Sound and light must be carefully considered when designing any hospital space, and these factors are particularly important to the design of a NICU.  The architecture of any inpatient area must allow patients or family members to have private conversations without being overheard by those nearby.  Disruptive and potentially worrisome noises from beepers, phones, and alarms should be kept to a minimum so that patients can relax, rest, and recuperate.  Light should be cycled in a natural manner to prevent patients from developing disturbances in their day-night rhythms, for such disturbances are inimical to sleep, growth, and healing. 

In the NICU, sound and light are especially important.  At the beginning of the third trimester, infants gain the ability to respond to sound and light.  In the womb, sound is damped, but in the NICU, infants are routinely exposed to significant noise.  Loud noises have been shown to lead to decreased oxygen saturation in babies, and premature infants are very susceptible to hearing loss.  In the NICU, it is recommended that ambient noise be kept below 50 decibels (dB), but in practice, the noise level is almost always much higher.  To solve this problem, incubators should be made out of sound-muffling material, and other equipment in the NICU should be made quieter.  Most NICU’s across the country are also much brighter than is recommended.  Bright lights cause lowered oxygen saturation and poor weight gain for infants.  Premature babies should ideally be exposed to as little light as possible, to mimic the environment of the womb.  In the NICU of the future, sound and light will be controlled so that the environment is as healthy as possible for infants.     

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