What is the WELL Building Standard? It is a rating system for the effect a building has on the people inside it, published by IWBI. Where LEED measures a building’s impact on the environment, WELL measures its impact on human health: the air occupants breathe, the water they drink, the light they work under, the food available to them, and how the space supports movement, thermal comfort, acoustics, mental health and community. A project that meets every mandatory requirement and earns enough points is WELL Certified at Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum, and the professional credential attached to the standard is the WELL AP.
This guide covers what the standard contains, how the scoring works, what makes WELL different from every other rating system, what it costs, what the research actually shows about whether it works, and what 47,396 projects in IWBI’s public directory reveal about how WELL is used in practice.
| What is WELL in 60 seconds | |
| What it measures | The building’s effect on occupant health, not on the environment |
| Who publishes it | IWBI; GBCI provides third-party review |
| Current version | WELL v2 since 2020; the next version, One WELL, opens for enrollment in late 2026 |
| Structure | Ten concepts, 24 preconditions, just over 100 optimizations |
| How it scores | 110 points; Bronze 40, Silver 50, Gold 60, Platinum 80 |
| Most common outcome | Gold (47.5% of certified projects); Platinum is 41.2% |
| What makes it different | On-site performance testing of the finished building |
| Does it expire | Yes, after three years |
| Certified projects worldwide | 2,820 in 59 countries |
| The credential | WELL AP, 115 questions, no prerequisites |
What is the WELL Building Standard and who runs it?
IWBI launched the first version in 2014, building on years of research linking design, policy and operational choices to health outcomes. WELL v1 was organized around seven concepts. WELL v2 was released as a pilot in 2018 and refined over two years, including a six-month public comment period and a 2020 review by IWBI’s Governance Council, which confirmed that every feature met four tests: evidence-based, verifiable, implementable and open to outside input.
WELL v2 then became the single current version, and IWBI publishes quarterly addenda to it. The Q4 2020 edition is the one the current WELL AP exam is written against, with later editions refining feature language rather than changing the structure.
| Year | Milestone |
| 2014 | WELL v1 launched; GBCI begins third-party certification |
| 2016 | Over 200 projects in 21 countries |
| 2018 | WELL v2 released as a pilot |
| 2020 | WELL v2 confirmed as the single current version; WELL Health-Safety Rating launched |
| 2021 to 2023 | WELL Performance Rating and WELL Equity Rating added |
| 2026 | One WELL published for public comment in March, enrollment due late 2026; 2,820 certified projects; over 16,000 credentialed WELL APs |
Two organisations are involved, as with LEED. IWBI writes and maintains the standard, runs the digital platform on which projects build their scorecards, and issues both the certification and the WELL AP credential. Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI), the same body that reviews LEED projects and administers the LEED exams, provides the third-party review: it assesses a project’s documentation and its performance test results before certification is awarded. That shared reviewer is one reason the two systems are so often pursued together.
Two numbers that measure different things. IWBI reports that more than 100,000 locations covering 6.45 billion square feet participate in WELL across 131 countries. Participating is a broad term: it counts projects that have registered, projects holding one of the ratings such as WELL Health-Safety, and projects that have completed certification. The public project directory shows the certified subset: 2,820 projects covering about 647 million square feet. Both figures are accurate and they measure different things, which matters when comparing WELL with other systems.
| From IWBI’s public project directory, September 2026 | Figure |
| Directory entries in total | 47,396 |
| Certified with a level | 2,820 |
| Registered and nothing further | 32,466 |
| Holding only the WELL Health-Safety Rating | 10,694 |
| Precertified | 1,069 |
| Countries with at least one certified project | 59 |
| Certified floor area | about 647 million square feet |
| Median certified project | 89,940 square feet |
| Share of certified projects that are offices | 83% |
Six things people get wrong about WELL
| What people assume | What is true |
| WELL competes with LEED | They measure different things and are routinely pursued together; GBCI reviews both |
| WELL is about air and water | Half the standard is policy: food, mental health support, parental leave, ergonomics |
| A WELL registered building is a WELL building | 32,466 projects are registered; 2,820 are certified |
| WELL is an American standard | China has more certified projects than the United States |
| Platinum is rare, as it is in LEED | Platinum is 41% of WELL certifications against 11% of LEED certifications |
| Certification is awarded on the documentation | Every project is physically tested on site before it certifies |
1. WELL competes with LEED. It does not. LEED certifies environmental performance and is reviewed from documentation; WELL certifies the effect on occupants and is reviewed from documentation plus on-site testing. Many projects hold both, WELL awards an Innovation point for holding another rating system alongside it, and GBCI reviews both. The two are complementary, which is why the credentials sit side by side on a CV.
2. WELL is LEED with extra air quality credits. This is the single most common assumption candidates arrive with, and the technical concepts are only part of the standard. Nourishment asks what the cafeteria serves and how it is labelled. Mind asks whether the organisation offers mental health services and education. Community asks about parental leave, new mother support, family support and health benefits. Movement asks whether workstations are adjustable. These are human resources and operations questions, and they are the reason WELL project teams include HR and facilities people alongside architects and engineers.
3. A WELL registered building is a WELL building. Registration means the enrolment fee has been paid. Of the 47,396 entries in the public directory, 32,466 are registered and nothing more, which is roughly eleven registered projects for every certified one. Only 2,820 hold an actual certification level, and 6 percent of the directory is the certified share. A further 10,694 hold only the WELL Health-Safety Rating, which is a separate, lighter programme and not WELL Certification. If a building’s status matters to you, look it up in IWBI’s project directory and read the status line rather than the marketing.

4. WELL is an American standard. It was created in the United States, but the certified projects are not. China holds 798 certified projects to America’s 498, and only 17.7 percent of all WELL certifications are in the US. On the people side the split is similar: of the 8,572 WELL APs listed in IWBI’s directory, 3,054 are in the United States, about 36 percent, against 78 percent for the LEED credential directory.
5. Platinum is rare. In LEED it is: 11 percent of certified projects. In WELL, Platinum is 41 percent, and the entry level barely exists. There are 34 Bronze projects on earth. The reason is covered in the scoring section below.
6. Certification is awarded on the documentation. It is not. Every WELL project is physically tested on site before certification, by an authorised agent who measures air, water, light, sound and thermal conditions in the finished building. Candidates who come to WELL from LEED are routinely surprised by this, because LEED has no equivalent, and it is the difference that changes how a project is run: a building can be designed perfectly and still fail. It is explained in full below.
What are the ten WELL concepts?
WELL v2 organises its requirements into ten concepts. Each concept contains features, and each feature is either a precondition, which is mandatory, or an optimization, which is optional and carries points.
| Concept | Preconditions | What it covers |
| Air | 4 | Air quality thresholds, smoke-free environment, ventilation design, construction pollution management |
| Water | 3 | Water quality indicators, drinking water quality, legionella and moisture management |
| Nourishment | 2 | Fruit and vegetable availability, nutritional transparency |
| Light | 2 | Light exposure, visual lighting design |
| Movement | 2 | Active buildings and communities, ergonomic workstation design |
| Thermal Comfort | 1 | Thermal performance |
| Sound | 1 | Sound mapping |
| Materials | 3 | Material restrictions, hazardous materials management, CCA and lead management |
| Mind | 2 | Mental health promotion, nature and place |
| Community | 4 | Health and well-being promotion, integrative design, emergency preparedness, occupant survey |
Air. Air quality thresholds for particulate matter, VOCs, carbon monoxide and ozone; a smoke-free environment; ventilation design to recognised standards; and construction pollution management. Optimizations cover enhanced air quality, enhanced ventilation, operable windows, air quality monitoring, pollution infiltration management, combustion minimisation, source separation, filtration, enhanced supply air and mould control.
Water. Preconditions for water quality indicators, drinking water quality (lead, arsenic, mercury, copper, disinfection by-products) and basic management for legionella and moisture. Optimizations cover enhanced water quality, drinking water management and promotion, moisture management and hygiene support.
Nourishment. The concept with the fewest analogues anywhere else. Preconditions require fruit and vegetable availability and nutritional transparency wherever food is sold or provided. Optimizations address refined ingredients, food advertising, artificial ingredients, portion sizes, nutrition education, mindful eating, special diets, food preparation, responsible sourcing, food production, the local food environment and red and processed meats.
Light. Light exposure and visual lighting design are the preconditions. Optimizations cover circadian lighting design, glare control, daylight design and simulation, visual balance, electric light quality and occupant control.
Movement. Active buildings and communities, and ergonomic workstation design. Optimizations cover the circulation network, facilities for active occupants such as showers and bicycle storage, site planning, physical activity opportunities, active furnishings, activity spaces and equipment, promotion, self-monitoring and ergonomics programming.
Thermal Comfort. A thermal performance precondition, then optimizations for verified thermal comfort, thermal zoning, individual control, radiant comfort, monitoring and humidity control.
Sound. Sound mapping is the precondition, followed by maximum noise levels, sound barriers, reverberation time, sound reducing surfaces, minimum background sound and enhanced audio devices.
Materials. Material restrictions, interior hazardous materials management, and CCA and lead management, covering asbestos, lead, mercury, PCBs and chromated copper arsenate. Optimizations cover site remediation, enhanced restrictions, VOC restrictions, transparency, optimisation, waste management, pest management and pesticide use, cleaning products and protocols, and contact reduction.
Mind. Mental health promotion and nature and place (biophilic design), then mental health services, education, stress management, restorative opportunities, spaces and programming, enhanced access to nature, tobacco cessation and substance use services.
Community. The largest concept by number of features. Health and well-being promotion, an integrative design process, emergency preparedness and an occupant survey are mandatory. Optimizations cover an enhanced occupant survey, health services and benefits, new parent support, new mother support, family support, civic engagement, talent recruitment and workforce action plans, accessibility and universal design, and emergency resources.
An eleventh category, Innovation, sits outside the ten. It awards points for strategies the standard does not yet cover, for having a WELL AP on the project team, for making the certification visible to occupants, for holding another green building rating system such as LEED alongside WELL, and for carbon disclosure and reduction. Across the ten concepts there are 24 preconditions and just over 100 optimizations.
How does WELL scoring and certification work?
WELL v2 runs on a points system with 110 points available in every project scorecard.
Preconditions carry no points and every one is mandatory. A project that misses a single precondition, or a single part of one, cannot be certified at any level. Preconditions define a minimally healthy building; points are earned above that floor.
Optimizations are weighted by potential health impact. Each is made up of parts, each part carries a point value, and the maximum for the feature is the sum of its parts. The WELL platform generates a draft scorecard from the project’s parameters, which the team then refines.
Two caps shape strategy. A project may earn no more than 12 points in any single concept, and no more than 100 points across the ten concepts. The remaining 10 come from Innovation, which is also where surplus points above the 12-per-concept cap are counted. The caps mean a project cannot reach a high level by excelling in Air and Water alone. Both caps are due to be removed under One WELL, covered below.
| Total points | Level | Minimum points required in every concept |
| 40 | WELL Bronze | 0 |
| 50 | WELL Silver | 1 |
| 60 | WELL Gold | 2 |
| 80 | WELL Platinum | 3 |
The per-concept minimum is the detail most guides miss. A Platinum project needs at least three points in each of the ten concepts, which means three points in Nourishment and three in Community even if it is an industrial facility with no cafeteria. That requirement, more than the point total, is what makes the top level a test of breadth.
Which level do WELL projects actually reach?
Almost all of them reach Gold or Platinum. Of the 2,820 certified projects in the directory, 47.5 percent are Gold and 41.2 percent Platinum. Silver is 10 percent and Bronze is 1.2 percent, which is 34 projects worldwide.
Set that against LEED, where Platinum is 11.1 percent and the entry level accounts for nearly a quarter of projects, and the two systems look very different in practice even though both use a 110-point scale and four levels.

| Level | WELL certified projects | Share | LEED share for comparison |
| Entry level (WELL Bronze, LEED Certified) | 34 | 1.2% | 23.6% |
| Silver | 283 | 10.0% | 29.1% |
| Gold | 1,340 | 47.5% | 36.3% |
| Platinum | 1,163 | 41.2% | 11.1% |
Two things explain the difference. The first is self-selection: WELL is voluntary, expensive per square foot and mostly pursued by owners who have already decided health is a priority, so the projects that enter are the ones that intend to score well. The second is that the standard changed. Under WELL v1, Gold was the norm at 62 percent and Platinum was 10 percent, a distribution close to LEED’s. Under WELL v2, Platinum became the most common outcome.

| Level | WELL v1 | WELL v2 | WELL v2 Core |
| Bronze | 0% | 2.2% | 1.8% |
| Silver | 28.2% | 5.3% | 3.9% |
| Gold | 61.9% | 43.6% | 48.5% |
| Platinum | 9.9% | 48.9% | 45.8% |
For anyone reading a WELL plaque, the practical consequence is that Gold in WELL is not the achievement Gold is in LEED. Silver is the unusual result, and Bronze effectively does not happen.
WELL Core is the pathway for core and shell buildings where tenants occupy most of the space. A building qualifies if at least 75 percent of the project area is tenant or common space. WELL Core uses the same four levels without the per-concept minimums, and features are re-weighted according to how much of their benefit reaches tenants.
WELL Precertification lets a project still under construction demonstrate intent, using documentation based on plans rather than as-built conditions and without performance testing. It requires all preconditions plus 40 points and carries no level. 1,069 projects in the directory hold it.
What is One WELL?
One WELL is the next version of the WELL Building Standard. IWBI published it for public comment on 10 March 2026, closed comments on 1 May 2026, and has said enrollment opens later in 2026. It is not a WELL v3 with tougher thresholds. It is a reorganisation: WELL v2 Certification, the WELL Ratings and selected WELL for Residential strategies are merged into one library, so that a strategy such as particle filtration has the same name, the same requirements and the same point value whichever WELL program a project is pursuing. IWBI calls this point-for-point interoperability. Points earned toward a WELL Rating count toward WELL Certification without separate accounting.
Ten concepts stay the same, plus Innovation. Beneath them the hierarchy changes: features and feature parts become 212 Strategies, grouped into 54 Themes so that related strategies sit together instead of being scattered across a concept.
| Element | WELL v2 | One WELL, as published for comment |
| Concepts | 10 plus Innovation | 10 plus Innovation, unchanged |
| Structure below the concepts | Features made of feature parts | 54 Themes containing 212 Strategies |
| Preconditions | Mandatory, worth no points | Still mandatory for certification, and now earn points |
| Cap per concept | Maximum 12 points | Removed |
| Cap for locations that have not met preconditions | 49 points | Removed |
| Level thresholds | Bronze 40, Silver 50, Gold 60, Platinum 80 | To be adjusted, because preconditions now carry points |
| Programs | Separate scorecards for Certification and each Rating | One library; rating points count toward certification |
| Keeping current | Quarterly addenda that projects choose to adopt | The scorecard updates automatically when IWBI updates WELL |
The scoring changes are the ones that alter strategy. Under WELL v2 a project earns nothing for its preconditions and cannot take more than 12 points from any concept, which is why no project can reach Gold by excelling in Air and Water alone. Under One WELL, IWBI says preconditions “now qualify for points across the board” and the concept cap is removed, “affording more ways to earn the points needed for each level”. The minimum points for each level will move up to reflect that preconditions score, and the exact new thresholds have not yet been published. Nor has IWBI said whether the per-concept minimums for Silver, Gold and Platinum survive; that is the detail to watch, because it is the rule that currently forces a Platinum project to score in Nourishment and Community whatever the building type.
What does not change is the health bar. IWBI’s stated aim for this version was ease of use rather than stricter thresholds. Speaking at the Tokyo WELL Summit in June 2026, IWBI’s chief executive Rachel Hodgdon said the primary objective “was to enhance the user experience of participating in the WELL certification process”, and that “if we’ve done this right, we’ll never have to launch a new version of WELL again”. After One WELL the standard is meant to evolve continuously on the platform rather than through numbered releases, which is why IWBI describes the scorecard as updating itself.
What it means for a project registered under WELL v2. IWBI has not yet published One WELL migration rules. Its standing rule for earlier versions is that a project is not required to upgrade until its second recertification, six years after award, and that a Skybridge tool maps features from the old version to the new. For One WELL, IWBI has also announced a legacy pathway: where a new strategy is more stringent than its WELL v2 equivalent, teams may keep using the v2 feature language for three years from the date enrollment opens, after which they submit updated documentation or drop the feature from the scorecard.
What it means for WELL AP candidates. Nothing yet. The WELL AP exam is written against WELL v2 with the Q4 2020 addenda, according to IWBI’s exam guidance updated in March 2026, and IWBI has announced no change to the exam. Anyone studying now should study WELL v2. When IWBI publishes an exam update, this guide and the WELL AP exam prep page will say so.
What IWBI has not yet published, as of September 2026: the enrollment date, the new point thresholds for each level, whether per-concept minimums remain, pricing, the migration rules for WELL v2 projects, and any date for a WELL AP exam update. This section will be updated as each of those appears.
What is WELL performance verification?
Every WELL project is verified on site, and this is the single thing that separates WELL from every documentation-only rating system.
After the documentation is submitted, an authorised WELL Performance Testing Agent visits the completed building, usually for one to three days, to validate the documentation and take measurements across all ten concepts: air quality parameters, water quality parameters, light levels, sound levels and thermal conditions, following the sampling protocols in IWBI’s Performance Verification Guidebook. The results go to GBCI alongside the documentation, and certification is awarded on both.
This is not commissioning, and it is the reason WELL is called a performance-based standard rather than a design standard. A building can be designed to meet every threshold and still fail verification if the installed filters, the water treatment or the acoustic finishes do not deliver what the drawings promised. It is also why the standard reaches past handover: several features require ongoing monitoring, and recertification takes into account all data collected since the previous certification.
For multifamily residential projects, which can pursue WELL with five or more dwelling units, testing inside dwelling units is not required for Bronze or Silver but is required for Gold and Platinum.
There are 350 authorised WELL Performance Testing Agents listed in IWBI’s directory worldwide, which is worth knowing when planning a project timeline in a country with few of them.
How does a project get WELL certified?
| Step | Who does it | What happens |
| 1. Enroll | Owner or consultant | Pay the enrolment fee, define the boundary and project type; a draft scorecard is generated |
| 2. Build the scorecard | Whole team, including HR and facilities | Confirm every precondition, select optimizations and parts |
| 3. Document | Design team, contractor, owner | Drawings, specifications, policies, letters of assurance, operational records |
| 4. Precertify (optional) | Project under construction | Preconditions plus 40 points on planned documentation |
| 5. Performance test | WELL Performance Testing Agent, after occupancy | On-site measurement across the ten concepts |
| 6. Review and award | GBCI reviews, IWBI awards | Findings returned, team responds, level awarded |
The boundary must be applied consistently to every feature and may not exclude parts of the building to make compliance easier. And because so many features depend on policies rather than construction, the operations, HR and facilities teams need to be in the room at step 2, not after design is finished.
Organisations certifying for the first time usually put the people who will run the building through group training before the scorecard is built, because the operations and policy features are the ones that stall when nobody on the team has read the standard.
Does WELL certification expire?
Yes. Unlike LEED BD+C and ID+C certifications, which do not expire, WELL certification is valid for three years. To keep it, a project recertifies, and recertification takes into account the performance data collected since the last award, with testing repeated in common areas and spaces under building management control.
| System | Does the certification expire? |
| WELL v2 (all pathways) | Yes, after three years |
| WELL Health-Safety Rating | Yes, renewed annually |
| LEED BD+C and ID+C | No |
| LEED O+M | Yes, after three or five years depending on version |
That expiry is deliberate and follows from the performance testing. A certification that rests on measurements taken in a working building only means something for as long as those measurements hold, which is a different proposition from a plaque recording what a design achieved on paper at handover.
What does WELL certification cost?
Two kinds of cost, and the fees are the smaller one.
| Fee (WELL v2, IWBI published rates) | Amount |
| Enrolment, flat | $3,000 |
| Program fee | $0.16 per square foot |
| Program fee minimum and cap | $8,000 minimum, $98,000 cap |
| Program fee, industrial locations | $0.08 per square foot |
| WELL Core program fee | $0.08 per square foot ($0.05 industrial) |
| Performance testing | from $15,000, depending on the provider |
| Emerging market or sector discount | 25% |
| IWBI member saving | up to 15% |
For the median certified project in the directory, about 90,000 square feet, that works out at roughly $3,000 enrolment plus $14,400 program fee plus $15,000 or more for testing, so about $32,000 in fees before anyone has changed a specification.
The larger cost is everything else: the consultant or WELL AP who builds and manages the scorecard, the design and product choices the selected features require, and the policy and operational changes, which is a category LEED does not have. A project pursuing new parent support or mental health services is committing to an ongoing programme, not a purchase. As with LEED, the cost is far lower when the standard is chosen before design and far higher when it is added halfway through.
What are the other WELL ratings?
WELL Certification is one programme among several that reuse the same ten concepts. The directory shows how differently they are taken up.
| Programme | What it does | Directory entries |
| WELL v2 Certification | Full certification for owner-occupied space and interiors | 23,151 |
| WELL Health-Safety Rating | Operational policies, maintenance protocols and emergency plans; annual renewal | 16,858 |
| WELL v2 Core | Core and shell buildings with tenants | 3,378 |
| WELL v2 Pilot | Early v2 adopters | 2,276 |
| WELL v1 | The original standard, no longer open to new projects | 1,335 |
| Enterprise + WELL | Portfolio-wide enrolment with a WELL Score | 208 |
| WELL Community | Districts and communities | 107 |
| WELL Equity Rating | Accessibility, inclusion and health equity | 57 |
| WELL Performance Rating | Measured air, water, light, thermal and acoustic performance | 26 |
The Health-Safety Rating is the one that most distorts the headline numbers. It launched in 2020 as a response to the pandemic, is far cheaper and quicker than certification, and accounts for more than a third of everything in the directory. It is a real IWBI programme and a reasonable thing for a building to hold. It is not WELL Certification, and a building that holds only the rating should not be described as WELL Certified.
Where is WELL used?
Certification volume has grown steadily and is now running at roughly 580 projects a year.

| Year | Projects certified |
| 2018 | 80 |
| 2019 | 114 |
| 2020 | 112 |
| 2021 | 160 |
| 2022 | 306 |
| 2023 | 432 |
| 2024 | 580 |
| 2025 | 583 |
| 2026, pace as of September | about 583 |
The geography is the surprise. China holds more certified WELL projects than the United States, and the top ten includes India, Spain, Australia, France, the United Kingdom and Japan ahead of Canada.
China is also the one market where WELL review is handled differently. Since 1 June 2024, projects in mainland China are reviewed and certified by two IWBI-authorised Chinese certification bodies, the China Certification Center for Construction (JCC) and the Shanghai Research Institute of Building Sciences (SRIBS), so that WELL certificates there are issued under China’s certification regulations and can be checked on the national certification register. IWBI’s directory continues to list the projects. Source: IWBI support centre, Reviews for locations in mainland China.

| Country | Certified projects |
| China | 798 |
| United States | 498 |
| India | 174 |
| Spain | 169 |
| Australia | 129 |
| France | 124 |
| United Kingdom | 113 |
| Japan | 111 |
| Italy | 82 |
| Netherlands | 79 |
| Canada | 61 |
| Poland | 52 |
Comparing the project directory with the people directory shows something no published source has noted: credentialed professionals and certified buildings are badly out of step by market. China and Spain have fewer credentialed professionals than certified projects. Saudi Arabia has 84 WELL APs and two certified projects.

| Country | WELL APs listed | Certified projects | WELL APs per certified project |
| Saudi Arabia | 84 | 2 | 42 |
| United Arab Emirates | 131 | 17 | 7.7 |
| Canada | 453 | 61 | 7.4 |
| United States | 3,054 | 498 | 6.1 |
| United Kingdom | 367 | 113 | 3.2 |
| Australia | 195 | 129 | 1.5 |
| India | 229 | 174 | 1.3 |
| China | 640 | 798 | 0.8 |
| Spain | 123 | 169 | 0.7 |
That is not a judgement on any market. It is what an early market looks like: professionals credential first, buildings follow. The Gulf in particular has built a WELL-literate workforce well ahead of its certified building stock, which is the position the United States was in around 2018.
Who certifies. WELL is an office standard owned by landlords. Offices are 83 percent of certified projects. Property companies own 816 of them and REITs another 179, and the owner names that recur are JLL, CBRE, Jones Lang LaSalle, Swire Properties, Landsec, Enel, Sanofi and MSD. Multifamily residential is the second largest category at 182 projects, followed by manufacturing at 180 and technology at 173.
Does WELL actually work? What the research shows
This is the question the standard’s own marketing cannot answer, and the honest answer is that the evidence is real but mixed, and it depends heavily on how the study was designed.
The strongest evidence is positive. Ildiri and colleagues, published in Building and Environment in 2022, followed occupants across four offices before and after they moved into WELL certified space. Every parameter studied improved, and the authors describe the increases from pre- to post-occupancy as highly statistically significant. That design is the most convincing available, because it follows the same people through the change rather than comparing different people in different buildings.
Kent, Parkinson and Schiavon, in Scientific Reports in 2024, compared 1,634 occupant survey responses from 20 WELL certified offices against a statistically matched set of 1,634 responses from 44 LEED certified offices, controlling for award level, time in the building, workspace type, window proximity and floor height. Overall building satisfaction was 94 percent in the WELL buildings against 73 percent in the LEED ones, which the authors express as a 39 percent higher probability of finding a satisfied occupant in a WELL certified building. They are careful to add that they cannot pinpoint why.
The cross-sectional studies are more mixed. A 2020 study of 1,121 survey responses across nine offices found higher satisfaction in WELL buildings for spatial comfort, thermal comfort, noise and privacy, but lower satisfaction for visual comfort and connection to the outdoors. A 2021 study of three paired buildings found that only two of the three pairs showed statistically significant improvement, and that around 55 percent of the certification parameters made no significant difference. A 2021 indoor air quality study found no significant difference in the concentration of most measured pollutants between WELL and non-WELL buildings. And a 2023 comparison of 1,403 survey responses from 14 offices found no significant differences in self-reported health between WELL certified and non-certified buildings.
| Study | Design | Finding |
| Ildiri et al., 2022 | 4 offices, same occupants before and after | All parameters improved, highly significant |
| Kent, Parkinson and Schiavon, 2024 | 20 WELL vs 44 LEED offices, matched, 3,268 responses | 94% vs 73% overall satisfaction |
| 2020 study | 9 offices, 1,121 responses | Better on thermal, noise, privacy; worse on visual comfort and outdoor connection |
| 2021 study | 3 paired buildings | 55% of parameters showed no significant difference |
| 2021 air quality study | WELL vs non-WELL | No significant difference in most measured pollutants |
| 2023 study | 14 offices, 1,403 responses | No significant difference in self-reported health |
What to make of it. Three things reconcile the results. Satisfaction moves more easily than measured health, so studies asking how people feel find effects that studies measuring pollutant concentrations or health outcomes do not. Sample sizes are small: fourteen offices is not many buildings, and a single unusual building shifts the result. And the buildings studied are mostly v1 or early v2, certified before performance verification and the current thresholds were in their present form.
The fair summary is that WELL reliably improves how a building feels to the people in it, that the evidence for measurable health outcomes is thinner and still emerging, and that the studies with the strongest designs are the ones most favourable to the standard. Anyone selling WELL on a promise of measurable health improvement is ahead of the literature. Anyone dismissing it as a marketing exercise is behind it.
Where is WELL in its life cycle?
The scale of WELL is easy to misread, in both directions. 47,396 directory entries makes it sound enormous; 2,820 certified projects makes it sound marginal. The useful comparison is not with LEED today but with LEED at the same stage.
Setting the two directories side by side, and excluding LEED’s homes because WELL certifies almost none, WELL’s certified stock today is what LEED had certified by the end of 2008. That is the market position: past the pioneer phase, before the mainstream one.

| Years since launch | LEED, commercial, cumulative certified | WELL, cumulative certified |
| 6 | 711 | 357 |
| 8 | 2,233 | 823 |
| 10 | 7,757 | 1,835 |
| 12 | 15,660 | 2,817 |
Two honest readings come out of that table. WELL has reached the volume LEED had in 2008, which was the year before LEED’s steepest growth: LEED went from 2,233 certified commercial projects to 7,757 in the two years that followed. And WELL is taking longer to get there. LEED passed this point in its eighth year; WELL has taken twelve. Certification is more expensive per square foot, it requires on-site testing that LEED does not, and it reaches into operations and human resources policy, all of which slow adoption.
The consequence for anyone working in this field is on the credential side. There are 8,572 WELL APs listed in IWBI’s directory against 95,058 entries in the LEED credential directory, roughly one WELL AP for every eleven LEED credential holders. In most markets a LEED credential now identifies someone as qualified rather than as unusual. A WELL AP still identifies someone as unusual, which is the position the LEED AP held around 2008.
There is also a structural difference. LEED has had a two-tier system since 2009: the Green Associate as an entry credential and the AP with specialty above it. WELL has no equivalent. There is no WELL Green Associate, only the WELL AP, which is exactly how LEED worked before 2009, when there was a single LEED AP and no entry level; the 39,444 people still listed as legacy LEED APs are what that structure leaves behind. In practice it means the WELL AP is somebody’s first green building exam more often than the LEED AP ever is, since candidates with no green building background have no gentler starting point.
How does WELL compare with LEED?
LEED certifies a building’s environmental performance and is reviewed from documentation. WELL certifies its effect on occupant health and is reviewed from documentation plus on-site performance testing. LEED’s scorecard is dominated by energy; most of WELL’s has no LEED equivalent. LEED BD+C and ID+C certifications do not expire; WELL’s lasts three years. Both use 110 points and four levels, both are reviewed by GBCI, and many projects hold both. The full comparison of the two systems and their credentials is in LEED GA vs LEED AP vs WELL AP, and the LEED side is explained in what is LEED.
The WELL AP credential
The WELL Accredited Professional is the credential for people who apply the standard: designers, engineers, facility managers, workplace and HR professionals, sustainability consultants, and the LEED APs who keep finding WELL on the same projects.
| WELL AP | |
| Prerequisite | None; 18 or older |
| Exam | 115 questions (100 scored, 15 unscored pilot), 2 hours 30 minutes |
| Scoring | 125 to 200 scale, 170 to pass |
| Fee | $299 |
| Delivery | Prometric test centres or online via ProProctor |
| Maintenance | 30 CE hours every 2 years, 6 WELL-specific |
| Credentialed worldwide | over 16,000 |
The exam is written against WELL v2 with the Q4 2020 addenda and is unaffected by One WELL until IWBI says otherwise
IWBI’s directory lists 8,572 WELL APs, plus 382 WELL Faculty and 350 WELL Performance Testing Agents, both of which require the WELL AP first. There is no entry-level credential below it: no WELL Green Associate, only the WELL AP.
That scarcity is the reason most people give for taking it. Set against 95,058 entries in the LEED credential directory, there is roughly one WELL AP for every eleven LEED credential holders, and candidates who already hold LEED describe it as the credential that still differentiates them. This author, profiled by IWBI in September 2026, came to WELL the same way, from LEED. The Archiroots organization is listed in IWBI’s WELL directory, and full exam detail, dates and preparation are in the WELL AP exam prep course page.
What WELL AP candidates find hard
Across the 7,000 professionals Archiroots has prepared for LEED and WELL exams, about 15 percent sit the WELL AP, most of them already holding a LEED credential. The pattern is consistent. The technical concepts, Air, Water, Light, Thermal Comfort and Sound, are the ones a LEED background prepares people for, because the thresholds and the testing logic are familiar.
The concepts people struggle with are Nourishment and Materials. Nourishment has no equivalent in LEED at all: fruit and vegetable requirements, nutritional labelling, portion sizes, food advertising and food environment policy are unfamiliar territory for a designer or an engineer. Materials looks familiar and is not. WELL’s material features are about hazardous substances, abatement, pesticide and cleaning product management and ingredient disclosure, which overlap only partly with LEED’s Materials and Resources category, and candidates who assume the LEED content carries over lose points there.
The absence of an entry-level credential shows up here too. Because there is no WELL Green Associate, a meaningful share of candidates sit the WELL AP as their first green building exam, with no LEED background to reason from at all. They have no gentler starting point, which is a real argument for IWBI to consider one, and it makes the two-week structure matter more rather than less.
The preparation pattern matches LEED: a two-week plan at one to two hours a day, the second week on full-length practice exams, and 80 percent on those as the threshold for booking.
Pass rates deserve a straight answer, because nobody publishes one. Among Archiroots candidates who follow the study plan, complete the training and pass the practice exams before booking, the pass rate is 100 percent. The people who do not pass are the roughly 5 percent who sit the official exam without finishing the practice exams, convinced they already know the material. They usually do know the material. What they have not practised is the way the questions are written: a single keyword changes which answer is correct, and several options are often defensible while one is better. That gap between knowing a concept and recognising it under exam phrasing is what practice exams close, and it is the only reliable predictor of the result.
IWBI publishes two Archiroots resources in its own tools library, a free 100-question WELL AP sample practice exam and the WELL AP exam training. The same exam is available directly as the free WELL AP practice exam.
About the data in this guide
The directory figures come from the public WELL project directory export available from IWBI, taken in September 2026: 47,396 projects with their project type, certification status, level, certification date, size, location, space type, owner and sector. Certification level and date were parsed from the status field. Projects holding only the WELL Health-Safety Rating, only precertification, or only registration are counted separately and excluded from the 2,820 certified figure. Floor area is as recorded by the project. The people figures are counts read from IWBI’s people directory with its own filters, in September 2026; because the directory is opt-in, it lists fewer professionals than IWBI reports as credentialed. LEED comparison figures come from the USGBC project directory export analyzed in what is LEED.
Frequently asked questions
What is the WELL Building Standard?
A rating system published by the International WELL Building Institute that certifies buildings and organisations on their effect on occupant health, across ten concepts: Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Movement, Thermal Comfort, Sound, Materials, Mind and Community.
What does WELL stand for?
Nothing. Unlike LEED, WELL is not an acronym. It is the name of the standard, always written in capitals, published by the International WELL Building Institute.
What is WELL certification?
The award a project receives after meeting every WELL precondition, earning enough optimization points, passing on-site performance verification and completing GBCI review. The four levels are Bronze at 40 points, Silver at 50, Gold at 60 and Platinum at 80.
What are the WELL certification levels?
Bronze (40 points), Silver (50), Gold (60) and Platinum (80), out of 110. Silver and above also require a minimum number of points in every one of the ten concepts: one for Silver, two for Gold, three for Platinum.
How many points does WELL have?
110 in each project scorecard: up to 100 across the ten concepts, capped at 12 points per concept, plus up to 10 in Innovation.
Does WELL certification expire?
Yes. WELL certification is valid for three years, after which a project must recertify. The WELL Health-Safety Rating is renewed annually. This is different from LEED BD+C and ID+C, which do not expire.
How much does WELL certification cost?
A $3,000 enrollment fee plus a program fee of $0.16 per square foot, with an $8,000 minimum and a $98,000 cap, plus performance testing starting at $15,000. A 90,000 square foot project pays roughly $32,000 in fees. WELL Core and industrial locations pay $0.08 per square foot, emerging markets receive a 25 percent discount, and IWBI members save up to 15 percent.
What is the difference between WELL and LEED?
LEED measures a building’s environmental impact and is verified from documentation. WELL measures its impact on occupant health and is verified from documentation plus on-site performance testing. Many projects pursue both, GBCI reviews both, and WELL awards an Innovation point for holding another rating system alongside it.
What is WELL performance verification?
An on-site visit by an authorized WELL Performance Testing Agent after occupancy, usually one to three days, measuring air, water, light, sound and thermal conditions and spot-checking documentation. Results go to GBCI with the documentation, and certification depends on both. It is the reason a building cannot be WELL Certified on drawings alone.
How many WELL certified buildings are there?
IWBI’s public directory listed 2,820 projects certified with a level in September 2026, across 59 countries, covering about 647 million square feet. A further 32,466 projects are registered but not certified, and 10,694 hold only the WELL Health-Safety Rating.
What share of WELL projects are Platinum?
41.2 percent, which is unusually high. Gold is the most common level at 47.5 percent, Silver is 10 percent and Bronze is 1.2 percent. For comparison, only 11.1 percent of LEED certified projects are Platinum.
Which country has the most WELL certified buildings?
China, with 798 certified projects, ahead of the United States at 498 and India at 174. Only 17.7 percent of WELL certified projects are in the United States.
Is WELL only for offices?
Offices are 83 percent of certified projects, but the standard applies to multifamily residential, education, retail, hospitality, healthcare and industrial projects, and WELL Core covers core and shell buildings with tenants.
Is WELL certification worth it?
The research supports the experience of the building more strongly than measurable health outcomes: studies following the same occupants before and after a move to WELL space find significant improvements, while cross-sectional comparisons are mixed. For owners, the case is usually made on tenant demand, retention and ESG reporting rather than on a health claim.
What is a WELL AP?
A WELL Accredited Professional: someone who has passed the WELL AP exam and demonstrated knowledge of the standard, its ten concepts and the certification process. There are no prerequisites, the exam is 115 questions in two and a half hours, and the credential is renewed every two years with 30 hours of continuing education.
What is the WELL AP pass rate?
IWBI does not publish one. Among Archiroots candidates who complete the training and pass the practice exams before booking, the pass rate is 100 percent; the roughly 5 percent who fail are those who sit the exam without finishing the practice exams. The exam rewards recognising the better answer among several defensible ones, which is a skill practice exams build and reading alone does not.
Is the WELL AP worth it?
It is the least saturated of the major green building credentials: 8,572 WELL APs are listed in IWBI’s directory against 95,058 entries in the LEED credential directory, roughly one for every eleven. There is also no entry-level alternative, so the WELL AP is the only way into the standard. Candidates who already hold LEED most often give differentiation as the reason.
Is there a WELL Green Associate?
No. WELL has a single credential, the WELL AP, with no entry-level tier below it. That is how LEED worked before 2009, when there was one LEED AP and no Green Associate; 39,444 people are still listed as legacy LEED APs from that era.
How does WELL compare with LEED in size?
LEED has 129,568 certified projects to WELL’s 2,820. Compared at the same age and excluding LEED’s homes, WELL’s certified stock today is roughly what LEED had at the end of 2008, its eighth year. WELL has taken twelve years to reach that point.
What is the WELL Health-Safety Rating?
A separate, lighter IWBI program launched in 2020 covering operational policies, maintenance protocols and emergency preparedness, renewed annually. It uses the same concepts but is not WELL Certification, and 10,694 projects in the directory hold it without being certified.
What is One WELL?
One WELL is the next version of the WELL Building Standard, published by IWBI for public comment in March 2026 and due to open for enrollment in late 2026. It keeps the ten concepts and merges WELL Certification, the WELL Ratings and WELL for Residential into one library of 212 strategies in 54 themes. Preconditions earn points for the first time and the 12-point cap per concept is removed. The WELL AP exam remains based on WELL v2.
