The return-to-office trend has quietly reopened a question most commercial real estate investors have never had to answer: Does the air quality inside a building affect the performance of the people working in it, and if so, whose problem is that?
According to Andrew Legge, Founder and CEO of Havelock Wool, the answer is beginning to matter in ways that building owners and developers have not fully priced in. Legge argues that commercial real estate has historically treated interior building materials as a pure cost variable – something to minimize, not optimize – and that this logic is breaking down as research connecting indoor air quality to worker productivity becomes harder to ignore.
Why Buildings Ignored Air Quality
Legge is direct about why commercial projects have historically defaulted to the cheapest available building materials: the people making the decisions are not the ones breathing the air.
“In the commercial space, you’ve got investors looking at internal rate of return, and you’re not spending extra money on things that get stuck in the wall,” Legge says. When a building is backed by an investor whose primary metric is yield, the case for spending more on insulation or interior materials is difficult to make – especially when the occupants who would benefit from better air quality are tenants, not owners.
This misalignment has kept healthier building materials largely confined to the custom residential market, where the owner paying for construction is also the one who occupies the building. In commercial real estate, that alignment does not exist by default. Legge says the industry has yet to develop frameworks to bridge that gap.
Return-to-Office Shifts the Equation
As companies bring workers back to physical spaces and begin measuring productivity, engagement, and retention more carefully, the variables that affect cognitive performance in buildings are becoming more visible. Legge sees this as a potential turning point.
“Now you can really start to correlate indoor air quality and cognitive function,” Legge says.
The underlying research has been building for years. Studies have linked elevated CO2 levels, volatile organic compound concentrations, and particulate matter to measurable declines in decision-making and focus. As employers compete for talent and justify the cost of maintaining physical office space, the quality of the environment inside that space may become a more explicit part of the value proposition.
For building owners, this creates a competitive angle that has not historically existed in commercial leasing: the ability to demonstrate that a building is healthier than its competitors. Legge argues that the clearest opportunity lies not in improvements buried inside walls but in solutions that are visible, quantifiable, and tied directly to occupant experience.
Why Partial Solutions Fall Short
Legge’s broader argument is that indoor air quality cannot be effectively addressed with a single product or intervention. The materials inside the walls, the surfaces on the walls, and the active filtration systems in the air all interact. Optimizing one while ignoring the others yields incomplete results.
“If you’re going to filter the air on the wall passively, if you’re going to filter it with filtration actively, why are you going to shove the walls full of particulate-emitting product?” Legge says. His point is that insulation, surface materials, and active filtration systems function as a single environment – and that treating them as independent purchasing decisions undermines the outcome each one is meant to achieve.
Legge acknowledges the industry is still developing the frameworks to act on this logic. But the implication for commercial building owners is clear: competing on indoor air quality will require thinking holistically about the full material stack, not simply adding an air purifier to a space filled with off-gassing materials.
From Residential to Commercial
That dynamic is beginning to change in specific commercial contexts where energy performance is central to a project’s design from the outset. Passive house high-rise developments represent one environment where the incentive gap narrows, because material integrity is a defining feature of the project rather than an afterthought.
Acoustic performance is another entry point. Unlike improvements that affect air quality without any visible trace, acoustic outcomes are directly demonstrable and easier to connect to worker experience during a lease negotiation. For building owners looking to compete on occupant wellbeing, acoustics may prove to be the more accessible starting point – one that opens the door to a broader conversation about the full material environment.
Market Outlook
Whether the broader commercial real estate market treats indoor air quality as a competitive differentiator will depend on how quickly tenants demand healthier environments and how quickly building owners develop tools to measure and communicate air quality data. Legge believes the direction is clear, even if the pace is uncertain.
Early signals point in that direction. Return-to-office productivity tracking, growing research on cognitive performance, and emerging green building standards all suggest that indoor environment quality could become a measurable factor in leasing decisions within the next several years. The buildings that make that case credibly and back it up with material choices that match may find themselves with an advantage the industry has not yet learned to price.
About the Expert: Andrew Legge is the Founder and CEO of Havelock Wool, a Nevada-based manufacturer of wool-based insulation, acoustic panels, and air filtration products serving both residential and commercial construction markets. He has led the company for over a decade.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.
