You can listen to Episode S4E10 right here!
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Lori, hello and welcome to the Third Age design podcast… as always, sharing essential information on senior environments, but this month in a different way. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet, and we’ve got a panel discussion today to review the next challenges in senior living design. What are we looking forward to and what might be somewhat painful? We’ll meet the panel shortly for part one of this session, but first I want to tell you about what’s coming up later in this month’s ‘Innovation Spotlight’, we’re going to look at recent research from the Vienna University of Technology regarding nanoparticles, and even though you may not think so, these may soon become very important to you. We’ve got a rather fun quotation to start with. Most of you have heard of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, if not the book, then possibly the resulting TV series which was distributed in over 30 countries worldwide. Ms Wilder said, “Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to those who have nothing to do but smell.” Isn’t that brilliant? Yeah, it’s lot easier to criticize than to actually do. And this podcast is for the doers, the operators, developers, architects and designers who want to learn more and always improve what is being done. Go to our website at thirdage dot design and hit the ‘Join Us’ button, and you’ll automatically receive A TAD extra, which is exclusive information for our community members. The current one is a review of end of life spaces and the impact that they have on patients and their family members. The Third Age Design podcast is supported by Wissner-Bosserhoff. Elevate nursing care with intelligent beds from Wissner-Bosserhoff, blending modern day, smart care technology with comfort; empowering caregivers worldwide. Discover more at www we-bo.com that’s www.wi -bo.com. Okay, to get started, let me set the scene here. This panel discussion was hosted at the newly designed and innovative Shackleton’s Furniture Showroom and factory in Dewsbury, England, an experience in itself, if you’ve got the opportunity to visit, and I really do highly recommend it. As I mentioned earlier, the topic for today is the next Senior Living design challenges, and for the first, and I think probably only time I’m one of the panelists. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet. I’ve already introduced myself at the beginning of the podcast, but I’m going to give you a little bit of information about me, and then I’m going to introduce the other panelists and let them tell you something about themselves. So I’ve been Director of Park Grove Design since 1993 we’ve won Pinders Awards, Dementia Design Awards design awards, etc. Really focusing on this area, we do some hospitality work as well. And I’m a Past President of the British Institute of Interior Design. For my sins, let me go to Diana now. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Diana Celella
I will thank you. My name is Diana Celella, and I’m the Director of The Drawing Room Interiors, which is an international award winning design practice. I graduated my degree in interior design 1986 which is where my journey began in this field. I’m a BIID registered designer. I’m an associate consultant for Hammond care dementia choices. And I served as Past President of SBID, society of British and international designers, and I’m the Past Chairman of the healthcare design panel. I work in commercial interior design, specializing in healthcare projects ranging from care homes to dental practices assisted living and retirement villages. Got a deep interest in evidence based design within the care industry, and I also work for my sins, as well as a part time University lecturer for Masters in interior design, Arts University Bournemouth, which has inspired my my desire to share my design expertise. And in 2016 I was honored to be named West Midland Women of the Year for my contributions to design education.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So totally under qualified to be on this panel today. We’ve got another stellar star to my right hand side. You can’t see this because this is an audio podcast. But Tracy, would you introduce yourself? Please?
Tracey Richards
Thank you. Lori, so I’m Tracy Richards, and I’ve only actually had my design practice Three Nine Designs for four years, but I have been doing interior design in the care sector for over 10 years now, started in-house with a with a large company, and then decided to set up on my own. We’ve got relatively large design practice now, which is amazing. I’m really, really happy, and it’s continuing to grow. But yeah, we work on a number of different care designs from nursing, dementia, assisted living, and, yeah, that’s all we focus on. Is care design. It’s our specialty, and that’s what we like to pride ourselves in.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And the company that you were with before, we should mention, because a lot of our listeners are also in the United States. It was an international company, very, very well known in both the US and the UK, and possibly some other countries as well…
Tracey Richards
Canada I believe, yeah, good point. Lori, so yes, Sunrise Senior Living was, I was their head designer in the UK, so I led the UK team for a number of years, and then, yeah, unfortunately, that then changed providers, so I set up on my own, and I’ve actually got the work back, just externally, which is really nice, and get to see all the lovely homes and refurb them. So yeah, it’s a really good job.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So we at the podcast. We’re very excited to have what I consider to be, you know, the A team within the United Kingdom talking about the senior living design challenges, because what we’ve learned on the podcast going to other countries, is these challenges are fairly universal. So we’re going to be taking a UK approach today, but it will resonate with listeners in other countries as well. So the challenges, I’m just going to bullet point some, and there’s some that we had talked about prior to the actual recording session, and that is: the differentiation, or lack of differentiation, in operator offers within the sector. This is the same as I said, particularly in the US. we find this as well, lack of sustainable supply chain options, potential change in care models, staff retention and how design can assist, engagement with residents and staff and how that is managed. The impact of new technologies and how we keep up with that, and the impact of rising construction costs on FF & E budgets that designers have to work with. So you’re happy to for us to just launch into those. So starting with the United Kingdom, specifically, we’ve got our luxury our mid-range and our budget offers. And, do you find that the new operators that are coming into the sector are all going into one particular part of that range? Or what are you finding in the market Diana?
Diana Celella
Yeah, when people are selling up and going into care…? Yeah, so in a higher price range of houses is always going to have more money for people to be in a…. Well, I think the most of the clients we see as a design practice are most, mostly high end or mid-level, basically a lot of time because of the budget end there isn’t the budget for interior designer anyway. But I think also that a lot of people are putting their money into the high and mid -level because the budget care homes are really struggling because the residents that tend to live in those care homes are mostly state-funded. The state funding isn’t enough to cover all the operational costs, so there’s a problem. What we have found, though, is some of the charities are now doing sort of like more high end care homes where they can have private funding, but they use the profits from these privately-funded care homes to then help the more state-funded care homes to run so they can take the money from the high end into the budgets, where we have been asked with budget care homes, which tends to be more when we’re working for a big group that have got an array of different ones…is trying to work at how we can sort of turn them from being perhaps a top heavy to state funding to try and change the model to more a 60% private funded to 40% state funded to help with the operational costs. So that’s what we’re finding, that it is. But I think, as well as a lot to do with geography as well, isn’t it the price of the house prices in the area.
Tracey Richards
We’re finding exactly the same. We get more of the new builds at the high end, mid range, but then we are attracting quite a lot of the refurbs at, say, the more state funded homes. So they are trying to up their game, maybe not as bigger budgets, but they are trying to, they are trying to make their homes a little bit more, less-institutionalized, a little bit more homely. And they’re seeing that, obviously you might have a high end one around the corner, and then they’re trying to keep up with it. So we’re getting a lot more clients kind of coming to us for ideas, and maybe not with the biggest budget, but we can always help like, that’s something we kind of like to do a Three Nine, is work with everyone. So we always want to try and put as much into them, lower budgets as we can, to bring them up without going.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Also, you get new ideas. So sometimes when the budget’s really low, we find we’re at our most creative, because somehow we have to make sure, but then you can tweak that for another part of the market and still get the benefit of the concept..
Tracey Richards
100% Yeah, we find that we actually enjoy doing them budget ones, because it is making you think more challenge, be more creative, come up with other ideas that aren’t maybe just, you know, small things where joinery, maybe they kind of haven’t got the budget to do paneling, but maybe we could do beading and things like that, where we can still make it look like paneling, but at a lower cost. And it’s not, you know, loads of joinery.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
That’s what Park Grove hast started doing as well, putting putting a dado rail, or what they’d call a chair rail, in the US, and then just adding some molding to the wall, painting the whole thing in satinwood, and then it looks like you’ve got a panelld room. So they’re all but you’ve raised a really good point Tracy, which, which isn’t on our list here, which is the difference between refurbs and new builds, because we find at Park Grove Design, we find that the client’s expectation is that, if it’s only quote, unquote, a refurb, it’s going to be less money. But from a design, from a designer standpoint, it takes us a lot. Could somebody else speak to this? So it’s not just me?
Tracey Richards
Yeah, it’s so much more work doing refurbs. And when I was in Sunrise, as we spoke about before, that’s all we did was refurbs. Over in the UK, we weren’t building and once I started to do new builds, I was like, this is this is lovely. This is so much more straightforward. But for me, my background is refurb so I really enjoy it. It’s engaging with the residents that you don’t have a new build. It’s, you know, getting involved with the staff, walking around the home, seeing what they actually need. And again, you come up with new ideas, because it’s things that you don’t necessarily always know about that they’re saying, well, this actually is a problem. Can you come up with an idea how this could be better for us or work better? And actually it makes us more creative. And then we think, actually, we should put that on should put that on the new builds, because, actually, it’s a really good point, good idea. And yeah, actually, we really enjoy that part of it.
Diana Celella
Yeah, because it’s more operational, there’s nobody operational.
Tracey Richards
But then so much more work, because then you’ve got so many more opinions. It’s not just the operators,
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
…and you’ve got the people funding it, and you’ve got the operators, you’ve got residents. You have whoever happens to be the head of the home that month, yeah, change from week to week, Yeah, and then when it changes, your brief changes at the same time. Let’s, let’s skip forward just to finish off that question. But we should probably skip forward right now to engagement with residents and staff, because there’s a natural kind of flow there. But what we’re finding in the UK for Park Grove is everybody seems to be trying to get into the top end of the mid-range, not the middle mid-range, not the lower bit, but but for a return on investment for their fund they’re trying to pitch to that you’re finding the same, yeah, and that makes it more difficult for us as designers to differentiate what is unique to this client, aesthetically, as opposed to another. I wonder what will happen in the future? So I consider that to be a real challenge of design in this area,
Tracey Richards
Yeah, because you’re kind of pigeon-holed, yeah. And then you’re not really getting to look at all the other aspects of design, because you are just in that one area where everyone’s expecting this very high level. And then it’s almost like, I don’t know if you but we get clients that go, oh, well, they’ve got this down the road, so we want that. And it’s like, but is that actually necessary for your clients? Is that what you want? Or do you want to be hitting the same clients? If that’s just down the road, why don’t you come up with something different, and then you’re getting your unique selling point? And I find that a lot with care, unfortunately, is they tend to just want what everyone else has got, and they just think outside the box…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
We’re going to have a hair salon. We may or may not have a cinema that ends up with with equipment sitting in it.
Tracey Richards
Yeah. 100% and we find that no one really wants to get down that unique selling point, because I can understand because it’s their money, and they don’t want to risk it, because they’re thinking, Well, what if that isn’t the right route to go down, and are we spending the money correctly? Because no one else has done it. But as designers, we’re like, this is exactly the right route to be going down like this is going to get you more residents, because it’s different. And so, yeah, it is difficult to try and it’s differentate.
Diana Celella
I’m lucky that I have got one particular client that are always up for something different and new, and will listen and you know so, but I agree. And do you not think talking about like mid-range, high-range, that what is high end for one care group might be mid-range for another care group?. So, you know, it’s like how they perceive high end…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And where they are in the country, which you mentioned earlier, which will be the same in other countries as well. They’ll have your more affluent parts of the country.
Diana Celella
And you know, you can ask a client What’s your weekly fee going to be, because that gives you a good idea of where they’re pitching. But what in London is mid-range would be perhaps very high end somewhere else. Yeah, so it’s sometimes. There’s a lot more to it than just different rangest
Tracey Richards
Location. Yeah, what their standards are as a provider, there’s loads of different factors. You have to come in with such a big questionnaire almost just to get your brief out of them, because what they kind of see, like you said in their head, as a mid to high end, you could actually look at all the details and go, actually, you’re hitting more of the mid range. You’re not up that level, but do you want to be? And again, then you ask, what are you going to be charging? Because then I can factor in what is that’s going to work for you. So yeah, there’s so many questions at the beginning of the process that has to be asked, because every provider is totally different.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And you were also mentioning earlier Tracy about, you know, the different stakeholders that need to be engaged, and that there are more with refurbs. But either way, there are a lot of engagement. How do you guys engage? What do you have a methodology or something that you use for engaging with residents and staff? Because if you do Park Grove’s, going to steal it!
Tracey Richards
For us personally, it’s more of a natural kind of progression. We don’t go in with loads of forms and write, what do you want? We kind of go into the home, thinking, right? Who, who looks like they are working here every day, who looks like they could talk to us and give us some information. So we’ll walk around a home with, say, the Home Manager, maybe the Director of a certain region, and then sometimes a Shareholder in that business. But then we’re also say, do you mind us talking to the staff and the residents? Because that gives us the best insight, because they’re there every day, and they can say, what are their problems? What do they really like? And what do they enjoy about the home? Because sometimes you think, Oh, they won’t need that, and actually it’s something they really enjoy. So you want to be able to keep giving that and provide that in your design. So it’s, it’s really important, I think, to talk to that end user as well. So we try and talk to everyone in the home if we can, because everyone has a different view. Each stakeholder will have a different view. Every Home Manager, and like you said, will change sometimes from month to month, or they really wanted this color in this room, and you go back with your designs, and they’re gone. It happens a lot. So we tend, we tend not to go down to that level of detail, but we will, we will say, how do you want this room to function? How do you see it working for you? What kind of furniture would you like? Is it soft seating? Is it dining? Is it more of an arts and crafts room? You know, we’ll, we’ll ask them kind of questions. So yeah, we try and engage everyone, not just the stakeholders or not just the resident, but staff as well, and everyone on different levels.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Cause there could be a culture within that building that you’re not familiar with that isn’t the same. So we’re doing, we were doing, just about finished now, the Royal Hospital Chelsea, which for which is for listeners who aren’t familiar with this, who probably no one will be outside of the UK. This is a military-based establishment, and they have a thing– all of their fireplaces have a calendar that they change every day, and it’s basically a piece of metal with a sliding arrow that goes over a number. And it’s kind of an honor for somebody to be the person that changes the calendar. So we’re looking at fireplaces, we have to know that that’s part of the culture. Something as specific as that is part of the culture, of that of that environment. Do you have any…
Diana Celella
Yeah, well I mean, we do exactly. That’s actually what Tracy was saying. I think some of our best ideas sometimes have come from like it might be one of the residents and they’ve asked for a solution in something, and, you know, I’ve suggested things. But then what we do when we’re doing refurbishments, what we tend to do is, for each room, we do two ideas, so we then have a big meeting with all the residents and staff, or as many that can attend. And residents, sorry, relevant…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Relevant relatives.
Diana Celella
So we have this group of people that come into the meeting, and we present for each room, two ideas. And the idea of this is that we are we wanting to give choice to them, the residents and relatives and staff, but also to bring them on-board, because they’re going to go through a bit of a trial where it’s going to be refurbished. And if people are on-board and interested and. Feel engaged in the choice, yeah, then they’re more likely to put up with the you know. And then what happens is, we leave these ideas with them, and they vote, they take a vote, and then the votes come back to us, and we then go with, you know, the majority votes for the different rooms. Obviously, behind the scenes, we’ve made sure all these schemes will work together, and we’ll still get a flow, and it all still works, but it does mean that we’re engaging people, and we do them quite different to each other, so they’re not totally similar schemes, and we do that with nearly all our refurbishments. We did two ideas for measure. We don’t tend to do them for corridors more than because we need the corridors to link all the ideas, but certainly for sort of, you know, communal spaces, we do more than one idea, yeah.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Diana, do you find that the that the operators or the funders ever feel threatened by losing control as soon as you engage either staff or residents? Is that? Do you perceive that fear?
Diana Celella
How we do it is, we talk to the management and, you know, the project manager and the client, and we talk about controlled choice, so that by doing a choice, that there’s no bad answer, and these choices are shown to them first, so that they know they’ve been engaged and they’re happy with whichever the residents and staff choose. So although there’s a choice, it’s a controlled choice. Yeah, so it’s not saying, ‘what color do you want in this room, or we want red walls?’ It’s here’s a choice. Here they are. Yeah, and it’s a very controlled choice. So we know it’s still going to meet all the evidence-based design. We know the LRVs have been taken consideration everything else, but we know it will work in flow, and we know that the management client have already approved those choices in advance. Yeah, we’ve got some clients we’ve worked for so long now they say we don’t even need to see them, because we know we’re happy with what you do, that’s fine. But with new clients, we tend to do that. They’ve seen it in advance. They’ve made sure they’re happy, so it’s very controlled.
Tracey Richards
We’ve done exactly the same one of our clients, they’ve approved everything first, and then we’ve given them the choice. Yeah, exactly the same. I think we’ve we’ve been done three for some reason. We’ve done three of every scheme. But yeah, we’ve done exactly the same. And then they’ve got to choose which one they want for each area. But the same it’s controlled. It all flows together. So whatever they do choose, we know it’s going to Yeah. And then the stakeholders are happy, because they’ve seen it all before, yeah. And then if a management change, it’s already been signed-off, and the residents have seen…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And engaged already. So it’s a natural it’s a natural progression.
Tracey Richards
But it is quite difficult to engage everyone and keep everyone happy. I think that’s probably the main part of our job, is just keeping everyone happy. And I think the more you talk to them, the more you are good at communicating, the best you get out of it. And I’ve found that over the years, the more you communicate with everyone, you just then you get everyone on board, is the best way.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Speaking of communicating, we’re recording today at Shackleton’s, which is a very nice furniture company based in the UK, based in Dewsbury in the north of England. And they’ve actually put on a room that designers can use and bring clients to in order to show them what they do. And one thing that I know they’re adding into this is sustainable products, and an opportunity for designers to come and see sustainable products in one location. Park Grove Design, we find getting sustainable products in this particular sector of senior living, whether it’s care or retirement, very, very difficult, because of all of the chemicals and all of the everything that’s required. So I’m not the only one having …
Diana Celella
Impervious layers straight away, the foam that we have to use is terrible, yeah, so therefore they can’t be sustainable.
Tracey Richards
It’s so difficult, I think because care has to go through so many loopholes, and it has, I think it’s probably one of the highest, apart from, maybe prisons, of, you know, all these different factors we have to, you know, fire regulations impervious, everything else that that just gets pushed aside. So it’s really difficult. But I know that some a lot of companies are trying, and they’re trying really hard, but the only issue again, is then it comes down to budget, because that pushes the price up. So we’re finding that sometimes we’ll say, this is sustainable, but actually it’s a little bit more pricey. Then the client will go, actually, I’ll go for the cheaper and less sustainable, which is something we’re hitting at the moment, yeah.
Diana Celella
We’ve signed declaration, you know, trying to think what it’s called, the Interior Design Declare, as you probably have as well. And therefore we’re, and we’re really focused within our office and everything on sustainability. It’s important thing to us. But like you said, the fabrics that we’re using. The carpets are not sustainable, but we can do it in different ways. You know, there are other things we can do. We try to bring in sort of antique, reclaimed furniture. Just been doing a project where they had some beautiful chairs and we wanted to reupholster them to but the problem is sometimes, again, they cost more. By the time the taken, picked up, taken back to someone the other. The other problem with it, not just the cost, is, because you’re doing a refurbishment, what do the residents sit on? Where they go off to be covered , exactly. Yeah, you know. And then we tried to do it in bits, and then it’s even more expensive.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
You know? What we did on one project was we had every upholstered piece of furniture have a separate set of seat covers we made in the same fabric. We do that then packaged in plastic. But then you get into the issue of where are all of those stored? Yeah, and who is actually marrying up and marking those parcels that this is the seat cushion for this. Because otherwise, you go back and you find…
Tracey Richards
yeah, it never matches.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
This is, this is a genuine challenge…
Diana Celella
Because we went into so many care homes where you go in and they’ve taken the cover off and you’ve got just like the blue foam, showing. So we start sending spur ones with every project. But like you said, you end up with a mishmash of different ones put on. Sometimes don’t even fit.
Tracey Richards
Storage is is such a big problem as well for care homes, they don’t have enough, as it is.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
I think, for anybody listening out there who’s in the part of the supply chain, we need more from you as designers in this area. We need a lot more from you in terms of what is sustainable, what is not sustainable, and and proving your credentials on the product so that we can share that and sell it to the client.
Tracey Richards
That is such a good point, because you have some you get it with fabric companies, you have to be so careful where they’ll say, Yeah, it’s sustainable. We’ve We’ve reused or reclaimed plastic bottles. And then you look into it, and it’s plastic bottles from China that they’ve made. To say it’s been made from plastic bottles, but they’ve made them plastic bottles. They haven’t recycled any so you have to be so careful with the labeling check in. It’s so bad.
Diana Celella
it is really bad.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
We had the same thing in the UK in general, when the part L legislation came in on lighting, and what used to happen is, if you were doing sort of big commercial spaces or blocks of apartments and you had to have a certain percentage of low energy bulbs, but they weren’t very good In those days. So the developers would get these cheap light fittings from China, put them in the ceiling. The building control person would go through and sign-off and say, yep, we’ll tick that box. Then they’d rip them out, throw them away, and then buy what they really wanted to put in, because that was the only thing that people would buy. Just so there was waste. So it actually wasted more than when it first so you raise a really good point, it’s got to be that.
Diana Celella
And that is sometimes hard to trace. You have to ask a lot of questions, yeah, the questions to ask,
Tracey Richards
…they have to know what labels to look for exactly,
Diana Celella
…a lot of greenwashing, yeah.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
But that’s why I’m really impressed with what Shackleton’s are doing and putting in a place where designers can sit and actually look at all of these kinds of green products and credentials in the same place, because otherwise we’re doing a lot of research. And in the next podcast, we’ll have part two of our panel discussion when we discuss changes in model of care and how that affects the design of facilities, storage, new technologies, and the impact that these have on project budgets. You’ll find information on today’s guests and indeed on Shackleton furniture on the podcast page for this episode at thirdage dot design. So at the beginning, I mentioned nanoparticles. A few months ago, Vienna University of Technology published research into special titanium oxide nanoparticles, specially developed as an additive which can be added to standard and commercially available wall paints to give them, as they state, it ‘self-cleaning’ power. They use sunlight to bind substances from the air and then decompose them afterwards. So it not only cleans the air, but it apparently keeps the paint color more stable, also, because the particles clean themselves with the UV light when the nanoparticles get additional atoms, such as phosphorus, nitrogen or carbon added, the researchers believe that 96% of pollutants could be degraded by a combination of these particles in sunlight. Paint companies worldwide, as you know have started to market air cleaning paints. But before you specify you’re going to want to look into what the technology is and if there are any downsides. So for example, I’ve been told anecdotally that some paints that are rushed to the markets need to cure and only clean the air and capture carbon during that specific time period. Others can give off unpleasant odors in the short term. Whatever product you’re considering or which is being offered to you by a product rep. please review the link we’re going to give you on the podcast page for this episode on our website at thirdage dot design so you can better interrogate before you specify your purchase. Make no mistake, this is the way of the future, and the better informed you are, the more likely you’ll get a better result. The TAD international events calendar has received new listings for 2025 and you’ll want to have a look at them, including the International Conference on Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in Tokyo, Japan, from the 9th to the 10th of January, and the Global Conference on Age and Gerontology in Berlin in Germany from the 14th to the 16th of March. And you’ll find additional events on the page at Third Age dot Design. Thank you to today’s panelists, Diana cholela of Drawing Room Interiors, to Tracy Richards of three nine designs and to Shackleton’s furniture for hosting us and for the very impressive factory tour. To our sponsors, Wissner-Bosserhoff. Elevate nursing care with intelligent beds from Wissner-Bosserhofff blending modern, smart care technology with comfort and empowering caregivers worldwide. Thanks to our editor and producer, Mike scales, to Valerie Adler of the right website, to Peter Thorne, who composed our theme music and is playing the piano with Mary Blanchard on flute, and of course, to you for listening. Next month, we’ll have part two of our discussion on the next Senior Living design Challenges, and then in December, we have a world exclusive, when I’ll be speaking with Eloy von Hal, one of the founders of Hogewyke Village in the Netherlands, about how this world renowned dementia village has changed since its inception, and of course, it’s many accolades and what they’re doing differently now. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet and I do hope you’ll be joining me.