Park Grove design show stand at Interiors UK
Park Grove Design will work in collaboration with Out of the Dark, to create a feature stand at the heart of the show. The stand aims to promote inclusive design in the form of a living and dining room-set.
Out of the Dark is a charity that recycles and restores salvaged furniture as a means to train, educate and employ young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Park Grove is passionate in raising the standard of design in care home environments. The principles behind this design work directly translates to designing an environment that suits the majority of people for everyday living.
Our Director Lori explains…
“Inclusive design should look like a property that you or I would want to live in and invite guests to. Inclusive design is not focused on one particular issue – age, disability, whether or not you’re in a wheelchair, whether you can see or not. The idea of inclusive design is that there are things we can do within ‘normal’ design schemes that would work better for everyone.
“Simple design decisions such as avoiding furniture with sharp corners, incorporating highly visible easy-to-use handles and increasing contrast levels to delineate furniture and space and avoid bumps are all ways of maximising accessibility for a wide range of people. As people age, their retinas become less responsive to light – so a dimmer switch allows light levels in a room to be easily controlled according to the amount of light needed. For many people with dementia, a strong contrast in floor colours between, for example, a bedroom and bathroom might make traversing one to the other feel like stepping into an abyss; maintaining a consistent floor colour throughout a space is a simple way of overcoming this problem.
Inclusive design should be good design; it’s not just for elderly people, although I have never in my life met one human being that doesn’t age, we [as an industry] design properties that we have to move out of because we get old.
The care and retirement home sector is ready for change. It’s had a lot of bad press; babyboomers putting their parents into homes are used to a much higher standard of living than a generation ago, and they don’t want to put their parents into places like this. If we’re smart about the decisions we make, it’s an area that we can greatly improve.”
Visit the Interiors UK show at the NEC Birmingham from January 19th – January 22nd, Hall 2 stand number 2G27.
