Trauma-Informed Design
Architectural colour design for safety, belonging, and healing.
WHAT IS Trauma-Informed Design in architecture?
Contrary to what many architects and designers think, trauma-informed design isn’t limited to crisis or care settings. It’s relevant anywhere humans interact with buildings and each other.
Our environment shapes our experience of life each and every day.
These effects accumulate over time, and are another way that social inequality plays out - people living in beautiful, safe environments are starting every day with an advantage over those living in poorly designed, unsafe environments.
Everyone needs a safe and beautiful environment in order to thrive.
For people recovering from traumatic events, or suffering from mental and physical illnesses, the need for appropriate, safe and healing spaces is even greater.
And yet, those who are most in need, are often subjected to the worst environments. It doesn’t have to be this way.
With a Trauma-Informed approach, architecture can be the first point of contact for traumatised people to cultivate or rebuild their sense of safety and connection to the world.
Lymesmith’s philosophy of Place Based Colour Design is entirely in alignment with Trauma Informed Design. After 15 years of collaborating with Architects and Designers to produce beautiful and engaging buildings through the careful consideration of colour, I’m ready to assist you to implement Trauma Informed Design Principles in your next project.
Trauma-Informed Design IS designing the feeling first
Working with Core Collective, Christopher Clinton Architects and SBLA Studio, Lymesmith developed a Trauma Informed approach to colour and materiality for prototype houses for the Hobart Women’s Shelter.
When we designed the Hobart Women's Shelter houses, we knew they should be unlike ‘regular’ rental homes or shelter accommodation. It was crucial that the houses felt like homes and could signify a 'new start' for the women and their children. Along with strategic spatial design, the palette of materials, textures and colours were carefully calibrated to provide sensory stimulation and connection to place, enabling residents to feel safe at home and safe in their bodies.
Shortlisted - 2024 Architecture Au, Social Impact Awards
Commendation - 2025 Interior Architecture, Tasmanian Architecture Awards
Hobart Women’s Shelter
“When I walked in here without any of my stuff, it felt homely. Straight away, I wanted to be here, and I could have just been in here when it was empty, and it would have felt homely. So I don’t know what that is, coziness and all of the colours and the wood and the texture are everything I like. If I was choosing to make a house, I would do it like this”
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“Your work embeds a layer of storytelling and artistic expression into the architectural expression, thereby creating a greater depth of meaning. The outcome provides multiple layers through which the end user can interact with the building."
Gabrielle Pelletier, Sam Crawford Architects
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“Sonia prepared a beautiful colour scheme where, rather than using one colour, she proposed 4 different greens to improve the restaurant’s spatial qualities and create depth and interest. It was such a wonderful experience working with Sonia. She made a good scheme into something really special.”
Phillip Arnold, Plus Minus Design
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“I have worked with Sonia for some time now and I admire her confident and bold approach to architecture. Sonia pushes the envelope – always thinking outside the box - and continually helps me to do the same."
Emili Fox, Architectus
How Trauma-Informed Design Applies to Your Projects
Every colour, material, and spatial arrangement in a building has the potential to either help regulate or overload the nervous systems of the building users.
However, most buildings are not designed with the nervous system in mind.
As designers, we are frequently asked to create spaces that are for ‘everybody’, i.e, spaces that are inclusive and ‘neutral’. This usually results in bland environments that feel institutional and boring - designing for ‘everybody’ may in fact be the same as designing for nobody. Nobody benefits, and nobody will love the end result.
Lymesmith’s approach to colour design for care settings such as women’s shelters, supported accommodation, hospices and hospitals, social housing, aged care and health clinics is transformative and urgently needed.
If you want to unlock the power of trauma-informed design in your work, and you want to understand how colour can create safe, humane and engaging environments that support healing, recovery and connection, get in touch today.
