Bespoke scent design
Scent, designed into the building rather than added to it
Scent works on emotion and memory, which is why an arrival is where it earns its place. Designed deliberately it gives a space a character people recognise, and it works with the sound, light and air around it rather than against them. Valeo Technology designs it into the building: a formulation made for the place, diffusion coordinated with the services, and an intensity commissioned once and documented.
Developed, not selected
A formulation developed for the building and the brand rather than chosen from a catalogue. That is the difference between a sensory signature and a smell.
Designed into the fitout
Diffusion, placement and intensity coordinated with the services and ceiling design during documentation, so the scent belongs to the building rather than arriving after it.
Specified against air quality
Every scent decision is also an indoor air decision. It goes into the specification with the zoning, the diffusion rate and the products named, the same way any other building service is specified.
Where scent belongs
The zone is the question, not the sector
“Can we scent a hospital” is the wrong question, because a hospital contains a ward and a reception and they are not the same problem. We answer space by space, the same way we zone sound. Stated before you ask.
| The space | How we design it |
|---|---|
| Arrival, reception and client-facing | Yes. Where scent does its best work. Low intensity, zoned, switchable. |
| Hospitality and premium retail | Yes. Brand experience is the brief and occupancy is transient. |
| Commercial workplace, including health sector offices | Yes, in the front of house. An insurer’s workplace is an office, not a clinical environment, and we design it as one. |
| The working floor | Sparingly, and designed for the exposure. Eight hours is a different brief from eight minutes. |
| Private clinic and day surgery reception | Case by case, with the air handling proven to be zoned away from clinical space first. Signage, low intensity, an unscented route through. |
| Clinical areas, wards, patient rooms, treatment spaces | Case by case, and only where the clinical team and infection control have agreed it and the zoning is proven. Signage, low intensity, an unscented route through. |
| Aged care resident and communal areas | Room level and consent based, designed with the operator. Residents cannot leave a space, so the design gives them the choice rather than the building making it for them. |
| Teaching and learning spaces | Case by case, zoned and low intensity, with an unscented route through and the arrangements agreed with the institution. |
| Through the air handling system | Where the zoning is proven first. An air handling unit often serves more than the space you meant to scent, so the specification starts there. |
And a rule that applies everywhere: scent works when the air quality, ventilation and acoustics of a space are already right. Where they are not, that is the first piece of work, and we will say so.
Through the air handling
Air handling diffusion, specified from the zone outward
Distributing scent through a building’s air handling often gives the most even result, and it is an engineering decision as much as a design one: the unit decides where the scent goes, so the specification starts with what the unit serves.
The unit sets the zone
A single unit commonly serves a reception and the floor behind it, or a lobby and the consulting rooms off it. Scent introduced for the first reaches the second unless the design has checked, so the zone a scent occupies is set by the ductwork before it is set by anyone’s intent.
What does this unit actually serve?
Before anything is specified we map the air handling against the occupancy: which unit serves which spaces, where the returns are, and who is in each of them for how long. On a refurbishment the drawings and the reality frequently disagree, which is its own useful finding.
Scent follows the zone, not the duct
Where a unit serves the scented zone and nothing else, air handling distribution is good engineering and we specify it. Where it does not, scent goes on dedicated distribution or on standalone units serving that zone alone, so the scented zone and the served zone are the same shape.
Done this way, air handling diffusion is the cleanest installation on the floor: no units in the space, one point of maintenance, and an intensity set centrally and commissioned once. The work is proving what the air handling serves before anyone chooses a fragrance.
The evidence
What the research shows
Ambient scent can influence how people experience an indoor space. The research below explores those responses and the role of individual preference.
For design, the relevance is personal: a fragrance people enjoy can contribute to the character of a space, but preferences differ. We consider scent alongside sound, light, air quality and how the space is used.
Explore the three independent, peer-reviewed studies below, with their findings and limitations. None of them is a Valeo Technology result.
The three studies in full, with their limits and their citations
The response is real, and it is now being measured in Australia
A 2025 Australian study in Building and Environment found that a peppermint scent in a controlled office-like room was associated with measurable changes in brain activity, lower reported sluggishness and dullness, and scent-evoked memory associations in 86.67% of participants. That is a report of associations formed, not a measure of improved memory. The authors describe the results as tentative and call for olfactory codes and standards.
The study measured human response, not indoor air quality, emissions, safety or workplace productivity. It is evidence for why scent is worth designing deliberately. The authors call for olfactory codes and standards to be written; none exists today.
Kafaei, Latifi, Burry, Ciorciari, Aminitabar and Ji (2025), Building and Environment 271:112626. Single-blind, n=30, Swinburne University of Technology. DOI 10.1016/j.buildenv.2025.112626
Preference decides much of it, which is why scent is designed with sound
The wider review agrees and adds the useful caution. Spence (2020) finds the effects of pleasant ambient scent small but real, strongly dependent on individual preference, and easily undone when scent is combined with cues that do not fit it, the wrong music among them.
That is why the pairing of scent with sound is designed on every project rather than assumed, and it is the practical reason the two sit in one practice.
Spence (2020), Frontiers in Psychology 11:598859. DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.598859
The same scent, two different physiological responses
Forty-eight young adults were randomly assigned to an ambient bergamot scent or to no scent while working through office tasks, with heart rate variability measured alongside self-reported anxiety, pleasantness, comfort and stress. Women showed higher heart rate variability and rated the room more pleasant and more comfortable. Men showed lower heart rate variability, which is generally read as more stress rather than less, and rated the room less pleasant and less comfortable. Both groups reported feeling less stressed.
We publish this because it is the limitation that matters most in practice. A fragrance chosen because it is described as calming is not calming for everyone in the room, the self-report and the physiology did not agree, and that is the argument for trialling a scent in the space with the people who will live in it rather than specifying it from a description.
Liu, Awada, Becerik-Gerber, Lucas & Roll (2023), Journal of Environmental Psychology 91:102135. DOI 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102135. n=48, randomised, office tasks.
How a project starts
The specification comes before the fragrance
We map the air handling against the occupancy, set the zones alongside the sound design, and write the specification. Only then is a formulation chosen to meet it, the intensity commissioned once, and the whole thing documented so the building can be handed over with it.
The specification is a real document and we will send it to you.
Sent on request to a work address. It is written for architects, facilities leads and procurement teams, and it is the document we design to ourselves.