Trauma-Informed Design

Trauma-informed design is a multidisciplinary approach to creating spaces that are safe, supportive, and conducive to healing for people who have experienced trauma. Just as a bad environment can be harmful, so can a good environment be helpful.

At both Haven House and Cloud Nine Studios, virtually every aspect of the home has been made to follow the principles of trauma-informed design, down to thousands of subtle details that have been fine-tuned to form an environment that significantly aids in trauma recovery.

A Dining Dilemma

Even when choosing something as innocuous as dining furniture for Haven House, over twenty specific trauma-informed design criteria were evaluated. A failure to meet any one of these could have adverse effects on some residents, so throughout the selection process, thousands of options were eliminated before a classic handmade farmhouse table set met them all:

Comfort & Safety: Rounded edges and corners on tabletops and seat pans enhance both perceived and actual comfort, while circular table legs soften impact with both human and chair legs.
Usability & Openness: Plenty of room for people to enter or exit when others are seated, plus bench seating along one side creates an inviting visual opening and reduces conflict along a busy pathway.
Stability: Oversized construction from solid, dense wood makes for highly stable surfaces, which reduce anxiety and promote harmony when used by multiple people concurrently.
Durability: In an environment where spills are to be expected, the lack of upholstery reduces the anxiety, guilt, and shame associated with accidental stains. Multiple layers of hard surface coating allow for comfortable use without fear of damage.
Visual Cues: A ladderback chair style adds relaxing horizontal lines with gentle curves, avoiding the the agitating vertical lines of slat- or spindle-back chairs, while high color contrast between tabletop, legs, and the surrounding environment enhances visibility and ease-of-use.
Aesthetics: The color and texture of the wood integrates naturally with the rest of the home, and the hand-carved details in the table apron add a touch of warmth and beauty.

This amount of effort and forethought seems like overkill to many, since to most people it would not make a dramatic difference. But these environments have not been built for the general public, but rather for those recovering from severe mental trauma. To understand why such fanatical attention to detail is justified, it can be useful to first look at injuries which are easier to see. Consider the following:

Intensive Care for the Mind

Consider the following:

People who are recovering from serious physical trauma are vulnerable to countless sources of danger that are all around us, but that would not affect a typical healthy person. In this case, they can be placed in a medical intensive-care unit (ICU), an environment that has been painstakingly designed to remove all sources of infection so that patients do not suffer additional injury and all of their available resources can go toward healing. While perfectly healthy people do not need to live in an ICU to recover from everyday problems, they would certainly benefit from its existence should they find themselves recovering from serious physical trauma.

Changing only a few words, an equally true statement can be made:

People who are recovering from serious mental trauma are vulnerable to countless sources of danger that are all around us, but that would not affect a typical healthy person. In this case, they can live in a trauma recovery housing facility, an environment that has been painstakingly designed to remove all sources of mental interference so that patients do not suffer additional injury and all of their available resources can go toward healing. While perfectly healthy people do not need to live in a trauma recovery housing facility to recover from everyday problems, they would certainly benefit from its existence should they find themselves recovering from serious mental trauma.

Making matters worse, while trauma makes people vulnerable, recovering from that trauma requires people to make themselves even more vulnerable, as the process of trauma recovery often involves confronting difficult emotions and memories that have been suppressed or avoided, and sometimes challenging core beliefs and worldviews, which can lead to confusion and a diminished sense of control.

While this emotional exposure is uncomfortable or even painful, it is a vital precursor of healing and growth, and can lead people to better understanding themselves and their coping mechanisms, forming stronger and more authentic relationships based on trust and empathy, building emotional strength and the ability to navigate future challenges, and learning to express emotions and set boundaries to reclaim a sense of control and personal agency.

However, if people suffer additional injury during this voluntary vulnerability, they can not only be set back in their healing, but worse, they can be discouraged from trying again, and the risks of harm and suppression grow with the severity of the trauma. Even when not as seriously harmful, what would be shrugged off as a minor annoyance and forgotten by most people could have an outsized effect on someone in recovery, consuming precious mental energy and interfering with sleep, potentially exhausting someone already operating at diminished capacity before she even leaves her home, leading to wasted therapy sessions or even emotional dysregulation.

To that end, we have endeavored to take trauma-informed design to its logical extreme to make Haven House and Cloud Nine Studios effectively ICUs for mental health recovery, removing stress triggers and sources of conflict wherever possible, no matter how minor. The dining table was just one example; similar care was taken with nearly all other furnishings and architectural features in these thoughtfully planned environments. Some of the areas of focus include: