Creating the Perfect Room with Buckingham Interiors
Welcome to part one of our Buyer’s Guide. Over the coming weeks we’ll be publishing, part by part, a comprehensive guide to creating a stylish, comfortable and fit-for purpose interior for the residents at your senior living scheme.
Buying furniture and creating the best environment for your residents can be a daunting task, but our easy to follow Buyer’s Guide takes you through the entire process, from thinking about how you want a room to be used, creating the best layout, and selecting the right furniture. Careful planning can help to create a home-from-home, and future-proof a scheme to attract new residents.
You want to make the best first impression; residents need to feel at home and their guests need to feel welcomed. A well thought-out and designed scheme, with themes and colours linking key areas while differentiating others, creates an attractive and comfortable home for residents, and helps them to navigate their way around the scheme in their perfect room.
Our Buyers Guide takes you through the planning stages and explains how to choose the right furniture. If you would like to view a completed Buckingham Interiors scheme for inspiration, contact our Sales Team to arrange a visit, or look at our range of case studies describing completed schemes.
How Will Your Perfect Room be Used?
The first step is to look at the room’s use. What is the room currently used for and is that really how you would like it to be used?
Take, for example, a lounge area. Do residents use it to simply sit and relax? Or to enjoy activities such as craft clubs or coffee mornings? A refurbishment or a refit is the ideal time to think about whether you want to change the purpose of the room, and the right furniture, laid out in the right way, can help to transform how it is used, not just how it looks. Try not to replicate what you already have – use the opportunity to breathe new life into your communal areas and consider new styles, layouts and materials. People are much more aware of design these days and as you reach out to younger residents, they often expect a more refreshing and uplifting environment.
Is your dining area used for formal dining or is it used more for tea and light snacks? Do you hold any events in your dining room, and how many people does it need to accommodate? Don’t forget significant occasions like Christmas, which can involve many more people using the space.
There are some easy ways to build more of a community atmosphere in a communal room; for example a noticeboard where you can share information on activities and events helps to promote them and boost attendance. Installing ‘memory shelves’ where residents can place personal objects or photos can encourage conversation and social interaction too.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our Buyer’s Guide – part two: Creating a Logical Layout
