Market Differentiation: Creating an Interiors Brand
Your most critical issue in care at the moment is unlikely to be creating an interiors brand, but clarity of your offer can actually assist with staffing, retention, and overall residency levels.
People want to live in a very specific place, a place they can call home, and this mindset is one of the first benefits of market differentiation.
Do you have a favourite place in your own home where you feel most comfortable? It will be a specific location in a unique room. Creating these environments can be tricky because they are designed for many different people at the same time. But having opportunities for very personal ‘spots’ within, even a large room, provides a sense of ownership for the resident.
Create defined spaces
In the example shown the inside of the fixed shelving is in a strongly coloured laminate identifying this as the Violet Lounge. Staff can easily look through the fixed objects to see everyone in the lounge and yet the division creates a sense of privacy and delineates between more interactive and quieter spaces. If each ward were to have a different palette with a similar layout, you will have begun creating an interior brand, which is uniquely identifiable, and with personal spaces for residents, staff and visitors.
In addition to creating resident ‘ownership’ of spaces, interior branding can save time for operators and potential residents. Simply put, one aesthetic will not appeal to everyone. The more definitive your aesthetic, the more people who will feel at home there will be drawn to it.
Likewise, images of your interior branding should convey in which part of the market you sit: high, medium, or budget. If someone has lived their life in luxury it is reasonable for them to have similar expectations in relation to their next home. A person who has never lived in such an environment may either find this aspirational or somewhere they might never feel truly at home. The point is, strong interior branding differentiates where you sit in the marketplace.
You can always tell when a home is going to look like just another care home. The website will have a significant number of pictures of smiling older people and staff and absolutely nothing showing the environment in which people live. (Spoiler alert!) Why…? Because no one actually wants to live in a care home or anyplace which looks like one.
Here is an example of an integrated retirement community corridor. For a care home, you’d add a contrasting handrail, fix any furniture to the wall (dependant on your fire officer and corridor width), and add scrubbable paint. It doesn’t take much. In this case the interior brand is fresh, contemporary, clean, and bold.
If you were looking on the website for this community, you’d know something about the atmosphere. Care must of course be exceptional, that’s what you’re selling…but environment matters…to residents, to their families, and to your increasingly hard to find members of staff.
Start with your budget, and find a theme
To define interior branding goals, it makes sense to begin with budget. Use of colour is an easy win with almost no cost implication. Park Grove designed an assisted living facility which was literally located in the middle of a roundabout off the A406 in London. No real budget to speak of, but colour ‘pops’ are apparent throughout the building in furniture and paintwork.
Upholstering chair backs in a strong colour combination linking to a feature wall paint creates an instant scheme which can look both smart and unique. An oversized wallpaper on one wall, not an expensive option but one with major impact.
Credit: Park Grove Design, UK
Hotel projects have been going this route for a while, but it is critical in making such choices that the idea of ‘home’ is always in mind. Options must also be site appropriate. We would not use this example in a dementia area, for instance, but it undoubtedly has impact and a unique sense of place.
An artwork theme can be another cost-effective option for developing your brand. The Queensbury hotel in Bath has built its entire brand on Victorian cartoons which look fun and fresh when mixed into its Georgian surroundings. Instead of standard ‘care home images’ of swans and flowers, you might look into fun, uplifting, and even irreverent artwork options.
Interior branding is about market differentiation, so you must also look at what your competition is doing. In the world according to Google: “In Hull, the summers are short, comfortable, and partly cloudy and the winters are long, very cold, windy, and mostly cloudy.” There is a care project in Hull in which architects and designers have created a unique covered indoor/outdoor area which can be used year-round. Creating an interior brand with this as a starting place would be relatively easy with real and excellent fake plants used throughout along with biophilic design principles.
You could be the home of oversized electric fireplaces, or if you’re working on a new build, will yours be the super contemporary option?
Park Grove developed a project where each resident bedroom was designed based on a famous clothing designer…Ralph Lauren, Chanel etc. If you have a fantastic activities director, why not highlight music and the arts?
Your home could be the one which brings the outside community in. A cafe/bistro can add an additional revenue stream, but only if people REALLY want to go there. Let’s face it, not many people are anxious to go out for the day to get a cup of coffee at a care home or integrated retirement community. If you’re going to compete with the High Street, you really need to compete with an interior and menu which are up to the task. Simply because it’s trendy doesn’t automatically make it unsuitable for residents. It simply means they may get more visitors and more community interaction.
Find a way to stand out
As part of brainstorming themes, we’ll use an example of one which would be quite challenging. I am not suggesting you necessarily invite dogs into your home, but let’s review the type of considerations you’d have to review if you did. The model is the same regardless of the interior branding theme you choose.
If dogs were to be part of your brand you would begin by reviewing where in the home you would be putting, or in this case allowing, the intervention. For this example, we will imagine dogs to be allowed in ground floor private resident rooms with direct exterior access, and perhaps one communal area so all residents can benefit. If the interior brand concept was plants you would begin by looking at where you have natural daylight in the building.
What surface finishes are appropriate for your concept? Using our dog example research would need to take place into vinyl flooring which is scratchproof. If water bowls are to be present then the floor would also require a slip-proof finish, and the water bowls would need to contrast with the floor to prevent a trip hazard
Do you have acoustic separation between resident rooms, and could an acoustic intervention be required in the communal space?
Operators should next review furnishing considerations affected by a particular theme choice. A dog-sized copy of your communal lounge sofa would be a wonderful touch but only if it doesn’t represent another trip hazard. Fortunately, most anti-microbial and waterproof fabrics would work with this example but again scratch-proofing would need to be reviewed.
Regardless of what interior branding theme you develop it is essential that all aspects tie directly back to operational ease. You are primarily offering care, not artwork, dogs, or plants.
In our dog example a key operational aspect would be dog walking. If a resident owner were not up for walking on a particular day a provision would have to be in place without the need for use of a valuable member of staff. An exterior enclosed open run with sand base might serve the purpose here. In short, if you have an idea it’s likely there will be a way to achieve it through good design.
In conclusion...
In any interior brand there will undoubtedly be other considerations as well. You should walk through all diagram steps to ensure your idea does not tread on the business of care. It should instead add interest and differentiation for all stakeholders including any talented staff who, at the present time, can pretty much choose their place of work. When you review your market, do you stand out in a positive way, or does your website just show images of smiling older people and staff? When you welcome visitors is the first thing they see many old people smiling, or the environment in which they live?
It is possible to test an idea before spending any money at all. Look at your website and that of other homes in the area. Pick a concept which will work with your budget and preferably one which you find truly exciting. Test the idea against the considerations diagram and then in a small area on site to get feedback from residents, family members and staff. Alternatively, you can track a ‘proposed design’ on your website and check analytics to see how much of your traffic goes to that page. The proof of success is whether or not your occupancy rate, staff retention, and overall ambience improve.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
do something unique
tie your interior branding theme together will all other brand elements such as your website, logo, and business cards
be brave in your choices as they can be trialled with minimal expenditure while anticipating significant returns
Interior branding differentiates one proposition from another as well as providing residents a unique place to call home. It saves time for operators by matching the financial and aesthetic aspirations of potential residents and family members with actual environments, and it provides an interesting and uplifting place in which staff can work. It is the next step forward in care home interiors.
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