Whether someone is in home care or senior care, the interior design of either a home or the residential care one lives in can have a large impact on one’s mood and behaviour.

This is perhaps most apparent in the choice of colours we use within our living spaces. It is well known that different colours can exhibit different feelings and emotions.

By carefully selecting the right colours, they can have a positive impact on one’s wellbeing, but picking the wrong types of colours can have the opposite effect.

The Colours in Senior Care

If you live in a care home, the interior designers should have back when the home was being constructed carefully considered what colours they were going to use in each living area.

While there are a large number of colours to choose from, colours that generally have warm tones, such as red, blue and green, or cool tones, such as blue, purple and green, are typically used in a care home environment, depending on the type of mood one wishes to create.

Warm colours should generally be used in social areas, where the bright colours have the potential to engage residents with its vibrancy and promote healthy cognitive function and communication.

For areas more personal, such as bedrooms, cool colours should be used to promote calmness and reflection. Areas of worship and quiet rooms can also benefit from these types of colours.

Creating the right contrast

However, while selecting the right colours is important, one must ensure that the colours chosen create a nice contrast and do not clash.

For personal areas, many senior care homes use a combination of soft pink and beige contrasted with soft blues and greens to create an overall relaxing and soothing environment.

It is also very important that the walls and floors of rooms have contrasting colours, as using the same could cause confusion in some residents.

This is because residents with poor eyesight or a disorder such as dementia may not be able to differentiate the two, which could lead to trips and falls, particularly if the area involved has steps.

Similarly, if a room has a carpet that contains a pattern, this pattern should not be used on any walls, as again this could cause accidents.

And while the use of gloss may make a room look more appealing and attractive, it should not be used in care homes as it could cause confusion and undue stress in some residents.

Changing the colour in your home

For those in home care, adding a splash of colour to your own home need not be difficult, and it can greatly impact the feel of your home and your own wellbeing in the long run.

Consider the atmosphere you wish to create in a particular room and pick colours accordingly, bearing in mind contrast and compatibility.

While you can hire a painter to do the job, another idea is to ask some family members to perhaps help paint a room or two themselves. This can turn the job into a family activity, which can help combat loneliness and isolation.