Adaptations to Windowlessness

Abstract

This research examines the use of visual material to decorate windowed and windowless offices. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) Occupants of windowless offices should put up more visual materials than do occupants of windowed offices to compensate for the stimulus deprivation; (2) visual materials in windowless offices should consist of more "surrogate views" (e.g., landscapes and cityscapes) than the visual materials in windowed offices where real views are present; and (3) visual decor in windowless offices should be dominated by materials with a nature content. A detailed content analysis of wall decor used in 75 offices on the University of Washington campus was conducted. Results show that occupants of windowless space used twice as many (195 versus 82) visual materials to decorate their offices. Further, materials in windowless offices were dominated by nature themes as predicted in hypothesis 3. Although windowless occupants did not use significantly more "surrogate views" overall than did occupants of windowed spaces, content of the surrogate views was significantly different for the two windowed conditions. People in windowless offices used more landscapes and fewer cityscapes than did occupants of windowed spaces.