Greening the Workplace: How Plants Reduce Stress
- Oct 11, 2023
- 5 min read
Today 55% of our modern society lives in urban areas (UN,2018), and over 80% of our time is spent indoors. The need for high-quality built spaces that enhance our mental health and wellbeing is beyond important.
The shift of home and remote working has progressed rapidly, on set through the need for remote working during the 2020 pandemic. This shift is paving the way for well-being offices, not only for the home office but in the commercial setting the need for large offices has been reduced across many sectors; with the reduction of space required comes the economic transition to smaller office spaces, making space for a new age of biophilic office design. (Future of WorkHub, 2021).
The Mental Health Societies' 2018 study found that 74% of people in the UK felt so stressed they were overwhelmed with the feeling, the knock-on-effect of this isn't just in your own life, but your stress affects the people around you; have you ever gone into a job or even watched a film that shows a highly stressed boss or leader, their stress is transmitted to the employees. Stress can lead to a number of health issues; high blood pressure, mental illness, heart disease, obesity, the list goes on. Yes, some stress can be good for us, starting a new job, a big scary meeting, going for a run. But daily stress induced on your physical and mental self is not. One way that we can reduce stress levels is through the introduction of living plants into our homes and workspaces, shown to reduce anxiety by 37%, studies have also shown that including plants indoors has the power to lower physical and mental illnesses.
There are many great ways that we can bring some of the powers of nature indoors, plants are one of these and have been studied for their effects on stress, anxiety, and depression symptom reduction to an extent that shows they do have legs in this discourse. Briefly, a few other ways in which you can improve your workspace through natural elements include; good lighting, airflow and ventilation, natural materials, colours, and textures.
The Power of Plants for Productivity, Mental Health & Wellbeing
Studies have shown that the presence of plants in your home or office reduces stress, but why? Having a visual and physical connection with plants helps us to feel relaxed, this sense of calmness reduces anxiety levels. A 2007 study found that people who worked in a space with plants took fewer sick days off of work. This links to creating a space that isn't only bespoke to the user and their needs - adjustable lighting, temperature, etc - and is connected to creating 'likable' spaces; if you feel comfortable and ultimately enjoy a space, you will enjoy being within the space, reducing negative feelings of working. In relation, studies have shown that the presence of natural elements, including plants, in the workspace, creates higher feelings of job satisfaction.
Studies have shown that productivity levels increase the most with the presence of real living plants, that said, there is no harm in adding a few artificial plants to your space. Adding to this, studies have found that just 20 minutes spent with plants is enough for us to feel the peace-inducing benefits.
So How Can We Bring Nature in?
Let's take a brief delve into some ways that you can bring plants into your workspace; whether you work from home, office, or co-work.
1// Living or Not, Bring in the Plants
2// Making Use of Space
3// Suggesting Presence
Living or Not, Bring in the Plants
Studies have shown that real plants have greater benefits for their effect on our mood, emotion, and anxiety reduction than artificial plants do. That being said, the visual presence of nature aspects has been found to have a positive effect on these mental and physical health benefits.
Living plants have greater health benefits because the leaves have the ability to trap airborne dust and toxins, removing them from the air and in turn improving the respiratory air quality for the inhabitants of the space. Good air quality is one of the factors of a living plant's ability to improve productivity.
The predominant benefit of artificial planting is that they are low-maintenance, they may require dusting once in a while but other than that they don't need watering or pruning or drop leaves. That being said, the question here is more; what's the striding factor, ease of maintenance or better health and respiratory benefits?
Making Use of Space
Every (with some exceptions) built space compromises of four walls, a ceiling, and a floor; with so much space to play with, there is an opportunity to incorporate planting into any room. Too many desks crammed into your office to comfortably add floor-standing plants? Let's put them on the ceiling, use the walls, use what you have.
Plants on the Floor
Lets' take it back to basics, as such, the most common and standard way we can bring plants into a space is through potted planting, placed on a raised surface, such as a desk or shelf, or on the floor for larger potted plants. The majority of the time I will always favour one large plant over 3 small ones, maybe that's on personal preference, but smaller pots can feel cluttered and 'in the way', especially on a desk, where organization plays a prominent role for productivity.
Other ways that we can incorporate plants through floor space is through mimicking fauna through floor tiles, or even bringing living or artificial planting to the floor material with grass-crete and similar materials. Oliver Heath Design showed how this can be achieved in workspace design, with their design for The BRE Foundation Space; combining nature-suggesting and mimicked floor tiles.
Make Use of Walls
Walls can because a feature of wellness and green design; living walls integrate watering systems and planting pots to create a low-maintenance and low-mess approach to uplifting white walls. Room dividing partitions are a relatively easy way to increase productivity in an open-plan workspace, lowering visual and audio distractions in a 'living screen'.
Looking Up: Planting the Ceiling
Even the ceiling can be used as a space to house plants, hang pots or a shelf from the ceiling that can hold plants; this can be harder than a plant on the floor when it comes to watering, I would suggest using air plants if the pot is hard to reach, as air plants do not need soil and just sprayed with water. Another way that we can incorporate planting with space via the ceiling is with living ceiling panels, in the same way that we can use green panels on the walls, we can put them on the ceiling, logistically this is much easier achieved with artificial planting.
Suggesting Presence
In addition to the previous natural aspects of space, we can suggest the presence of nature through visual features of artworks, photography, and even sculptures of natural forms. In relation, natural materials and colours have the ability to affect our moods and emotions, so choose the colour of your walls carefully.
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Further Readings
https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-home-guide/benefits-of-indoor-plants#health-considerations
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