Redefining Luxury: The Role of Healthy Materials in Sustainable and Wellness-Focused Hospitality

Katie Sander Smith NCIDQ, CID, IIDA, NEWH, Associate, Interior Designer, Cuningham;
Monica Coleman NCIDQ, CID, IIDA, NEWH, Interior Designer, Cuningham;
Amy Frye, Associate Principal, National Research Director, Cuningham
Contributing author: [email protected]

Abstract

The hospitality industry is redefining luxury through a focus on wellness, sustainability, and authenticity, moving beyond material excess to prioritize guest health and environmental responsibility. This paper uncovers the role that healthy materials (non-toxic, low-VOC emissions and content, and environmentally sustainable) shape our indoor air quality, human health, and guest satisfaction. Drawing on recent research and case studies, including the Confluence Hotel and Caribou Coffee, the tangible benefits of healthier material choices are shared. With the support of rating systems and digital platforms, the design profession is equipping hospitality environments to lead this transformation, positioning healthy materials as foundational strategy for the future of modern luxury.

Introduction

The hospitality industry is undergoing a transformative shift, driven by conscious travelers who are redefining luxury. Traditional notions of luxury, once expressed through grand lobbies and an overabundance of materials, are giving way to a new definition of luxury centered on intangible values: time, personalization, authenticity, social responsibility, sustainability, and a clear hospitality importance placed on wellness commitment. As travelers become increasingly attuned to their environments, the role of guest preferences in shaping design outcomes has never been more influential.

Within this evolution, defining healthy materials becomes important; while the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “healthy” as “showing physical, mental, or emotional well-being: evincing good health” (Merriam-Webster, 2025), the post-pandemic landscape has heightened awareness of how built environments affect the human experience. This focus expands the implications for human health, directly influencing personal choices and the design of spaces in which people live, work, and travel.

This paper highlights how these forces are reshaping the industry, outlining the financial imperative that accompanies healthier, more sustainable design decisions, and highlighting how the design profession can respond. It explores how material choices at the project level can support the intersection of sustainability (good for the planet) and wellness (good for the guest), establishing healthy materials as a defining pillar of modern luxury.

Defining Healthy Materials

Healthy materials are building and furnishing materials designed to enhance occupant health, improve indoor air quality (IAQ), reduce chemical toxicity, and promote environmental sustainability. These materials emit less harmful substances, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and are non-toxic, sustainable (e.g., bamboo, bio-based, PVC free, recycled metals), and safe throughout their lifecycle, from production to disposal. Key characteristics include low VOC emissions, low VOC content, non-toxic compositions (free from harmful substances like formaldehyde, asbestos, or phthalates), and mold resistance. A recent study done by the WELL Building Institute, that focused on productivity and its economic benefit, found a 61% to 101% improvement in cognitive function due to enhanced indoor environmental and air quality, which translated into employee productivity benefits estimated at $6,500 to $7,500 per person per year (Hartke, J., Worden, K., Yang, M., & Gray, W. A., 2025). Materials that can improve

these spaces include mold-resistant drywall, low-VOC paints, bio-based materials (wood, hemp, bamboo) and organic fibers such as linens and organic cottons, all of which can support safer and more comfortable indoor environments. Information on material product composition and chemical content can be found in Health Product Declarations (HPD) provided by manufacturers to ensure transparency in product data (Health Product Declaration Collaborative).

On a larger scale, multiple U.S. states are advancing policies to restrict hazardous chemicals such as phthalates in products including vinyl flooring, building on landmark efforts like Washington’s Safer Products for Washington Act and California’s Proposition 65, which both target phthalates due to their health risks (Safer States, 2025; Toxic-Free Future, 2025; Washington State Department of Ecology, 2025). This growing state-level momentum is fueling a broader national market transformation, influencing what materials are specified and installed in public spaces (Safer States, 2025).

Implications for Human Health, Hospitality Importance

Choosing building materials significantly affects human health by influencing indoor air quality (IAQ) and mitigating risks like sick building syndrome (SBS). Materials such as synthetic paints, adhesives, and carpets can release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and foster microbial growth, such as mold, which impacts occupant health. These conditions trigger SBS symptoms, including respiratory problems, fatigue, headaches, and skin irritation, leading to irritability, reduced focus, and stress that can diminish guest satisfaction and staff performance (Wan et al., 2021). Research has also indicated that healthier environments can boost employee productivity by 8-10% and enhance retention rates (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2020).

Healthy materials are important in the hospitality industry, significantly influencing guest health, comfort, and satisfaction, as well as staff retention and business reputation. These materials can enhance health outcomes, lower operational costs, and improve employee retention (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2020). Using mold-resistant drywall and bio-based materials can help reduce moisture-related mold growth and airborne allergens, supporting better respiratory health for building occupants (Syriani, J., 2023). A pilot study by Nored et al. (2024) pinpointed carpets, furniture, and cleaning products as primary VOC sources in hotel rooms, emitting compounds like chloroform, benzene, and d-limonene. While short-term guest exposure showed no significant non-cancer risk (hazard index <1), chronic exposure for staff posed a cumulative cancer risk of 2.25 × 10⁻⁶, with chloroform accounting for nearly half.

When guests experience cleaner air and fewer irritation triggers, they tend to report higher satisfaction with the indoor environment, which can in turn support longer stays and repeat visits in hospitality settings (Kim et al., 2021; Zanni et al., 2023). Using low-emission, moisture-resistant materials is essential to minimize respiratory irritation, sensory discomfort, and long-term carcinogenic risks, especially for staff with extended exposure (Kim & Lee, 2022). Additionally, poor material choices can contribute to greater environmental issues like ozone depletion and global warming, further impacting IAQ and occupant health (Kokulu & Acun ÖzgĂŒnler, 2023).

Financial Imperative

The financial argument for healthy materials extends beyond basic cost savings to encompass holistic financial performance. While materials designed to reduce toxicity (e.g., those avoiding high-VOC paints, glues, and poor ventilation) generate a major financial benefit by avoiding health costs associated with conventional construction, the most compelling case is made by lifecycle analysis. Although healthy materials may involve a modest 2-5% higher initial costs, they deliver substantial 15-30% lifecycle savings through improved durability, superior energy efficiency, and reduced maintenance, often providing a payback period of just 3-5 years (World Green Building Council, 2021). This market shift is fueling rapid industry growth; the green materials market is expected to surge from $316 billion in 2025 to $922 billion by 2035, driven in part by factors like reduced employee sick days, saving an estimated $1,000–$3,000 per employee annually (Markets and Markets, 2024).

In addition, durable, high-quality healthier materials, combined with strong sustainability practices, can significantly enhance guest experience and brand value, directly resulting in revenue gain. Hotels that demonstrate strong sustainability credentials and practices often command a 4.4 -7.7% per square foot in room rentals (Hotel Investment Today, 2024). Hotel Marcel in New Haven, CT, employed a sustainability strategy featuring energy efficient retrofits, more than 1,000 solar panels, high performance insulation, and battery storage that allows the hotel to operate entirely on electricity with no fossil fuel use (Hotel Marcel, 2025). These measures reduce its energy cost to only about $3.00 per occupied room night, a drop from the current regional industry average of around $15.50 (Thiessen, 2024).

The Populus Hotel in Denver, CO, recognized as the first carbon-neutral hotel in the U.S., sustainable approach includes rigorous vetting of energy-efficient systems, low-embodied-carbon materials, and regenerative design practices that connect with local communities. A key component of Populus’s strategy is its carbon dashboard, a transparent tracking tool that monitors the property’s operational emissions, energy use, embodied carbon from materials, and the effectiveness of carbon-reduction measures over time (Urban Villages, 2025). This dashboard supports continuous improvement by providing real-time insights that guide decision-making and ensure the hotel maintains its carbon-neutral performance. With these goals embedded at every stage of design and operations, Populus demonstrates that high luxury can coexist with ambitious climate accountability and sustainability at its core.

Redefinition of Luxury

Traditional luxury, defined by extravagant lobbies and material excess, is being replaced by a focus on intangible values: time, personalization, social responsibility, and authenticity. Modern luxury pillars now include:

  • Hyper-Personalization: Luxury is an experience tailored to individual needs, using technology to anticipate preferences, offer bespoke itineraries, and provide human-centered services, with the potential for added assistance from Artificial Intelligence profiling.
  • Time and Seamless Convenience: Time is the affluent traveler’s scarcest Hotels must eliminate friction through contactless check-in/out, flexible schedules, and personal concierge services to maximize relaxation.
  • Authenticity and Exclusivity: Guests seek unique, curated experiences, such as behind-the-scenes cultural access, private dining, and genuine connections to the local community and
  • Social Responsibility: Selecting materials from manufacturers that support human rights in their day-to-day operations and supply chains, along with positive impacts on their workers and the local communities.

Programs such as the Wyndham Green Program demonstrate how green cleaning products not only protect staff and guests but also support brand credibility and environmental stewardship (Wyndham Hotels, 2025). Brands like Six Senses, Auberge Resorts Collection, and Small Luxury Hotels of the World are integrating sustainability, ethical sourcing, and holistic wellness as core business drivers (Six Senses, 2025; Auberge Resorts, 2025; Small Luxury Hotels, 2025). These initiatives create restorative settings central to modern luxury experiences.

The hospitality industry must continue to advocate and innovate with bio-based materials, advanced air filtration along with properly scaled mechanical systems (energy saving), and smart technologies to enhance IAQ and well-being. By viewing sustainability and wellness as integral to luxury, hotels will not only thrive but also shape a more responsible and meaningful travel industry. This redefinition of luxury aligns with sustainability and wellness, shaping spaces that nurture both people and the planet.

Guest Preferences

Consumer expectations are evolving, with modern travelers prioritizing wellness-centric and environmentally conscious accommodations. This luxury transformation is now embedded in architecture, materials, and operational ethos. Hotels increasingly specify natural, low-emission materials including reclaimed wood, bamboo, and organic fibers to reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and enhance IAQ (Kim & Lee, 2022). These environmentally mindful choices reflect a broader social trend: 73% of travelers value sustainability in accommodation, and 76% actively seek eco-conscious vacation options (Booking.com, 2024). Yet, the “intention-behavior gap” remains, often driven by higher room costs, limited availability, and proximity.

To close this gap, brands must offer transparent, affordable, and verifiable sustainability solutions across their entire portfolios. Third-party certifications such as LEED, WELL, and Green Key, among others, provide measurable assurance, validated by global standards from organizations like the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and EarthCheck. Industry leaders are already setting measurable goals; Six Senses aims to reduce carbon emissions by 46% by 2030, while Red Carnation Hotel Collection plans to achieve net-zero by 2050 (Six Senses, 2025; Red Carnation, 2025). In tandem, wellness and sustainable tourism initiatives that focus on physical, mental, and spiritual well-being are converging to form the foundation of a luxury ethos rooted in responsibility and renewal.

The Design Profession’s Response

The design profession should proactively integrate sustainable design and consider using tools within their project scopes to help meet both wellness and sustainability demands for the hospitality sector. The following tools provide data on material safety, sustainability performance, social responsibility, and lifecycle impacts, fostering a holistic approach to selecting materials in hospitality environments. As our industry evolves, these tools continue to be redefined with new features, datasets, and certifications to improve transparency, carbon accounting, and human health criteria.

  • USGBC LEED v5: the latest update to the LEED rating system promoting circularity, recycling, and low-emission materials with an emphasis on decarbonization and material reuse.
  • One Click LCA: a life-cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon accounting platform that helps quantify embodied and operational carbon, supporting designers and developers in meeting decarbonization targets throughout a project’s lifecycle.
  • Building Transparency’s EC3 Tool: an open-access database and assessment tool that enables users to compare and evaluate the embodied carbon of construction materials using Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), promoting more informed and lower-carbon material selection.
  • Health Product Declaration (HPD): a disclosure of the chemicals present in a product and identifies any potential concerns by comparing against priority hazard lists, including the GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals and additional government agencies HPDs contribute to compliance with green building programs including LEED v4, WELL, Google Portico, and Living Product Challenge.
  • Parsons Healthy Materials Lab: provides educational courses and resources for designers on how to integrate healthier material choices, with training in material chemistry and sustainable practices.
  • Living Future Institute’s Red List program: highlights classes of chemicals that should be avoided in building products such as formaldehyde, asbestos, poly-vinyl chloride, and
  • Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute: offers a certification program that verifies the sustainability performance of products across five categories: Material Health, Product Circularity, Social Fairness, Water & Soil Stewardship, and Clean Air & Climate Protection.
  • mindful MATERIALS: provides unified criteria through their ‘Common Material Framework’ toolkit to support holistic, sustainable specifications.
  • MindClick: a hospitality focused rating program that evaluates manufacturers and their products, including furniture, fixtures, and equipment, environmental health
  • Certified B Corporation: provides third-party certification for companies that meet rigorous standards for social and environmental responsibility.
  • Design for Freedom (Grace Farms Foundation): a movement actively promoting social responsibility and human rights in the building and construction industry.
  • ESG Framework: an approach for evaluating a company’s Environmental, Social, and  Governance performance.

Tools such as LEED v5, One Click LCA and Building Transparency’s EC3 tool provide robust frameworks for carbon tracking and life-cycle assessment, allowing designers to evaluate both operational and embodied carbon impacts (U.S. Green Building Council, 2025; One Click LCA, 2025; Building Transparency, 2025). Complementing these, platforms like mindful MATERIALS and Cradle to Cradle offer comprehensive guidance for selecting healthier, low-carbon, and transparently sourced materials (mindful MATERIALS, 2025; MindClick, 2025; Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, 2025). From a social fairness perspective, resources including Certified B Corporation, Grace Farms’ Design for Freedom initiative, and broader ESG frameworks help promote ethical sourcing, labor transparency, and responsible supply-chain practices across global and local markets (Certified B Corporation, 2025.; Design for Freedom, 2025; ESG, 2025).

Material Choices at the Project Level

Designers make healthy material choices typically at the project level. Approaches can range from broad strategies, like aligning with established sustainability frameworks to specific actions like choosing safer or more sustainable materials demonstrated by two case studies: the Confluence Hotel and Caribou Coffee. Both case studies prove that small but targeted material decisions can deliver positive returns.

The Confluence Hotel, which reopened in the Fall of 2023 in Hastings, MN, celebrates the city’s local character through a thoughtful adaptive reuse of a historic landmark. The original structure served as an industrial manufacturing facility for the H.D. Hudson Manufacturing Company Factory, which produced products for industrial agriculture and pest control. Restoring and preserving the history of this prominent building by the Mississippi River was a community essential, resulting in a design that honors its industrial past.

The design approach for The Confluence Hotel emphasizes regional identity and deep sustainability, skillfully integrating reclaimed materials and practices that preserve the building’s heritage while fundamentally enhancing occupant health and environmental performance.

Crucially, these sustainable choices were not merely theoretical; the resulting environment was designed to ensure that the dedication to well-being is immediately felt by the occupant. This concept is expressed through a creative fusion of seemingly contradictory architectural elements: the design utilizes rigid and organic forms, balances rough and refined materials inherited from the historic architecture, and employs a palette of warm and cool colors, all working together to create a space that is both visually engaging and profoundly restorative.

The commitment to health is evident throughout the 84-room boutique hotel’s interiors. All carpet and paint selections meet the UL GREENGUARD Gold certification standards (www.ul.com), ensuring low chemical emissions that support improved indoor air quality and occupant well-being. These choices can reduce guests’ exposure to harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs), contributing to healthier indoor air quality (IAQ). As a result, the use of low-emitting materials across interior finishes can enhance the overall guest experience by fostering a cleaner, healthier environment. In addition to reducing chemical load, material strategies at the Confluence also prioritized using local resources and therefore minimized environmental impact. One example, by choosing wood flooring sourced within Minnesota, local forestry industries were supported and transportation-related carbon emissions by an estimated 15–20% compared to non-local alternatives were reduced (Dsilva, J., Zarmukhambetova, S., & Locke, J., 2023).

Other material specifications further supported a low-impact design, including the use of recycled content finishes, metal trims, and PVC-free wallcovering to minimize chemical exposure for all.

These decisions collectively reflect a powerful commitment where each choice, from enhancing IAQ to supporting local economies, reinforces that small-scale, locally attuned interventions can collectively advance the health of both people and our planet.

Caribou Coffee’s new Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) Terminal 2 location is set to open in February 2026 blending the Midwest brand’s iconic “cabin” aesthetic with a modern, sophisticated, and sustainable twist. The entire project exemplifies sustainable design, with goals aligned to the LEED v4 Framework. This approach prioritizes occupant health and environmental responsibility through the careful specification of materials with low to zero VOCs, North American sourced components such as tile and FSC Certified wood, and limited chemical content verified by third-party certifications. The design prioritized materials that minimize harmful emissions. Countertops, for example, are acrylic resin-based solid surfaces that meet NSF, Declare, and silica-free criteria, helping to improve Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and limit chemical exposure to users.

Furthermore, materials were carefully referenced against the LEED v4 and Living Building Challenge v4 Red List during selection. The tile chosen for the retail space was sourced within the USA to comply with LEED v4 requirements, effectively supporting local and regional supply chains. The use of HPDs and Declare labels was instrumental, as they are recognized by LEED v4 and v4.1 for Material Ingredient Reporting, requiring full ingredient disclosure and screening for hazardous substances (Living Future Institute, 2025). These simple but effective material choices demonstrate a clear commitment to creating a healthier, low-impact environment for travelers passing through MSP (Metropolitan Airports Commission, 2024).

Conclusion

Healthy materials are not a fleeting trend or a niche offering; they are the definitive expression of the new luxury. Every surface, finish, and fabric is chosen deliberately, embedding the guest’s physical and mental wellness into the very structure of the building. In an industry where experiences are the product, surrounding people with consciously chosen, non-toxic materials deliver a new form of luxury. By conveying to the customer that their health matters, brands turn a sense of protection into a defining part of the experience. Healthy materials are the new standard of excellence in hospitality.

This integrated approach where sustainability and wellness are inseparable from design and profit translates into a quiet, modern luxury that guests feel, not just observe. As the hospitality industry continues to progress, the integration of these materials stands out as a central strategy, not only improving indoor air quality and reducing health risks for both guests and staff, but also enhancing brand value, operational efficiency, and cost savings. By embracing certifications, digital tools, and material transparency, designers and hospitality leaders can create restorative environments that meet growing consumer demand for authenticity, sustainability, social responsibility, and wellness.

References

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