I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years. And for most of that time, the conversation about how spaces affect people’s nervous systems happened in pretty small rooms: occupational therapy practices, specialized design circles, the occasional workshop with people who were already convinced.

That’s changing. I’ve noticed it gradually, and then all at once.

This month I’ll be presenting at Neuroplaces in London, which is part of the London Design Festival, one of the largest design events in the world. In December I’ll be at the International Conference on ADHD in Baltimore, which is one of the biggest annual gatherings in the ADHD field. And in 2028 I’ll be leading a training for about 100 designers at Earl Swensson Associates, a large architectural firm in Nashville.

Three very different rooms. Three very different audiences. All asking some version of the same question: how do the spaces we design actually affect the people inside them?

I’m not sharing this to talk about myself. I’m sharing it because I think it says something worth paying attention to about where the design field is, and where it’s heading.

What changed, and why it changed now

Neuroinclusive design has been around as a concept for a long time. What’s new is that the mainstream is starting to take it seriously.

A few years ago, getting a session on sensory-informed design onto the program of a major international design festival would have been a harder conversation. Now it’s there. The International Conference on ADHD, which brings together clinicians, researchers, coaches, educators, and families, is including design in what has historically been a clinical and behavioral conversation. Large architecture firms are bringing in training on how sensory processing affects the people who use those spaces. These are the firms designing office buildings, hospitality spaces, and multi-family housing for thousands of people.

That’s not a niche conversation anymore.

I don’t think this happened because the design world suddenly got more compassionate, though I’d like to believe that’s part of it. I think it happened because the data caught up. There’s enough research now on how lighting, acoustics, spatial layout, and material choices affect nervous system regulation that it’s harder to ignore. And there are enough neurodiverse people, with ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, and other variations, who are naming what wasn’t working about the spaces they were supposed to feel comfortable in.

The design world is starting to ask different questions

For a long time, design education focused on what a space looked like. Then it started incorporating how a space functioned. What’s happening now is a third layer: how a space feels neurologically rather than aesthetically.

That’s a different skill set. It asks designers to understand things like how a specific color temperature in lighting affects focus and sleep. Why open-plan spaces that photograph beautifully are genuinely difficult for a lot of people to work in. How the placement of furniture affects whether someone feels safe enough to settle into a room.

These aren’t soft, subjective questions. They have specific, learnable answers. And that’s what I’ve spent a significant part of my career building frameworks around: for the families I work with directly, and for designers through my IDCEC-certified course, Interior Design for Sensory-Friendly Homes.

The fact that these frameworks are now being requested by major design festivals and architecture firms tells me the field is ready in a way it wasn’t five years ago.

The clinical world is paying attention too

What’s interesting about the ADHD conference is that it’s not a design event. It’s a clinical one. The people in that room are primarily working to support individuals with ADHD through medication, coaching, behavioral strategies, and therapy.

The environment those people go home to hasn’t historically been part of that conversation. But it’s hard to ignore the connection between a home that feels chaotic and dysregulating, and someone’s ability to actually benefit from all the other support they’re getting. A well-structured coaching session doesn’t undo what a poorly lit, acoustically overwhelming kitchen does every morning.

I think that’s why design is starting to show up in clinical spaces, as a part of the picture that was always missing rather than a replacement for anything else.

What this means if you’re a designer

If you work with clients, some of them are neurodiverse. Whether they’ve told you or not, whether they know it or not. The research suggests roughly 15 to 20 percent of the population has some form of neurological difference that affects how they experience their environment. That number goes up significantly if you’re working with families.

Sensory-informed design works as a layer of practice rather than a specialty track for a narrow group of clients. It makes you better at your job across the board, because it asks you to think more precisely about what a space actually does to the people in it, not just what it looks like in photos.

What this means if you’re just trying to make your home feel better

You don’t need a diagnosis to have a home that feels like too much sometimes. A living room that feels loud at the end of the day. A bedroom that doesn’t help you wind down. A kitchen that makes mornings harder than they need to be.

Lighting temperature, scale of furniture, how a room flows, where the visual weight lands: a lot of what this work addresses affects everyone. The families I work with aren’t all working from a clinical framework. Most of them just know something isn’t working, and they can’t quite put their finger on what.