Dental students' visual scene preferences for stress mitigation in clinics: A descriptive study

Given that dental students are both future clinicians and at elevated risk for dental anxiety (DA), anxiety-reducing design offers dual benefits: supporting students' well-being and improving their capacity to care for anxious patients empathetically. We examined which interior scenes dental students judge most calming and whether judgments vary with DA or Big-Five traits. Two hundred forty-four dentistry undergraduates (63 % female; M age = 21.3 ± 1.6 y) completed the Arabic Modified Dental Anxiety Scale, the 10-item Big Five Inventory, and an environmental-preference survey. Students rated 29 design attributes and ranked 71 photorealistic renderings (11 themed sets) from most to least calming. Friedman χ 2 and Kendall's W assessed within-set heterogeneity and agreement; Mann-Whitney U compared dental anxiety groups and gender; Spearman tests linked ranks to MDAS/traits with Benjamini-Hochberg correction; ordinal-logistic models were run only where bivariate links emerged. All themes showed significant rank spread, with the highest agreement for daylight-related façades. Scenes with abundant glazing, outward views (e.g., rural landscapes), and sky imagery ranked most calming. High- versus low-anxiety students did not differ; trait and gender associations were small and scene-specific. A few decorative images showed modest multivariate effects. Overall, daylight and prospect yielded robust, trait-independent calming benefits, whereas colour, pattern, and representational art exerted minor, idiosyncratic influences; suggesting clinics should prioritize large glazing, natural views, and sky imagery while treating surface treatments primarily as aesthetic choices. • Dental students, at risk for anxiety, benefit from calming clinic designs. • Daylight and natural views are robustly calming for dental students. • Design elements like glazing and sky imagery reduce anxiety, independent of traits. • Prioritize natural light and views in dental clinic design over surface aesthetics.