Neurodiversity in design: how the workplace is catching up with colleagues

For years, workplace design has talked a lot about collaboration, culture and experience. More recently, it has explored wellbeing, flexibility and choice. But one of the most important conversations in the built environment is only just beginning to gather proper momentum – neurodiversity. Andrew Zacharias, country head for Agilité Luxembourg, explores the topic in more detail.

The CIPD says neurodiversity refers to natural differences in human brain function and behavioural traits, and estimates suggest as many as 20% of people may be neurodivergent in some way. In parallel, BSI’s PAS 6463, the UK guidance on neurodiversity and the built environment, is explicit that design should respond to a neurodiverse society and create places that are “more inclusive for everyone”.

Rethinking the office: Why neurodiversity matters now

Workstation | Workspace design show 2026

That last point matters, because neurodiversity in design is often introduced as though it is a niche issue, or something only relevant to a defined minority group. In practice, that framing can be part of the problem. It makes the subject feel specialist before people have had a chance to understand it.

What is becoming clear, both from research and from practice, is that this is not simply about designing for a label. It is about designing for people as they really are – different from one another, different from task to task, and often different from one day to the next.

Creating work environments that reflect how people really work

Offices have traditionally been designed to a one-size-fits-all model, yet many of the features now associated with neuro-inclusive design, such as quieter zones, clearer spatial cues, stronger acoustics and a broader choice of settings, benefit far more than a single user group.

That chimes with the wider evidence. Research on workplace design has repeatedly found that there is no true ‘out-of-the-box’ office, and that personality, preference and task all influence how people perceive and perform in a space. A 2018 research collaboration between the University of Bath, Bath Spa University and Atkins argued exactly that, noting that different spatial and environmental qualities, including density, views and sound levels, shape experience in different ways, and that activity-based environments can help support different tasks and user profiles.

So perhaps the better starting point is not: “how do we design for neurodivergent people?” but “why have we accepted workplaces that ask everyone to perform in exactly the same conditions?”

Open-plan offices are a good example. For some tasks and some personalities, they can support energy, interaction and visibility. For others, they create a constant low-level tax on concentration. A recent systematic review of 55 studies (Design Research Society Digital Library) found that background noise and open-plan workspaces negatively affect workplace wellbeing, while visual connections with plants and natural objects can improve it. Another 2025 study of 971 employees in activity-based offices found that better perceptions of task privacy, person-environment fit, satisfaction with the work environment and ease of switching workspaces were associated with better recovery, stronger work ability, lower burnout risk and fewer insomnia symptoms.

That helps explain why the conversation around neurodiversity in design is growing now, not in isolation, but alongside bigger questions about the future of the office itself. Since the pandemic, organisations have spent a lot of time asking how to make people want to come back into the workplace. Usually that conversation centres on collaboration, hospitality and community. Those things matter. But they are not the full answer.

People do not just come to the office for culture. They come for different reasons on different days. Sometimes they need connection. Sometimes they need focus. Sometimes they need a sense of belonging. Sometimes they need somewhere calmer than home. Sometimes they need somewhere calmer than the office they already have.

That is why neuro-inclusive design should not be reduced to a checklist of specialist features. It is not simply about adding a quiet room and calling it done. It is about recognising that people process space differently, and that good design gives them more than one way to succeed within it.

BSI’s PAS 6463 reflects this breadth. It covers lighting, acoustics, thermal comfort and wayfinding, but the bigger principle is that poorly designed environments can create avoidable stress and exclusion, while better ones reduce friction and make participation easier. That is not just a social argument, it’s a commercial one too. The World Health Organisation notes that safe and healthy working environments are more likely to minimise tension and conflict at work and improve staff retention, performance and productivity. The CIPD similarly points to neuroinclusion as important for wellbeing, performance and retention.

This is where the topic becomes particularly interesting from a design perspective. Because once you stop treating it as an inclusion add-on, it starts to sharpen the whole brief.

From compliance to experience: A new approach to inclusive design

Lighting at workstation | Workspace design show 2026

Lighting is no longer just about compliance and lux levels. It becomes a question of control, glare, contrast and how different types of light affect attention and fatigue. Acoustics are no longer a technical afterthought. They become central to whether people can actually think. Wayfinding is not just signage. It is about reducing cognitive load and making a place legible. Spatial planning is not just density and headcount. It is about offering refuge as well as interaction, predictability as well as stimulation.

If we collectively accept that different tasks need different settings, and that hybrid work has changed employee expectations around autonomy and focus, then it follows that the most resilient workplaces will be the ones that offer people more choice, better clarity and less unnecessary stress. That is good for neurodivergent colleagues, yes. But it is also good for the finance manager trying to work through numbers without interruption, the project team reviewing drawings in a lively group, or the person who simply arrived feeling overstimulated that morning.

That distinction matters because it shifts the conversation away from this perception of designing for a small group of people and towards designing for the reality of human variation. Our moods shift. Our tasks shift. Our capacity shifts. We are not robots, and our workplaces should stop pretending otherwise. Some people may want to be in the thick of the action, others need quieter settings, and many of us move between those states depending on the day and the task at hand.

One of the challenges for clients is that neuro-inclusive design is ahead of the market in some respects. The intent is there, but the data is still emerging. Compared with sustainability, where benchmarks and cost uplifts are better understood, neurodiversity in design can still feel like stepping into less familiar territory. Clients can see the logic, but quantifying the return on investment in the same way is harder when the outcomes are human, behavioural and long-term.

For us, that is why this conversation matters now. We are working on a major project in Luxembourg where neurodiversity is not a side consideration, but a core design principle. It is already changing the kinds of questions being asked, and rightly so. Not “what does a standard office look like?” but “what kind of environment helps more people do their best work?” Not “what is the minimum we need to provide?” but “how do we design a workplace that feels intuitive, supportive and usable for the widest range of people?”

That feels like a more relevant question for the future of work anyway, because in reality the office is no longer competing only with other offices, but with home, autonomy, comfort, and people’s growing willingness to say, quite reasonably: “this environment is not working for me.”

What I’ve learned over the past few months is that neurodiversity in design is not about creating special treatment, but about catching up with what people have been telling us, directly and indirectly, for years – that environment shapes behaviour, concentration, mood and belonging.

The workplaces that respond to that reality will not just be more inclusive. They will be better.