Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and One Take, where we unpack the latest research shaping our understanding of indoor air and the built environment.

This week, we're diving into a paper that tackles a question millions of us have been living with since the pandemic: What actually makes a good home office?

The study is titled Home as an Office: Investigating the Associations Between Indoor Environmental Quality, Wellbeing and Performance in Work From Home Settings, and it explores a fascinating tension—between what sensors objectively measure and what people subjectively experience.

The Setup:

Researchers recruited 95 people working from home in Vancouver and Seattle and used a clever two-pronged approach. On one hand, participants were given desktop monitors that objectively measured PM2.5, total VOCs, CO₂, temperature, humidity, and sound levels—the hard numbers on the physical environment. On the other hand, they conducted detailed questionnaires asking people about their perceptions: Are you satisfied with the lighting? Do you have an ergonomic chair? Does noise from family interrupt you? They also measured outcomes using standardized surveys for psychological wellbeing, physical symptoms, and work performance.

The Core Question:

Which is the better predictor of wellbeing and productivity—the objective data from the sensors, or the subjective feelings of the occupants?

The Surprising Finding:

The data from the objective sensors—the actual measured levels of PM2.5, CO₂, and so on—showed predominantly weaker associations with how people felt or how productive they were. Even if CO₂ levels were a bit high or PM2.5 was slightly elevated, in this study it didn't have a strong direct link to reported wellbeing or performance.

Why? The authors suggest that indoor environmental quality in most homes was generally moderate, but more importantly, people have agency at home. If you're cold, you can change the thermostat. If the air feels stuffy, you can open a window. This ability to control and adapt seems to weaken the direct link between what a sensor measures and how people actually feel.

The Perception-Based Data Tells a Different Story:

When researchers looked at subjective perception, they found much stronger connections. Satisfaction with ergonomic furniture, good daylight, and a pleasant workspace aesthetic were all strongly linked to positive wellbeing and performance outcomes. People who felt good about their physical setup felt better and worked better.

The reverse was also true. Problems like unwanted interruptions from family, noise from the street, or even persistent kitchen odors were strongly associated with lower psychological wellbeing, reduced vitality, and depressed mood.

The Big Takeaway:

The paper's core message is not that objective indoor air quality doesn't matter—of course it does, especially at extreme levels. But in the context of working from home, our subjective experience of the space is a much better predictor of our wellbeing and performance than what a sensor might tell us.

Perception really is reality here. The feeling of being in control, having a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing space, and not being constantly interrupted—these are not just fluffy nice-to-haves. The study shows they have measurable, statistically significant associations with our mental health and productivity.

The Implications:

This challenges a purely engineering-led, sensor-driven approach to creating healthy buildings. It tells us we can't just focus on hitting certain parts per million. We need a more holistic, human-centered approach. When we design spaces for home working—or frankly, any space—we need to think just as much about ergonomics, acoustics, privacy, and personal control as we do about ventilation rates.

Home as an office: Investigating the associations between indoor environmental quality, well-being, and performance in work-from-home settings

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.113310

The One Take Podcast in Partnership with

SafeTraces and Inbiot

Do check them out in the links and on the Air Quality Matters Website

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction: The Home Office Question We've All Been Asking
• 00:01:35 The Study Design: Measuring Both Objective and Subjective Reality
• 00:02:55 The Surprising Finding: Sensors Don't Tell the Whole Story
• 00:03:32 The Agency Factor: Why Home is Different from the Office
• 00:04:05 Perception is Reality: The Power of Subjective Experience
• 00:04:41 The Problems That Matter: Interruptions, Noise, and Kitchen Odors
• 00:05:07 The Big Takeaway: Beyond Parts Per Million
• 00:05:53 Implications: A Human-Centered Approach to Indoor Spaces
• 00:06:40 The Validation: Your Uncomfortable Chair Really Does Matter
• 00:07:07 Closing: Thanks and Next Week