2025

Bedrooms may be beautiful, but aesthetics alone cannot lull the nervous system into rest. True recovery demands more intentional design – a choreography of light, sound, temperature and touch that tunes the body toward genuine and measurable balance.

At White Mirror, we call this philosophy Experience is Medicine – intentional spaces and experiences designed to deliver positive outcomes on our wellbeing, and also look to inspire better habits that we carry with us into our daily lives. Every texture, hue and frequency we encounter acts as an invisible conversation with our physiology. A flicker of blue light can delay the release of melatonin. A gentle vibration beneath the skin can slow the breath. A soft curve in a wall can whisper safety to the nervous system. The spaces we inhabit are not passive containers; they are living systems that shape how we feel, think, and sleep.

Image credit: White Mirror

From emotion to evidence

For centuries, architects have spoken about form and function. Today, the frontier is feeling. Through the emerging science of neuroarchitecture, we can now measure what we once only intuited: the way light rhythms regulate circadian cycles, the way biophilic textures lower cortisol, the way spatial acoustics affect brainwave states.

This scientific shift underpins Intentional Spaces: The Power of Place, a new global initiative between Thermengruppe Josef Wund, Johns Hopkins University’s International Arts + Mind Lab, and White Mirror. The project is pioneering the evidence base for neuroarchitecture – how the design of our environments actively shapes emotional, cognitive, and physiological wellbeing.

As Dr. Susan Magsamen of Johns Hopkins puts it, “Everything is an aesthetic experience – the cities we traverse, the rooms in which we live and work, and the sounds, sights, and smells we encounter throughout our day all impact how we feel.” The research is building the foundations of a Sensory Design Playbook – a practical framework for architects and designers to embed neuroscience into the built world. Because as we’re learning, the world we design is designing us back.

Image credit: White Mirror / Equinox

Designing the nervous system

When we design for sleep, we are designing for the most intricate system of all: the human nervous system. Every sensory cue – light, sound, texture, temperature – is a form of communication. The question is whether that communication is supportive or disruptive.

Inside Equinox Hotel New York, in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Walker, we translated the latest sleep science into a living experience. Guests follow a carefully sequenced journey: guided breathwork enhanced by warm-spectrum red and amber light; an audio landscape calibrated to lengthen exhalations and reduce heart rate variability; and a wakescape that replaces alarms with gradual, sensory reawakening. The goal was simple – align the environment with the body’s natural circadian rhythm. The result is a deeper rest, smoother wakefulness and recovery that extends beyond the night.

Such interventions may sound futuristic, but their roots are ancient. Warm light mimics the glow of fire. Rhythmic sound echoes the heartbeat. These primal signals tell the body that it is safe enough to surrender. When design remembers our biology, the body remembers how to sleep.

Image credit: Arianne Amores / Lupuna

Experience as medicine, explained

Architecture becomes powerful when it transcends the visual to engage the visceral. At Therme Euskirchen in Germany, the Lupuna Forest Bathing installation and experience produced by immersive collective Marshmallow Laser Feast and White Mirror compresses 24 hours of the Amazon rainforest into a 24-minute immersive journey. Guests lie on vibroacoustic loungers as light, scent, and temperature shift around them in synchrony. The experience synchronises body and brain into a meditative state – heart rates slow, breathing deepens, anxiety drops.

Projects like Lupuna prove a simple truth: experience itself can be therapeutic. We can design spaces that regulate physiology the way medicine regulates chemistry.

At Outernet London, with Pixel Artworks, we tested this principle in Room to Breathe – an immersive installation that taught visitors to calm their nervous systems through space itself. Light sequences expanded and contracted like lungs; spatial sound wrapped the listener in a slow, rhythmic cadence. In independent studies, over 84 per cent of participants reported measurable relaxation. This evidence proved that it was not an illusion.

Image credit: White Mirror

The new measure of design

For decades, the success of a space was measured by square footage, star ratings or generic visual appeal. But the new measure is transformation – the physiological, emotional, and cognitive shift a person carries home after they leave.

In hospitality, this marks a profound shift. I believe the next wave of luxury will be invisible: the feeling of your nervous system being quietly re-tuned after a long journey, the sense that the air itself is helping you breathe easier. Properties that soothe and regulate their guests’ biology will earn loyalty deeper than brand. Because the body always remembers how it felt.

Designing a better night’s sleep

To design for sleep is to design for the most vulnerable, restorative and essential of human states. It is to acknowledge that rest is an active recalibration, one that architecture and mise en scene of a space can profoundly influence.

The architecture of sleep is an act of empathy. It recognises that wellbeing is not a luxury amenity but a biological necessity; that design, at its highest form, is a healing art.

As we move from intuition to evidence, from aesthetics to neuroscience, we begin to see architecture not as backdrop but as medicine – a living, breathing extension of our own nervous system.

Main image credit: White Mirror / The Future Laboratory

Whilst ‘embodied carbon’ might not be the sexiest of topics, the fact I’ve enjoyed animated discussions about it at nearly every design industry event I’ve attended this year, shows that the challenge of how to measure and tackle embodied carbon in supply chains is being taken seriously. Embodied carbon is the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole lifecycle of a building or product. For hoteliers, project managers and designers alike, understanding this concept is vital to reducing environmental impact, cutting costs and creating spaces with longevity. In hotel interiors, where enormous amounts of materials are consumed for relatively short-term aesthetics, this carbon footprint can be staggering.

The Average Hotel Room = 385 Flights to New York

Whilst there is no universally agreed figure for an average UK hotel room over a 20-year period, a study by AECOM and the UKGBC suggests a new-build hotel might have somewhere between 800 and 1,200 kg CO₂e per m² of embodied carbon. For an average UK hotel room of 30–35 m², this equates to 24,000 to 42,000 kg CO₂e per room at build stage. If we consider that hotels are often refurbished every 7 to 10 years, with interior fitouts accounting for up to 300 to 500 kg CO₂e per m² per refurbishment, over 20 years a new built hotel, with two refurbishments could embody anywhere between 42,000 and 77,000 kg CO₂e per hotel room. To give some context, 77,000 kg CO₂e is the equivalent of 385 one-way flights from London to New York. That’s a significant amount of carbon which the industry must look to reduce, not only from an environmental impact point of view, but also because savvy customers are increasingly expecting the hospitality industry to toe the line when it comes to transparent sustainability policies.

Image credit: Annabel Staff / Drayton Court

Circular Design Inevitably Reduces Carbon

Hotel furnishings, fixtures and fittings are more regularly replaced than most other large buildings, so embodied carbon is a real issue here. Needless to say, interior design matters a lot when it comes to reducing these numbers. At Sibley Grove, we adopt a Design for Disassembly approach. This means designing interiors, furniture and fittings with circularity in mind: easy to take apart, reuse, repair or recycle. Circular design doesn’t just reduce emissions; it creates economic value. Materials can be re-sold, re-used or remanufactured, saving waste and reducing future capital expenditure. It’s one of those rare win-wins in life – considering a hotel build and fitout through the lens of embodied carbon will inevitably lead to cost savings in the long term.

Designing with Longevity in Mind Reduces Carbon + Cost

As with most things, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the past, when buildings and furnishings were made to last decades, even centuries. We’re currently transforming a neo-gothic building into a luxury hotel and it’s fascinating to see how many of the beautifully appointed features have stood the test of time. We’re restoring and upgrading many of them with the intention that they will last another century without needing to be replaced. Design thinking that considers the longevity of spaces rather than rapid turnover is a simple and fundamental principle in reducing carbon. And often gives a far superior result – a timeless and beautifully crafted tap may cost more upfront, but it will look and feel far, far more elegant that a cheaper bathroom fixture designed to be ripped out at the next refurb.

Image credit: The Chamberlain Hotel

Keep Asking Suppliers for Environmental Product Declarations (EDPs)

As interior designers, finding ways to understand the embodied carbon in a supply chain has often proven tricky. We’ve partnered with manufacturers like Kaldewei, whose Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) provide precise embodied carbon data. This transparency empowers us to make informed, low-impact material choices for a project from the outset. EDPs are something we are increasingly asking new suppliers for. Not every supplier we work with has the capacity or knowledge to implement this scheme, but I still ask because the more we use this as a metric for choosing materials, the more likely it is that suppliers will make that investment – and the more likely this is to become an industry norm. In terms of sustainability, I’ve witnessed that incremental steps are key in moving our industry towards a more sustainable and responsible position.

Main image credit: Annabel Staff / The Counting House

Open a magazine, scroll through Instagram, and chances are your feed will tempt you with a new wellness escape: sleep retreats promising to reset your body clock, digital detox camps offering freedom from screens, night-time-only programs designed to harness circadian rhythms. Wellness travel is booming, and wellness trips are predicted to grow by 14.7% by 2027 (Global Wellness Institute 2024). It’s hard not to be seduced by its promise because there seems to be something perfectly designed just for you – no matter whether you identify as a gym rat or a skincare devotee.

Image caption: Diana Goderich, Brand Strategist, WeWantMore | Image credit: WeWantMore

The appeal is undeniable. At its best, wellness travel offers rejuvenation, an escape from everyday stressors, the churn of daily demands, and the looming threat of burnout. But once we’ve acknowledged its potential, we also need to ask the harder question: what does the culture of wellness say about our lifestyles, and what role do brands play in creating and supporting it?

Escaping the Everyday Churn

Today, we are spending thousands and flying to far-flung parts of the world to address our basic human needs: to rest, breathe, and unplug. Yet these things are all freely available at home – at least in theory. The reality is that overwork, stress, and pervasive hustle culture drown them out. According to Mercer, 82% of employees worldwide are at risk of burnout (Global Talent Trends 2024). So we are travelling to repair what daily life has broken.

Siripan Deesilatham, visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London, notes in a 2024 study that the reasons behind wellness travel – stress, overwork, lack of rest – are closely tied to quality of life and lifestyle constraints. It is paradoxical that we buy packages that promise balance, when it is our own lifestyles – hyper-accelerated, over-connected, relentlessly optimised – that push us so far from equilibrium in the first place.

Retreats tackle sleep because our everyday rhythms deny it, and technology exacerbates the effects. In the US, over 75% of people (AASM 2023) report losing sleep because of digital distractions. So we seek solutions, signing up for programs to help us disconnect from devices that have colonised our free time.

But is wellness travel less about access to resources and more about the inability to claim them in everyday life? Are we actually addressing and healing unhelpful habits, or just putting a temporary patch over a systemic issue? While studies show that wellness travel provides relief and a reset, the effects are temporary and there is little evidence of sustained impact (Frontier 2023).

Image credit: Alex Bertha / Unsplash

The Productivity Trap

Ironically, the pursuit of wellness can generate its own anxiety. As wellness culture continues to grow and permeate every aspect of our lives, its shadow side becomes ever more apparent. Instead of offering relief, wellness culture can feel like indulgent navel-gazing, leaving people with a sense of failure rather than improvement. The very act of seeking care becomes another area for stress and comparison—not liberating and empowering, but debilitating. Holidays, once a reprieve from routine, risk becoming yet another productivity exercise. Rest itself is understood through metrics and performative signalling.

A digital detox not only becomes a recovery from anxiety-inducing tech, but also a badge of honour – proof of discipline and moral elevation. The practice of quantifying biological functions is already underway. Sleep specialists have coined the term orthosomnia to describe the stress caused by worrying about your own sleep quality. Yet sleep retreats promise measurable improvements. Biohacking camps package longevity as a competitive advantage. Digital detox camps market themselves as a few days of liberation from technology but can create guilt and inadequacy when participants struggle to disconnect. Even when done properly, many report feelings of anxiety and isolation during such retreats (Salepaki et al. 2025).

In this discourse, wellness travel itself feels like both a part of the solution and a symptom of the underlying societal condition. It promises respite but reinforces the very logic we’re trying to escape: a culture that struggles with one iota of unproductive time.

Image credit: Aman New York

Some destinations push back against this trend. Places like Eremito in Italy or wellness programming at Aman position their offering not just around quantifiable optimisation but around treating symptoms more deeply. Their programs follow a mind-body-soul approach, combining multiple modalities with immersion in the physical setting and local culture. By blending traditional practices with the surrounding environment, they create unique ‘pathways to longevity.’ Exceptions like these further highlight how unusual it has become to seek wellness simply for its own sake – and not as part of a productivity checklist.

The Sustainability Paradox

If we think about the sustainability of wellbeing, we discover a clear contradiction between what we are told is best and what is happening. Travelling halfway across the world to “detox” undermines the wider notion of wellbeing we claim to pursue. With tourism overall – especially flights – accounting for roughly 9% of global carbon emissions (Nature Communications 2024), what does it mean to talk about balance, care, and repair while simultaneously fuelling carbon-intensive behaviours that threaten planetary health?

So is wellness travel, as a category, harming the very notion it claims to protect: sustainable living and planetary wellbeing?

Image credit: Dharana at Shillim

The Opportunity for Hospitality Brands

The category continues to grow exponentially – valued at 651 billion US dollars in 2022 and projected to reach 1.4 trillion by 2027 (Global Wellness Institute 2024) – and the stakes could not be higher. But there is an opportunity to shift the narrative away from quick fixes and checklist-style optimisation toward experiences that genuinely nurture sustainable rhythms of living. It can reimagine wellness not as a one-off fix but as something continuous: an ongoing practice of care that outlives the retreat itself.

For travellers, this means reframing the purpose of wellness escapes—not as luxury commodities to repair the damage of unsustainable routines, but as catalysts for lasting and ongoing change. For brands, it means resisting the lure of gimmicks and leaning into design principles that encourage real restoration—the kind that extends beyond the retreat and builds enduring relationships.

There are already examples showing this is possible. Evolute Institute in the Netherlands offers psychedelic/psilocybin retreats combined with professional coaching. Programs include preparatory sessions to define the focus of the retreat, followed by a two-month integration phase to process and embed learnings into daily life—expanding the impact well beyond the program. Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Massachusetts offers time for slowness and reflection, as well as choice in participation, rather than a rigid schedule. One of the available workshops, ‘Integration: Taking Kripalu Home,’ is aimed specifically at planning how to bring insights, practices, and learnings back into daily life.

Image credit: Sparcstudio

Things for brands to consider:

– Design for slowness: Create environments that prioritise unstructured time and quiet, without layering on excessive programming.
– Integration over interruption: Equip travellers with practices they can carry into everyday life, rather than offering one-off detoxes whose effects vanish on return.
– Beyond luxury framing: Position wellness experiences as accessible and ongoing human needs, not elite indulgences.
– Long-term journeys: Encourage repeated connections, whether by returning to the same place or curating linked experiences across locations, to sustain benefits over time.

These opportunities go beyond luxury wellness stays. They create possibilities for hospitality, travel, and booking companies to integrate wellness into their offerings, take proactive steps themselves, and support people’s wellbeing journeys across different places and moments in time.

Reclaiming the Meaning of Travel and Care

In the end, wellness travel reflects both our hunger for restoration and our inability to claim it. Some of us genuinely need the container of travel and structured time away to break the patterns that feel impossible to shift at home. But unless we challenge the deeper dynamics – the commodification of care, the productivity logic disguised as healing—we risk reducing wellness travel to another industry of pressure.

Hospitality brands are uniquely positioned to bridge this gap. They are in a prime position to redefine wellness travel – not as a brief escape for temporary recovery, but as a sustainable way of life that integrates into daily living. For brands bold enough to step away from the checklist, and for travellers willing to reimagine the purpose of their journeys, the opportunity lies in creating rhythms of life that no longer need fixing.

Main image credit: Roberto Nickson / Unsplash