Sensing space: Designing for the Five Senses(smell)

Part 4

Every space has a smell.

Walk into a restaurant, a hotel lobby, a hospital, or a familiar home, and the air carries more than scent-

it carries identity.

We know these smells. We don’t need to see the tiles of a hospital or the table settings in a café to know where we are. One breath tells us. That’s because smell is memory, tucked deep inside us—recognisable, emotional, and profoundly nostalgic.

Materials Breathe, Too

Smell doesn’t just sit in the air. It clings to materials.

A leather sofa carries its scent- rich, warm, slightly sweet. A wooden spoon smells of years of cooking, absorbing flavours and histories. Even steel or marble, seemingly sterile, can pick up the essence of the environment over time. Every surface is a silent archivist, absorbing the smells of life and becoming part of the emotional landscape.

Materials, in this way, become almost human—holding memories, emotions, and stories in the invisible language of scent.

The Familiar and Transportive

Smell has the uncanny ability to transport us, not physically, but psychologically.

Have you ever stood in a room that smelled like a bakery, even though it wasn’t one? Your body reacts. You feel hungry, warm, perhaps even comforted-as if you're back in your grandmother’s kitchen.

Or you’re walking through a gallery, but the scent reminds you of sunscreen and ocean air. Suddenly, you’re no longer in a gallery-you’re at the beach, in your mind.

Our brains are deeply conditioned to associate specific smells with specific places and times. When that association is broken or shifted, it creates a surreal experience-a doorway into memory or imagination. It can give us the ability to shape out own experience and memory of a space.

Designing with Smell

So why do we often design only for the eye? To ignore smell is to leave out an entire emotional dimension of space.

Imagine:

• A meditation room that smells like pine and cold stone.

• A co-working studio that wakes you up with citrus and mint.

• A cozy living room that smells like fresh coffee and warm linen, inviting you to slow down and stay awhile.

Smell makes spaces feel alive-not static, but breathing. It anchors people emotionally and gives materials a kind of personality.

To design for smell is to design for what lingers.

After the lights are off, after the door has closed, scent stays-hovering, whispering, remembering.

Smell is the soul of space. And like the best designs, it’s felt before it’s understood.