How to Design a Care Home Living Space

• Space Consideration: Design the living space with adequate size to meet residents’ basic wellbeing needs, aiming for around 4 square meters per person to ensure comfort and functionality for socializing, dining, and relaxation.
• Optimal Lighting: Proper lighting is essential for residents’ mood and wellbeing, especially for those with poor eyesight. Consider both natural and artificial lighting, allowing residents to adjust lighting levels according to their preferences to accommodate varying needs.
• Functional Layout: Create a balanced layout that fosters social interaction while providing areas for privacy when desired. Ensure staff movement doesn’t disrupt residents’ relaxation by carefully planning circulation routes and minimizing through traffic.
• Versatile Furniture Selection: Choose furniture that caters to various activities such as eating, relaxing, hosting guests, and pursuing hobbies. Incorporate comfortable chairs, tables, workstations, and open spaces to accommodate residents’ diverse preferences and activities, promoting a sense of comfort and homeliness.

A living space is arguably the most important area of any care home, as this is where residents will spend a great deal of their time, whether it be eating, socialising, or just getting some peace and quiet. With this in mind, it’s absolutely essential that this area is designed purposefully and thoughtfully, so residents can get the most possible value out of the space.

Let’s take a look at some of the key considerations.

The space itself

Firstly, the most important aspect of a care home living space is its size. Being able to meet basic wellbeing needs is one of the fundamental concerns you will need to tackle, and how much room is needed will depend on how many residents there are that will be using the space. Around 4 square metres for each person that could potentially use it is a good place to start.

How to choose the right lighting for a care home living space

When a room is properly lit, it can do wonders for our mood and general wellbeing, and for those with poor eyesight, it’s the difference between being able to see and not. This is exactly why the right lighting is so important in a care home living space. 

Of course, how much lighting you actually need will depend largely on the amount of natural light that’s getting in, but one thing that you really do need to think about is how residents will be able to modify how much light is in the room. Different residents will have different needs when it comes to lighting, so it’s important to try and account for this in the design.

How to choose the right layout for a care home living space

While the living area of a care home is primarily a social space, it’s also important to create areas where residents can have some privacy if they would like it. Another thing to keep in mind is that the layout shouldn’t be such that staff are constantly passing through with things like waste, laundry or other items. The living area is ultimately a place for relaxation, after all.

Choosing the correct furniture for a care home living space.

A care home living space is a place for eating, relaxing, hosting guests and doing hobbies – that’s a lot of different activities, and the furniture needs to reflect this. Comfortable chairs and a variety of tables, workstations and open space should be accounted for in the living area, so residents can watch television, play music, draw – whatever they like! Contact us for a quote!

Aedifice Partnership is a leading consultancy and project management firm specializing in delivering high-quality projects across various sectors, including care homes, residential properties, education establishments, and commercial properties.

Our range of services includes project management, chartered building surveys, CDM and quantity surveying among others.

Here at Aedifice Partnership, we manage new care home construction projects across the UK.