Aging in the Right Place: The Need for a Room With a View

Most assessments of older people's ability to remain in their current houses or apartments—or age in place—focus on whether they occupy aging-ready or physically accessible and safe dwellings with minimal falling risks. Experts typically emphasize the importance of having grab bars, handrails, nonslip floors and bathtubs, accessible shelves and appliances, and no-step interior/exterior surfaces with a bedroom and bathroom on the first floor.

The hope is that when older people follow these home modification directives—especially those with physical limitations—they can perform their everyday activities more competently, feeling more independent and in control of their lives and surroundings.

However, achieving a good quality of life requires more than just occupying a physically secure or safe dwelling. Older people also want to live in enjoyable, pleasing, cheerful, and stimulating homes and apartments. These positive emotional experiences are vital in their advanced years when they spend more of their days in their dwellings.

As a result, it is helpful to consider how modifying the architectural and interior design features of a dwelling can make it more aesthetically attractive and physically comfortable. Its size, room spatial arrangement, paint colors, lighting fixtures, seating arrangements, heating and cooling abilities, cupboard space, and kitchen and bathroom amenities are obvious candidates.

Window Views Connecting Older People to their Outside Worlds

But there is another, less often examined feature of a home that is important to consider—its windows. Early on, Professor Graham Rowles distinguished what he labeled the "surveillance zone"—the area outside a dwelling that older people could observe from their windows. Because it was so essential to feel visually connected to their outside worlds, they would change their seating arrangements—chairs and sofas—for a better view.

The Positives of Window Viewing

The most appreciated function of well-designed windows is to stream daylight into an otherwise dark home. Natural light has therapeutic properties, improving mood, happiness, sleep quality and promoting more relaxed feelings.

But It Is What Older People See Beyond Their Windows That Often Matters

Viewing natural surroundings especially boosts their mental well-being. They feel exhilarated when they can enjoy a front-row seat to the beauty and energy of nature's bounty—its greenery, trees, gardens, and the liveness of its animal and insect life. Or when they can experience sunrises, sunsets, and the changing colors of transitioning seasons. One less active older person observed, "I love the way the trees begin to move, the branches, when the wind gets up."

However, for others less enamored with nature, the vitality of urban life—the continual flows and activities of people—visually stimulates them. They feel energized by seeing children playing, people walking their dogs, mothers pushing their baby's carriages, laborers installing a new roof, or a party across the street. They can inconspicuously participate in the ebb and flow of urban life, which may help relieve their boredom and possibly distract them from stressful thoughts.

But these visual images are noteworthy for a less apparent reason. Older people often attribute psychological meaning to what they see outside their windows. In the best of worlds, these residential displays confirm they have lived successful, worthy, or accomplished lives. Their neighborhood qualities are consistent with their perceived status in life. Then, they feel proud of where they live.

These emotional reactions are not news to developers and real estate agents.

Apartments have higher rents and houses higher property values when they have pristine water views of a tranquil lake, river, or expansive ocean, a bustling harbor, dramatic mountain views, a downtown skyline, or the putting greens of a golf course.

Outside the Looking Glass: A Window into the Past

These window views will also have deeper meanings because older people have long occupied their dwellings and neighborhoods. Consequently, what they see through their glass panes are not just momentary snapshots of their surroundings. Instead, vivid memories of their place's historical past inform their current residential images.

Consider the 83-year-old female homeowner studied by the late gerontologist Robert Rubinstein. Despite the depressing array of empty and dilapidated houses now appearing across the street, her window-view perceptions reflect positive memories of better times:

The mingling of past and present visual scenes is also illustrated by older occupants of a now gentrifying neighborhood. They are transfixed by the sight of enterprising developers transforming a vacated low-income apartment building into a high-end condominium building to be marketed to wealthy consumers.

Not all Window Views Yield Positive Experiences

Most discussions of window views emphasize how they positively influence the well-being of older people. However, the visual vistas of those in late life will not always include attractive, calming, or uplifting scenes and activities. Quite the opposite—they may be ugly, disturbing, and stressful.

Fortunately, some of these negative sights will only be temporary. Consider such examples as the fleeting view of an ambulance parked at a friend's house across the street or a for-sale sign on the lot of a treasured neighbor.

Other unpleasant views will be more permanent.

The seemingly unending brick wall of a facing apartment building, the sights of homeless people sleeping on sidewalks, an across-the-street house falling into disrepair, garbage strewn on their streets, and even the listless view of black asphalt roads may be legitimate reasons for despair and sadness.

Even seemingly upbeat window views may sometimes be repulsive. When energetic joggers flood the visual fields of older people confined to their dwellings, they may feel regret and sadness because of their inability to join them.

But window views perceived as undesirable may be preferable to none. When older people spend increasingly more time in their dwellings, even unpleasant sights of scenes, people, and activities outside their walls will arouse their sensory experiences. Both the good and bad mental stimulation received from their outside worlds can be beneficial.

Different Window Views for Different People Living in Different Places

Not surprisingly, the window views of older people are diverse. Occupants of high-rise apartments or condominiums will have dramatically different visual experiences than those in one-story houses. And what rural and city dwellers see through their glass panes will be worlds apart. Moreover, because older people are so different— in terms of their personalities, lifestyles, and income levels—the same window views will elicit very different emotional experiences—exhilarating for some but gloomy for others.

What we can all agree on, however, is that what older people see outside their windows is another factor contributing to whether they are aging in the right places.