Sunlight Health Hacks: Rediscovering Vintage Hospital Designs That Harnessed the Sun for Healing and Longevity

By Deborah Holmen, M.Ed., NBCT, CLC

Open windows allow the sun and breeze to pour in.

Walk through any modern hospital atrium, and you’ll see daylight pouring in like a quiet promise. We owe much of that brightness to the risk-takers of the early 1800s who were convinced that sunbeams could do what medicine alone could not: lift spirits, clean air, and shave days off a patient’s recovery. Here’s the story—in my voice—of how architects, reformers, and a certain war-weary nurse threw open the windows of healthcare.

The Moment the Sun Walked In

Picture the average hospital ward around 1800: one mammoth hall, beds crammed side-by-side, a single fireplace belching soot, and windows so small they were more rumor than reality. Mortality rates were dreadful, and physicians began noticing a simple pattern: the darker the ward, the longer the fevers lingered. French surgeons were among the first to experiment with brighter, airier “pavilion” wings—separate, low-rise blocks set parallel to one another so light could strike both sides of every room. British medical journals soon echoed the results, noting lower infection rates wherever daylight and cross-breezes were abundant.

Florence Nightingale Spots the Obvious

When Florence Nightingale returned from the Crimean War, she carried casualty ledgers in one hand and sketches of sun-splashed wards in the other. In her 1859 treatise Notes on Hospitals, she insisted that “one-third of every wall should be glass” and that wards should run north–south so the sun could sweep from one row of windows to the other all day long. She wanted a window for every two beds and vents above each sill to keep the air moving — ideas so radical that they drew snickers from some architects. Within a decade, however, new hospitals from London to Philadelphia were advertising “Nightingale wards” as a badge of modernity.

The Pavilion Plan Takes Over

By the 1870s, most major institutions had been rebuilt as loose clusters of one- or two-story blocks, separated by lawns. Historians estimate that three-quarters of hospital construction in Britain between 1875 and 1900 followed the pavilion model, crediting it with reducing cross-infection at a time when germ theory was still in its infancy. Tall sash windows, double doors at each end, and ventilating turrets on the roof kept a constant churn of fresh, sun-warmed air.

Many moviegoers can recall these depictions of peaceful “infirmaries,” now hospitals, with nurses pushing patients around the lawns and doctors tending to patients soaking up the fresh air and sunshine. 

Sun Porches, Balconies, and Roof Decks

Not satisfied with merely allowing light to pass through glass, architects soon added iron-framed sun porches to the gable ends of hospital wards. The Royal Victoria Hospital in Montréal, which opened in 1893, featured balconies wide enough to roll entire beds outside, allowing patients to “take the cure” without leaving nursing supervision. Swiss doctor Auguste Rollier went even further, building sun-facing sanatoriums high in the Alps; his tuberculosis patients sunbathed in reclining chairs on terraced rooftops even during winter, wrapped in wool blankets but with their faces and chests exposed to the alpine sunlight. Modern medical reports tracked weight gains, increased appetites, and fewer relapses among these pioneers of “heliotherapy.”

Engineering Light and Air

Back in England, inventor-architect William Strutt demonstrated that sunlight didn’t have to compete with sooty fireplaces for dominance. His Derbyshire General Infirmary (1810) featured large windows combined with a ducted heating system that drew fresh air in under the floor, slightly warmed it, and vented it out through rooftop chimneys. Parliamentary inspectors reported warmer rooms and fewer outbreaks of typhus. Hospitals quickly adopted Strutt’s approach of combining mechanical airflow with ample glazing—not for aesthetic reasons, but because ward statistics showed it saved lives.

Lessons That Still Shine

1. Daylight is medicine. Modern studies echo what 19th-century matrons observed: surgical patients near windows use fewer painkillers, and depressed in-patients go home days earlier when assigned to sun-filled rooms.

2. Design is therapy. By treating building plans as part of the treatment protocol, pavilion reformers turned architecture into a clinical tool long before “evidence-based design” was a buzzword.

3. Comfort invites compassion. Nurses writing in The Lancet during the 1880s noted that families lingered longer—and provided more help—when wards felt bright and well-ventilated.

   
   

Each sunrise that glints across polished corridors today is a quiet salute to those 19th-century minds who refused to accept gloom as a side effect of illness. They studied, sketched, and sometimes argued the sun indoors—not as decoration, but as a partner in healing. Their legacy is the shaft of light that falls across a recovering child’s pillow, the view of treetops from an oncology chair, and the knowledge that, sometimes, the best prescription is simply to pull back the curtain and let the day pour in.

Deborah Holmen is the author of It Takes a Lot of Shit to Grow Beautiful Flowers: A Gardener's Guide to Life, and an educator specializing in personal growth, parenting, relationships, and life transitions. She draws on 25+ years of experience to offer thoughtful advice for navigating new chapters. Do you have a question for Dear Next Chapter? Contact Dear Next Chapter HERE