How to Decorate a Care Home to Make it Feel Homely

Moving into a care home is a difficult decision for both the resident and their loved ones. A room in a care home could never replace your own family home.

But this doesn’t mean that a care home has to look clinical, stern, or unwelcoming. Quite the opposite: the best nursing homes have a homely atmosphere, where the residents feel safe and welcome.

Every item in your care home (from the biggest furniture pieces to the smallest decorations) can contribute to this homelike feeling. Let’s find out how you can achieve that and contribute to your residents’ well-being.

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1. Give Your Residents the Chance to Add Personal Touches to Their Room

A few empty photo frames that they can populate with pictures of their family can go a long way. You can also encourage them to bring their favourite duvet cover or blanket.

Taking a few pieces of their home along will help improve their mood. For patients with dementia, this can also help slow down memory loss. To that end, you can also encourage them to keep a diary or a personal calendar to help them remember events and dates.

2. Colours Can Improve Mood

When choosing the colours of your furniture, decorations, and soft furnishings, take into account how they can influence your residents’ mood. A few tricks you can apply to uplift their mood are:

• Use red in the dining room — red is known to boost energy. That’s why you see it in the logos of so many fast food chains. Red boosts your energy level and your appetite. Not sure about red? Orange works just as well to boost appetite and it feels less aggressive.

• Soft blue reminds people of the sea and it induces calm. It’s an ideal colour for bathrooms. You can also use it in summer decorations, to help people relax and feel chiller, but avoid it during winter, when it can be too cold.

• Green makes you feel comfortable, so it’s perfect for sofas or the entertainment room walls.

• Brown is the colour of chocolate and hot cocoa, so we often associate it with coziness and comfort. You can use brown accents in the residents’ room, like throw pillows or rugs. To boost interactions between your residents, add brown to your common spaces, as well, so they feel comfortable when they engage in conversation with other people.

3. Liven up the Place with Plants and Fresh Flowers

If possible, add fresh flowers to every resident’s room. If not, you can use potted plants and save the fresh flowers for the common areas where everyone can enjoy them.

Plants are very important, especially in urban care homes or in settings where there is little access to nature. This will improve the oxygen levels in the rooms and boost the seniors’ morale.

4. Avoid Ultra-Modern Interior Design

Modern interior design is rarely suitable for care homes. Since it typically features glass, metal, cold colours, and sharp edges it will be associated with hospitals and office buildings.

Instead, opt for a classic design, for objects that you would easily find in your residents’ family homes. Warm colours, soft surfaces, cozy patterns — everything one adds in a residential home to make it more comfortable and cozy should be found in a nursing home as well.

5. Invest in Quality Soft Furnishings

While it’s normal to spend more time choosing the furniture for your care home, it’s important to remember that it’s often the soft furnishings that tie everything together and make any space feel homely.

A well-chosen rug, cozy cushions, curtains, and bedspreads can completely transform a room. When you choose soft furnishings, consider both safety and style:

• Opt for non-slippery rugs with few (if any) patterns. Rugs with patterns can give the impression of a prominent obstacle, especially to residents with neurodegenerative diseases.

• The cushions should be easy to clean and disinfect.

• The same goes for bedspreads.

• The curtains should be fire retardant and help control the temperature and the light as well. For instance, blackout curtains are ideal for individual rooms, while thinner curtains could go in your common spaces, where you should have natural light throughout the day. Check out this complete guide to choosing curtains for care homes for more tips and tricks.

Wrapping Things Up

Still not sure how you could make your care home feel more homely? Why not ask your residents?

After all, they are the ones who should feel at home there. Tell them if you’re planning a renovation or just a small touch-up to your interior design. You may get some excellent ideas.

Plus, this will help them feel needed, which will improve their well-being. What better way to feel at home than to participate in decorating the space?