How School Buildings Influence Student Health

Did you know that students spend over 15,000 hours in a school building by the time they graduate high school? Did you also know that the average school building lasts roughly 50 years?

In other words, if you design or construct school buildings, you have a huge hand in the lives of innumerable students––across multiple generations!

It goes without saying that when designing and building schools, it's important to create as healthy a building as possible. However, because many schools in the United States are more than 50 years old, they are susceptible to poor indoor conditions, including air pollution, mold, elevated noise levels, radon, asbestos, inadequate lighting, and more.

Schools and Student Health

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over the past 80 years, 250,000 public schools have been consolidated into roughly 98,000. And according to the US EPA, schools have four times as many occupants per building as office buildings, even when they have the same amount of floor space. This results in rapidly deteriorating buildings, where students are forced into spaces not originally intended for study, as in 31% of schools that use portable classrooms. Research from Harvard has even found that both ambient air pollution and access to green space are directly associated with chronic absenteeism in Massachusetts public schools.

But just how much is student performance affected by the building they're in? Quite a bit.

Inadequate ventilation has repeatedly been found to affect students' health, thinking, and performance. Low ventilation rates in schools have been associated with:

• Asthma symptoms
• Respiratory infections leading to absenteeism
• More frequent nurse visits
• Fatigue
• Impaired attention spans
• Poorer performance on math and reading tests.

Noisy environments also have a greater impact on children due to their developing language skills. As such, schools with noisier environments have been shown to affect children's comprehension, speech, memory, and other cognitive processes.

Windowless classrooms, a design trend that began with the 1973 energy crisis, are also a part of what makes older school buildings unhealthy. Lack of access to natural daylight has long been associated with headaches, depression, nearsightedness, and eyestrain. Alternatively, schools where students have access to windows, more time outdoors, and higher classroom illuminance have seen reductions in these symptoms, as well as improved sleep quality.

Creating Healthy School Buildings

We've talked before about the nine foundations of a healthy building. To design or build healthy schools that positively affect student health, thinking, and performance, you'll need to consider all nine of these foundations.

In this blog, we'll focus on how improved ventilation, air quality, and lighting benefit student health and learning. For in-depth information on all nine foundations, check out the PDF recently released by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality

Did you know that because children's lungs are still developing, they breathe in larger volumes of air relative to their body size? And unfortunately, more than 25 million children (nearly 50% of American students) attend schools that haven't adopted an indoor environmental quality (IEQ) plan or formed a strategy to identify and remediate poor air quality.

What's worse: common indoor air pollutants in schools have been observed at levels two to five times higher than outdoor concentrations. This, in turn, has been associated with acute chronic health effects like asthma, allergies, mucous membrane irritation, and impact on the central nervous system functioning. School staff, including teachers and custodians, are also negatively affected by poor IEQ; educational employees report the highest proportions of work-related asthma cases in the US.

Studies have shown that improving IEQ can positively affect cognitive outcomes, such as attention, concentration, decision-making, and memory. And multiple other studies have shown that when steps are taken to mitigate poor IEQ, students' academic performance improves.

Lighting

Lighting plays an essential role in an educational environment. Good-quality lighting creates optimal viewing conditions for students to read, write, and perform other classroom learning activities. There aren't as many studies on the impact of lighting in schools as there are on air quality, but we do know that children, with their larger pupils and significantly greater light-induced melatonin suppression, are more sensitive to light exposure than adults. Young adolescents have greater circadian system sensitivity to light exposure than older adolescents. Low indoor lighting levels, combined with less time spent outdoors, have also been linked to an increased risk of nearsightedness. Meanwhile, studies on daylight's health impacts report benefits such as improved vision, better sleep quality, and reduced symptoms of nearsightedness, eye strain, headaches, and depression.

Improving Schools with Skylights

You may have already guessed why we chose to focus on those foundations for a healthy building. But in case you didn't know, skylights can help address these concerns in schools.

VELUX skylights are expertly crafted and glazed to ensure bright, natural light throughout the buildings in which they're installed. Certain models can also open, allowing fresh air to flow in and dusty, stale air to flow out. When designing and building healthy school buildings, consider these commercial skylight options.

Prefabricated VELUX Modular Skylights

VELUX Modular Skylights (VMS) are an ideal daylighting solution for classrooms, libraries, cafeterias, gymnasiums, and common areas. Designed to provide large amounts of evenly distributed natural light, VMS systems help reduce glare and create brighter, more comfortable learning environments for students and staff.

Available in both fixed and venting configurations, VMS systems can also support natural ventilation strategies by allowing fresh air into the building while exhausting warm, stale air through the roof. Their modular design makes them especially effective for large educational facilities looking to maximize daylight across expansive interior spaces.

Commercial Sun Tunnel® Tubular Skylights

Not every area in a school has access to exterior windows or large roof openings. Commercial Sun Tunnel skylights are designed to bring daylight into these enclosed or hard-to-reach spaces. Using a highly reflective interior, these skylights channel daylight from the roof into interior spaces, reducing the need for artificial lighting during the day.

Ideal places to include tubular skylights include hallways, restrooms, administrative offices, storage rooms, and interior classrooms.

Metal-Framed Pinnacle Skylights

Pinnacle Skylights provide a durable, energy-efficient daylighting solution for educational buildings requiring high-performance overhead glazing. Their clean, low-profile design delivers consistent natural light while helping maintain indoor thermal comfort.

These metal-framed skylights are well-suited for schools seeking to balance daylight, energy efficiency, and long-term durability in spaces such as atriums, entryways, multi-purpose rooms, and circulation corridors.

Translucent Wall Systems

Translucent Wall Systems are another effective way to introduce natural light into school buildings while maintaining privacy and minimizing glare. These systems diffuse daylight evenly throughout interior spaces, helping create visually comfortable classrooms and common areas without harsh direct sunlight.

Often used in gyms, corridors, cafeterias, and gathering spaces, translucent wall systems can also improve energy efficiency by reducing reliance on electric lighting and supporting a bright, inviting learning environment.

Designing Schools for Student Wellness

Daylight and fresh air are essential components of healthy school design. By incorporating skylights and natural ventilation strategies into educational buildings, schools can create environments that support student well-being, improve focus and learning outcomes, and enhance comfort for students and staff alike.

To learn more about the benefits of skylights in educational facilities, check out our online eBook.