The Humanization of Indoor Environments: The Impact of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) on the Well-Being and Productivity of Saudi Residents

For many years, researchers and practitioners in the fields of architecture and interior design have focused on examining different strategies to make indoor spaces more human-centered and livable. As people spend most of their time in built environments such as offices, schools, and more importantly homes, there is an increasing need for a human-centered design approach to ensure that indoor spaces suit people’s needs. Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and its parameters, such as air quality, temperature, humidity, lighting, and acoustics, play a key role in creating human-centered spaces. While its impact on well-being and productivity has been well-studied globally, limited research has focused on IEQ in Saudi homes. Therefore, this study aims to examine the perception of Saudi citizens about the most impactful IEQ parameters on their well-being and productivity. A quantitative approach (questionnaire) was adopted to assess the obtained results, and descriptive statistics were used for the analysis. The first part of the questionnaire was related to participants’ demographic information, while the second part examined the impact of home IEQ on the residents’ well-being and productivity. The participants were 270 Saudi citizens who volunteered. Although the study found a positive relationship between the IEQ parameters and participants’ well-being and productivity, some parameters, such as temperature and humidity, affect the participants’ well-being more than their productivity, while other parameters, such as air quality, affect participants’ productivity more than their well-being.