Lawal, Lateef AdemolaVale, Robert2025-05-182022-09-10http://repository.futminna.edu.ng:4000/handle/123456789/1998Proceedings of 2nd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (SMUS Conference)Over the past decade, the patient-centred care approach has been a prominent discourse for healthcare organisations and building designers on how to improve healthcare environments for patients’ satisfaction. This is due in part, to the growing awareness that physical design of hospitals has considerable impacts on patient’s recovery and health outcomes within healthcare environments. Women, who use hospitals for birth, are particularly vulnerable when it comes to sleep disruption and recovery. The unconducive and unrestful situations in hospitals, especially within the postnatal layouts of healthcare facilities are of concern to healthcare providers and caregivers with adverse health effects on the new mothers in terms of their recovery experiences and wellbeing. Additionally, the short hospital stays following the birth implies that women need an optimum environment that can facilitate the rest and recovery experience while in hospitals. This is a unique situation in that research in the childbirth environment has only focused on labour and birth experiences of women. Best and ideal restorative postnatal design features to facilitate the rest and recovery experience for women are unclear. This study utilised a mixed methods design (online questionnaire surveys and focus groups) as a likely effective way to understand the intricacies about short hospital stay, interactions of design layout and women’s wellbeing postnatally. This methodological paper aims to provide insights that may be beneficial to other researchers combining questionnaire surveys and focus groups as techniques, in the study of an ideal physical environment for optimum postnatal care. The paper discusses the process for engaging the participants (postnatal women and midwives), their backgrounds and experiences of the postnatal space, especially in large, tertiary hospitals, the vision of postnatal care in an ideal world and how to analyse the rich, multiple perspectives that contribute to an understanding of a restorative postnatal hospital environment. The paper outlines some of the best practices regarding design features that could be beneficial to care givers for effective and quality postnatal care for women prior to going home.enfocus group discussionshospital environmentpostnatal recoveryrestorative featureswomen’s experienceswellbeingArticle