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Abstract Humans use the coastal ocean and its resources as a source of food and energy, as well as for a variety of other purposes, including transportation and recreation. Over the past several decades, uses of the coastal ocean have been increasingly accompanied by the installation of artificial structures. These artificial structures come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from energy and aquaculture infrastructure that incidentally form habitat for marine organisms to artificial reefs that are often deployed intentionally to become habitat. Marine spatial planning has offered a robust framework for siting artificial structures to minimize conflicts with other uses and maximize societal and economic benefits with other intended uses of the seascape, but ecological criteria are seldom considered in the planning process. In contrast, artificial reefs are intentionally sunk to form structured habitat and provide a variety of ecological functions, yet ecological principles are not often incorporated into the siting and planning process. Instead, artificial reefs are sited largely to advance societal and economic benefits and minimize conflicts with other uses, such as shipping traffic, military use, or impacts to sensitive areas. We outline a framework to further incorporate ecological principles into artificial reef siting, design and construction, and evaluation that features place‐based and adaptive management coupled with tenets from experimental field ecology. This framework accounts for complexities of and interactions among ecological, societal, and economic criteria associated with artificial reefs to ensure they meet defined goals.