No more sick building syndrome with homes designed to make you healthier

For years there's been a niggling worry that our indoor environment is making us sick. Toxic paints, dodgy air conditioners, all kinds of nasties contained in furnishings - even our cleaning products have been blamed for a heap of ills.

New Yorker Paul Scialla was someone who wondered if it was possible to reverse the process. Could buildings not only stop making us sick, but actually make us better?

So the former Goldman Sachs banker set up Delos, a research, consulting and real estate development company placing health and wellness at the centre of design. Delos pioneered the WELL building standard that, after a two-year pilot, was ratified in October 2014.

WELL is a performance-based system for measuring, certifying and monitoring features of the built environment that have an impact on human health and well-being, including air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and the mind.

According to Scialla, the standard "is grounded in evidence-based medical research that demonstrates the connection between the buildings where we spend more than 90 per cent of our time, and the health and wellness effects on us as occupants".

Scialla hopes that WELL certification will do for the indoor environment what LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) has done for construction: be a benchmark for developers and attract a premium from end users.