About

I'm Elianne Alblas. I design workspaces, but not in the way most people think about design.

I ran businesses in hospitality where I could watch what environment actually does to people. Not what the design promised. What really happened. And I kept noticing the same thing: people respond to the same environment in completely different ways.

That became the question I couldn't let go of. Why does an open floor plan energize one person and drain another by 10 AM? Why does fluorescent lighting give some people headaches while others don't notice? Why do some offices feel calm and others feel like chaos?

The design conversations I was hearing missed the point entirely. Open plan or closed offices. Warm lighting or cool. Standing desks or sitting. All surface decisions. Nobody was asking the real question: what is this space doing to people's nervous systems?

So I went looking for answers. Environmental psychology. Neuroscience. Neuro-inclusive design. Not to become a researcher, but because I needed to understand the gap between how we design offices and how human brains actually work in them.

Today I work specifically with workplaces. That's where the impact matters most. People spend 40+ hours a week in offices that are either supporting their focus, wellbeing, and productivity or quietly undermining all three. Most companies have no idea which one they're doing.

I translate research into changes people can actually make. Through consulting, strategic redesign, and speaking. I work from Utrecht, the Netherlands. I speak Dutch and English.