For over more than 20 years two major interpretations of restorative experiences have coexisted in environmental psychology research (Stress Reduction Theory and Attention Restoration Theory). To this day, however, an encompassing model that coherently integrates both frameworks is lacking. The goal of this paper is to sketch the first outlines of such a model. This model eminently focuses on the perceptual structure of natural scenes as a necessary – but not a sufficient – contributing factor to restoration. I start off with arguing that organisms – like humans – that have evolved in a natural world, need brain mechanisms that are optimized in processing and decoding the ‘fractal’ characteristics of natural scenes. In the second part, I review empirical and conceptual arguments in support of the view that the human visual brain indeed exhibits a processing fluency for nature’s fractal geometry. In the third section I explain how both types of restorative responses can be interpreted as temporarily differentiated outcomes of the phenomenon of perceptual fluency. On the one hand stress reduction is considered as an undoing effect, having its origins in the positive affective states that accompany fluent processing. On the other hand, perceptual exposure to nature allows attentional resources a relative opportunity to rest because perceptually fluent stimuli are low on processing demands. The paper concludes with several suggestions for empirically testing the model.