In most cases, designing homes with dementia in mind does not mean a special type of design. It’s not news that people prefer to live at home as they age. So, universal design for dementia-friendly dwellings helps people live at home for as long as possible.
Once basic accessibility features are considered, as they should be in all homes, it’s about the details. The research that underpins the guidelines for dementia friendly dwellings found four key design principles:
- Integrated into the neighbourhood
- Easy to approach, enter and move about in
- Easy to understand, use and manage
- Flexible, safe, cost effective and adaptable over time
The graphic below shows the elements in the design process that emerged from the research project.
Dementia Friendly Dwellings Guideline
The Centre for Excellence in Universal Design has a great set of guidelines for Dementia Friendly Dwellings. People with dementia and their families and carers are considered in the designs. The Guidelines are founded on the research mentioned above. The online content is in four sections:
- Home location and approach
- Entering and moving about the home
- Spaces for living
- Elements and technology systems
The introduction provides a brief overview of dementia which is caused by many different diseases. Floor plans are included as examples of spatial layout and circulation space. Typical universally designed dementia friendly features provide the details.
Dementia friendly home ideas
The Dementia Enabling Environments website has a page on home design ideas. Some of them are simple and cost nothing, but might not be obvious to the casual observer. The Adapt a House page has a floor plan of five rooms: living room, kitchen/dining, bedroom, bathroom and laundry. There are plans for houses and apartments.
It’s interactive, so clicking on a room brings up more detail. For example, in the kitchen they suggest see-through doors on wall cabinets.
If replacing an appliance, match it closely to the existing one. In the bedroom colour contrasts are important for finding the bed and other furniture. Block-out blinds on the windows help differentiate between day and night, especially in the summertime. There is lots more information and resources on the website.
The Dementia Enabling Environments web tool was developed by Alzheimer’s WA. There are more resources on the Alzheimer’s Australia website on creating a dementia-friendly home.
Home adaptations
A group of researchers in the UK wanted to find out the role of home adaptations in supporting people with dementia. They wanted to know what works, what doesn’t, and what more needs to be done. There were four key questions in their literature review:
- Which housing adaptations are being implemented and used on an everyday basis?
- How are decisions made to implement and use housing adaptations?
- What are the barriers and enablers to housing adaptation and use?
- What is the impact of housing adaptations on everyday life?
Results of the review
The review found that the most common adaptations were about physical limitations. The emphasis was on preventing falls. Clinical trials found that home adaptations have the potential to minimise falls. Safety relies on predictability of the environment for people with dementia. Nevertheless, this is the one area that is most lacking for people living in the community.
Professionals and family members were good at coming up with ideas for adaptations. The study also found that carers were often inventive with novel solutions. However, some carers preferred their own trial and error methods when they thought professionals would not be helpful. A key issue here is that most useful information for families is online and not everyone has the ability to access this information.
“I’ll wait until the time comes” was evident in some of the literature. Some families were in favour of adaptations prior to need, whereas others wanted to wait until it was necessary. The type of housing also had an impact on this aspect.
Carers felt the adaptations made their caring tasks easier. They spent less time supervising and resulted in less burden and more sleep. The health and wellbeing of carers was the main gap in the literature.
There’s a lot more information in this scoping review. The title is, Exploring the contribution of housing adaptations in supporting everyday life for people with dementia: a scoping review.