This presentation will primarily focus on the development and application of the method “Sketch and Talk” in which ethnographic and visual methods are used to get closer to patients’ and clients’ lived experience of their care environment. “Sketch and Talk” uses sketching and talking when meeting a participant in their cell or room as a way of creating a space for mutual observation and understanding of the interior (James, 2017). The method has been developed in research in institutions of care and incarceration (ICI), that is, prisons, special residential youth homes and forensic psychiatric hospitals. In these closed environments there are limitations to which research methods and tools that can be used. An awareness and respect for vulnerable groups as well as security is key to determine how the researcher can learn how personal stories of the dialectic relationship design, materiality, functionality and people’s experience of space, body, time and relations. ICIs are understood as an existential and ethical dichotomy with well-being on the one hand and the losses that incarceration brings on the other. The tension between punishment and (re)habilitation manifests through materiality, design, and high-security measures. However, the question for design in these environments is not whether it is possible to hinder the pain and losses that come with incarceration but how design can mitigate these losses, alleviate pain, foster well-being, and assist staff through a safe and supportive work environment (James, 2023). The findings suggest that future research can contribute with more knowledge on how an interior can promote well-being through design for autonomy, dwelling, and movement and as a result can open up new horizons of change and hope.