Indoor Environmental Quality

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is a very important aspect when designing the interior of a room. IEQ can affect people in both negative and positive ways as well as mentally, like increasing productivity, or physically, like producing cancer. Thus it is important to take into account all aspect that may affect indoor air quality and health including daylight, ventilation, temperature, humidity, noise, electrical light sources, and personal control of a setting.

Schools and the work place are good examples to look at IEQ, as many people spend a lot of time at these locations. To improve the indoor air quality in schools and to enhance students outcomes a designer should provide an ample and pleasant view, create a glare free writing surfaces and shad from direct sunlight, provide window treatments to control glare, provide an effective acoustical environment that eliminates annoying noise or excess sounds from outside the room, provide proper ventilation, and provide satisfactory physical characteristics like windows. Office space interiors should provide all of what was listed above for school and in addition to providing controllable settings like heat and cooling. This will provide a comfortable setting for people to work in and in return increase their productivity.

As there are many ways to increase IEQ, I am going to address a select few that I find most important for a project I have coming up. This will include reducing noise pollution, reducing glare, and increasing a desirable view to the outdoors. There are many things that affect the noise in a room including outside factors like people talking in the hallway or humming from an HVAC system. Some solutions to reducing noise include installing sound absorbing materials in between walls and directly onto walls. In terms of equipment and HVAC systems the interior designer should look into quiet HVAC lighting systems and isolating loud equipment so it is less distracting. Glare is another important IEQ aspect to address as it can decrease productivity and comfort if distracting light or glare is present. Some strategies to help reduce glare include installing window treatments, using less dark surfaces that will intensify the glare contrast, and making sure a window or spot is not directly conflicting with a work surface. Views from a window are another important factor to consider as a pleasant view can make a person feel more happy and thus increase their productivity and comfort ability. As much daylight should be provided into a room but sometimes providing as many windows as you can may produce some not so pleasant views. An interior designer should take this into account when planning window placement. If there will be a direct view into another building or into a parking garage for example the designer should make that window smaller, thus decreasing the unpleasant view while still providing natural daylight.

*Information received from: Sustainable design for interior environments . (2nd ed.). Fairchild Books.