spaces to support multiple modes of use without requiring staff intervention.
5. Design With the Senses in Mind
Trauma is experienced through the senses, making sensory design a powerful tool. Lighting glare, acoustical reverberation, strong odors, or abrasive textures can unintentionally trigger stress responses.
Best practice: Moderate sensory intensity by controlling acoustics, minimizing glare and flicker, selecting calming materials, and avoiding abrupt contrasts in light, sound, or color.
6. Foster Community Without Forcing Interaction
Social connection plays a vital role in recovery and resilience—but not everyone engages at the same pace. Trauma-informed design supports both strong and weak social ties by offering shared spaces alongside opportunities for quiet observation.
Best practice: Design communal spaces with clear visual connections and optional participation, allowing users to engage when—and how—they feel ready.
Designing for Trauma Is Designing for Everyone
A central premise of Architecture of Healing is that trauma-informed design does not create niche environments—it improves spaces for all users. Strategies that support dignity, agency, and well-being also enhance patient experience, staff satisfaction, and overall building performance.
As trauma-informed care becomes more widely embedded in healthcare and community systems, architects are uniquely positioned to shape environments that support regulation, connection, and trust—quietly, consistently, and at scale.