Full Scale Illusions of Nature for Hospitality

Sensory-Rich Arrivals: Making the 1st Impression Count

With the rising demand for more personalized experiences, hospitality environments are realizing that making a lasting first impression has never been so crucial. The lobby, traditionally marked as a transitory welcome space, is now understood to deliver a key differentiator for hotels: it marks the moment when guests form that distinct sense of place that makes their arrival both memorable and worthy of their highest compliment: spreading the word, taking the time to post a good review or a selfie to say ‘I’m so excited to finally be here’.

The boutique experience has centered on exquisite and highly curated interiors that deliver a well-defined atmosphere that speaks to the brand. However, many metropolitan hotels lack the ability to provide one of the most pleasurable architectural experiences that a high-end lobby, restaurant or bar can provide—the unalloyed beauty of a stunning vista to a natural landscape.

With the customer shift to boutique or lifestyle hotels has also brought to light the importance of catering to guests’ health, ambient pleasure, and wellbeing. And the most salient differentiator for hotel brands, according to Human Spaces 2.0, Biophilic Design in Hospitality, an influential white paper by Terrapin Bright Green, the 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design as they pertain to accommodation environments centers around three of the most robust attributes: a Visual Connection to Nature featuring both ample Prospect (a commanding view) from places of comfort, Refuge.  

Beyond the representational approach to photography by interior décor professionals, Sky Factory’s design framework is founded on our hardwired habits of perception as they relate to spatial cognition and extended space—the newfound purview of Neuroaesthetics. Our visual artists capture, compose, and frame biophilic sightlines to create a dramatic change of scale that alters an interior’s fundamental relationship to its surroundings.

Our award-winning family of Luminous SkyCeilings, OpenView Luminous Virtual Windows and dynamic Digital Cinema portals, are sensory-rich biophilic installations that provide a memorable sense of place for your property or specialty service. Discover how applied biophilic design for hospitality can elevate the experience of your guests in select environments ranging from lobbies, restaurants, and bars, to SPAs, gyms, and specialty environments like conference rooms, theatres, and VIP suites.

Illusions of Nature: Acclaimed for GOOD Design in Lighting

Applied Neuroaesthetics for Hospitality Environments

The Chicago Athenaeum of Architecture and Design in conjunction with The European Centre for Architecture, Art Design and Urban Studies awarded Sky Factory’s design framework a GOOD Design Award for its patented IRIS Circadian SkyCeiling. The calibrated LED lighting system developed for its family of award-wining Luminous SkyCeilings also inspired our latest custom-designed light box for the company’s next generation wall illusion—the OpenView Luminous Virtual Window.

Both landscape views and overhead sightlines that offer a realistic scale to green and blue spaces engage our biophilic memory of pristine nature outdoors. The hallmark of good design has always rewarded a dramatic change of scale for its ability to lift the spirits of the onlooker, transporting them into the realm of their imagination, cherished memories, and restorative emotions that inspire peace, calm, and pleasurable associations. Both overhead and landscape illusions enable the insightful designer to reimagine interiors and their connection to the undisturbed natural world.

The GOOD Design Awards, the oldest art, graphics, and industrial design awards program in the world, founded in 1950 by former MoMA curator Edgar Kaufmann Jr., and modern design pioneers like Charles and Ray Eames, Russell Wright, and George Nelson, ran for five years until 1955. Thirty one years later, in 1996, it was revived by Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, at the helm of The Chicago Athenaeum Museum, and The European Centre for Architecture, Art Design and Urban Studies. IRIS Circadian SkyCeiling designers, Skye and Bill Witherspoon, earned Sky Factory’s first GOOD Design Award in April 2025 at the Divali Palace Hotel in Athens, Greece.

Sensory-Rich Environments for Boutique Hospitality

Dynamic Accent Illumination for a Great Ambiance

IRIS Circadian SkyCeilings, a dynamic sky illusion that mimics the sunrise-to-sunset arc, uses patent-pending algorithms to capture the richness of the sky’s colorful range and its luminance variability. IRIS is a patented LED illumination system designed to bring our overhead illusory skies to life through two patented algorithms: PRiSM and DiAL. the soft modulated oscillations that these two algorithms orchestrate mimic natural daylight within the canvas of a carefully selected sky illusion that can also be combined into an Earth & Sky landscape that delivers a breathtaking connection to nature.

PRiSM provides location-specific sunrise-to-sunset modulations that mimic the diurnal progression of daylight from warm to cool light and back to warm illumination while DiAL modulates illumination intensity in way that supports focused attention and provides sensory-rich stimulation. Both systems are customized to each photographic Open Sky Composition (image panel). Together, IRIS can enhance the atmosphere of cozy spaces designed to mingle or burrow away in a corner. Whether you are enjoying a drink with friends or look forward to a great dinner or SPA treatment, a dynamic sky illusion can help set the proper mood by linking the interior with a memorable sightline.

Positive Outcomes Backed by Published Research

A View to Nature Reduces Travel Fatigue and Stress

Our fMRI-tested spatial compositions create a palpable experience of openness that enliven both our memories of nature’s vastness and nurture our internal resilience to dissipate fatigue, recharge our spirits, and prime our mood to bask in the atmosphere of place. Published in the Health Environments Research & Design Journal, Sky Factory’s photographic Open Sky Compositions are the only overhead photography of its kind to have been the subject of two peer reviewed studies.

Sky Factory installations reduce acute stress by over 50% and anxiety by over 35%. By engaging areas of the brain involved in spatial cognition and depth perception, Sky Factory’s illusory scenes—overhead or before the observer, alter occupant experience by facilitating autonomic self-regulation.

Our innate sense of open space is not only visual; it’s proprioceptive and exteroceptive, cognitive and pre-cognitive, engaging focused as well as peripheral vision in an integral manner that soothes and calms both body, mind, and spirit.

Sky Factory’s nature imagery is captured, composed, and installed to create the most credible illusion of perceived open space as a healing architectural feature. Panoramic scenes captured to create the feeling of extended space help assuage the agitation involved in modern travel, enhancing the relief of arriving at their place of destination and basking in the beautiful surroundings.