Senior Living

On a senior community, the interior decisions that matter most are baked into the plan long before anyone picks a fabric. Get the designer in while the walls can still move.

Nobody moves into a facility on purpose. They move into a home that happens to have support built in, and the interiors are how everyone tells the difference.

The resident will live there. Often, a daughter or son decides whether they do. Here’s how the interiors speak to both people on the same tour.

Residents should be able to find lunch, their apartment and the way back without reading a single sign. When the building does the pointing, everybody relaxes.

Three quiet decisions do more for resident independence than almost anything else in the budget. None of them has to look clinical.

The brochure room isn’t the one that matters most. It’s the coffee spot by the mailboxes, the dining room at noon and the bench in the sun.

One resident is choosing a lifestyle. The other is often choosing support, with family helping decide. The interiors have to know which story they’re telling.

As eyes age, the same room gets harder to read. Lighting is how we give it back, and done well it looks like a well-lit home, not a clinic.

A chair is a tool for standing up as much as sitting down. Get it right and residents stay independent. Get it wrong and they stay put.

A pretty portfolio is the easy part. The firm you want also understands care levels, operations, procurement and the adult child on the tour.