You can listen to Episode S5E12 right here!
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Hello, and welcome to the Third Age Design podcast where we do the legwork and you get the edge. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet, and this month, as the days are getting darker earlier and earlier, we’re going to review lighting specifically for seniors. And I can tell you, I learned a lot myself from this interview with Kam Dhatt of Kazaar limited, including how people react differently to sunlight. I didn’t even know that was a thing1 And speaking of lighting, today’s innovation Spotlight shines on inclusive design elements for bath and shower rooms in senior living. It was Mark Twain who said the two most important days in life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why. Now, I could debate that for a long time with somebody, and I’m not even certain I agree entirely, but knowing one’s purpose is a key to both wellness and happiness. Sharing inspirational information for the improvement of environments for older people is my calling, anyway, and that’s why the Third Age Design podcast exists. If you’re learning things here and we do when we’re producing it, why not tell a colleague. And if you have any comments or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you at contact at Third Age (dot) Design. The Third Age Design podcast, would like to thank our partners, Park Grove Design, interior design specialists and consultants in design for the third age. Park Grove Design, large enough to cope, small enough to care. Okay, let’s get started. Today’s special guest is Kam Dhatt, a lighting design expert and entrepreneur whose passion for the impact of light truly took off during a transformative experience in Australia, although he began his career in the UK working for major lighting manufacturers like Concord and Sylvania. As a technical person, Kam saw the potential of LED technologies to replicate the qualities of natural daylight indoors. His work with innovative products like Coex have showcased how we can bring the benefits of natural light into built environments, his journey into chronobiology and the neuroscience of light became more personal following his own ADHD diagnosis, and that fueled his curiosity about how light influences the brain and behaviour. Being married to an optometrist gave him deeper insights into the intersection of vision science and lighting. And recently, he’s been exploring red-light photobiology, cellular health and how lighting can enhance sleep and well-being. In other words, we’ve got the right guy on the podcast for this topic! Thanks for joining us, Kam, and let’s get straight into it. So let’s start out with what you recommend as an appropriate LUX, that’s the name in the UK, or they call it foot candles in the US, I believe, for elderly people inside a building, what is the number that we’re looking for?
Kam Dhatt
So for those who may not know what Lux is? Lux is what how we measure the quantity of light falling on a surface. The idea, you know, of using defined Lux levels, that’s what I call the traditional method, by the way, in America, foot candles is what’s used there. Yeah. And the thing about using Lux levels as a means of measuring light, and say, the standards that have been built around it, this sort of methodology has been around before I was born, and I’m 45 and so we’ve built lighting standards around numbers, basically for visual needs and visually needs only. And what’s missing out of that is the need for biology. So it’s a more complex question to answer, but I’m going to try to do my best, (okay), to go through it. And where I’m going with this is we need to look at sort of the new research areas that have come around since traditional lighting calculation methods and recommendations were first sort of devised. We now have an area, for example, called chronobiology, and this is an area of science that looks at the inner time clocks within living organisms. And this is where the science, or circadian rhythms really comes from (right). And on top of that, we’ve come a long way to reveal and understand neurodivergent brains. So we have a lot more understanding in the neuroscience of how light affects people’s brains and behaviour. And, of course, vision science and eye health, that’s come a long way as well, and revealed a lot more with our in terms of our relationship to light and outside. So well, what I’ll do chronobiology. I’ll jump into chronobiology. Chronobiology is a really interesting area, which will make you know, once I explain this, it might make you understand why Lux level is a difficult subject area to to easily answer.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
It sounds like it’s not a one size fits all. Just here’s a number from what I’m just reading between the lines here. So what’s, what is the neurobiology aspect of this? I mean, this, this entire episode, is entitled surprising things you’re unlikely to know about lighting for seniors. And I think, right off the bat, we’re into one already. So if you can explain a little bit about what that’s about…
Kam Dhatt
So, the principle here is, you know, when we look into the area of chronobiology… So this is a science that studies inner time clocks and its effect on biological processes. So, if I was to describe it from from a website you know, the inner time clock is looking at the phenomena of the clocks on biological processes. The simple idea is, humans have been on this planet for millions of years in one form or another. All animals have evolved. And from the very beginning and during our evolution, there’s always been one constant. There’s been the rising setting sun, rising setting sun, and it’s during this period of evolution where most of our time has been spent exposed to this rising setting sun, and spending most of our time during the day in the outdoors. And this single constant, it’s a very predictable thing. If I said to you, can you can you predict the weather in the UK, you laugh. But if I said, can you predict what time the sun’s gonna rise, you can say, of course, I can. And the thing is, nature loves predictability, and this is what’s allowed nature to thrive. And with this, nature’s been able to develop the biology that we all have and to live around this cyclical pattern of day night cycles.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
in which case that ties to circadian because the colour of the light, which is where the chroma must come in, used earlier, ties into the colour that the light changes throughout the day. Is that, is that right?
Kam Dhatt
Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know. So there’s, there’s a lot happening with this as well. So if I, if you think about the way when the sun rises during the morning, in fact, if we go back a little bit, there’s, there’s two things happening here. And this is why I want to talk about Lux levels. So with the science of circadian rhythms and chronobiology, we’ve come to understand how one our our biology is different during the day to what it is in the night. You know, we’ve come to understand we are biologically hardwired to be awake during the day and sleep during the night, and it’s and there’s no fighting that, you know. And the reason that is that the sleep is our recovery period to repair and repair the processes inside of us and particularly in the brain, to get us ready for the next active state. And what’s interesting about this area is that we’ve come to learn a lot about how not just the light levels affect us, because just start just hanging around this subject alone, if you went outside. Now, if I went outside now, measure the light levels which our ancestors would have been exposed to more than what we are now, I would say that there’s probably around about 15 to 20,000 Lux. Outside that that’s and it’s a pretty grey day. On a bright, sunny day, it will be anything up to 60, 70,000 Lux. This changes throughout the day, so it peaks, you know, during in the solar midday, and it starts dropping off quite, quite a bit, until it goes to nighttime with this zero Lux. But inside of that, there’s also the type of light. And as you know, light is made up of a whole spectra. And when we talk about spectra, we’re talking about energy or wavelengths and or colour. So you know, colour is a wavelength, and blue has very short wavelength. Red has longer wavelengths. And what we’ve come to understand is that our visual system isn’t just designed to allow us to see visually, but it’s also designed to pick up and deliver non-visual signals to the brain. And so this is where the colour element comes in. During the daytime, and daylight, they the light during the day is very rich in blue content. So you know, if I could show you the spectral graph of what daylight looks versus halogen light or sunset. You’ll see that the blue is much higher and peaks, whereas during the evening time, the blue starts dropping off quite dramatically and leaving us to see a nice, warm amber light. And so in the back of our eyes, we have part of other receptors, we have what we call ganglion cell-receptors, which have a neuro pathway that is actually a non-visual neuro pathway that goes directly to a part of the brain where our, you know, where our body clock resides. So it’s called a super chrosimatic nuclei. I call it the SCN. I’m not going to say that again. But and that, what that is, that’s the master clock in our brain, and what kind of biology has helped us learn is that it’s not, you know, every cell in us, everything has is running on a time clock. All your cells operate on a timely basis…,
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Regenerating while we’re dying, or, yeah, exactly,
Kam Dhatt
Rrecovery, regen…you know, active downtime, and you know, things like that. So and the body takes its cue in order to synchronise with what’s going on outside. Because the body needs to know, is it daylight to be active? Is it night to be prepared to sleep? And so the cue to the brain is that blue, rich light, or blue? Should we say that, particularly for 80 nanometer is a key wavelength that’s thought to be the one that triggers the most. So if somebody before we go too far further into circadian specifically, not all facilities or homes for older people, even if they’re private residences or they might be in retirement living or in care, for example, or have dementia, they all can’t necessarily afford to put in circadian lighting, although, obviously that would be helpful for so many reasons. In terms of agitation, sundowning syndrome, there are lots and lots of reasons for wanting to put that in. But if you, if you couldn’t afford to do that, is there an appropriate Lux level in the UK for people to have, for older people with elderly eyes, or what’s called foot candles in the US? How does…how do you recommend what that level might be inside a building if people did not have circadian lighting, if they don’t have circadian lighting, what I would say is it’s what’s more important than actual the Lux level is timing of the light. So I would say the first thing is move away from this idea that you have to have a fixed Lux level there is going to in terms of answering that question during the peak of daytime, when it’s not so bright outside, the light inside should also be bright and airy and give good uniform light. But the brighter, the better during the peak of day. But the more what’s really important is in the evening, times, as you start getting to that sunset period is lowering the light.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Just dimming would be better than nothing.
Kam Dhatt
Exactly. So dimming, and ideally, in an automated way that the dimming you know at least takes away the brightness levels of that light. Now the reason I have a reason I’ve been quite passionate about this area is because lighting today is, for example, the LED lighting that’s in most spaces, it’s going to be an LED light source that’s going to go in if somebody’s designing a standard sort of medical facility or dementia care home. LED led by nature is quite rich in blue. Even if you go to the warmer 3000 Kelvin, you’re still going to get a spike of blue. So dimming down, yes, it does help. And there’s and there’s, there’s more to it than just that as well. So you know, you’ve got the dimming element. And then there’s also the element of flicker control as well, which is another element that we always must be wary of. But this is why we’re really passionate about trying to push the idea of using tunable white lighting for circadian lighting. So there’s your intensity of light with a blue rich light, which is great. So that LED light with that blue content is doing a good job during the day, but as you get to the evening, you really want to cut that blue element out. And this is where tunable white is such a powerful tool, because through the automated lighting controls that is now readily available, you can dimp…you can go to a warmer, sort of warmer colour.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Do we need a transition space for lighting near exterior points for service users or residents that are older?
Kam Dhatt
Absolutely, if you’re coming in from the outside and your body’s going through the process of winding down and getting itself into the restful and recovery stateful sleep. And then it enters the building, which is so brightly lit with, again, blue, rich light, your circadian rhythms are completely being put off and out of whack. And this is what the problem we have today is that we are we’ve been able to extend the brain’s perception of what daylight is. We’ve been able to extend it further into the evenings. And what I find is that, I call it circadian flat-lining. It’s where during the day, when we should be spending time under high levels of daylight, we’re spending time indoors, more under artificial light, with a fraction of the light levels, what’s going on outside. (Yes) And then as we go on through the day, and as we start getting towards the wind down time and the sunset, we put the lights on or leave the lights on, which is the effect? Yeah, so we’re getting too much light there. And for brain health, this is something that’s really being looked into, because when the brain can’t entrain itself to follow a routine and a circadian rhythm, it’s circadian rhythms can’t function on a regular, cyclical basis. Guess what happens? Your sleep is affected. You can’t sleep properly. And so if, if you’re not sleeping properly, your brain’s not getting its recovery period as needed. And then, you know, you’ve got all the other environmental stresses going on. So this is why I find the area of dementia and mental health, really interesting because, you know, looking into the sleep research and what’s going on there, it seemed a lot of it was related to light exposure, or the lack of.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
…being at the wrong at the wrong time. And am I correct that lux levels are best lux levels or foot candles in the US are best figured by experts and not by an architect or designer or an operator themselves? Or is there a formula that can be shared for figuring out what your current Lux level is or what it might be.
Kam Dhatt
So, yeah, lux levels, if you’re looking at getting a lighting design done, lighting designers are your first point of call. So you have lighting designers consultancies who will do the calculation and understand what’s needed, especially that you’ve got lighting consultants who specialise in key areas. You’ve got mechanical, electrical engineering firms. So depending on the type of project, the size of project, the budget available, but it always pays. It’s just like, you know, it’s like architects. If you don’t bring an architect on board, or good interior designer on board, as you know, things, mistakes are going to be made, and it’s the same with lighting design. So you know, if you don’t bring in lighting designers, especially specialists, early on into a project, you’re then fixing problems, rather than solving problems early on. And you and you can find the great thing about UK is UK is the hub of lighting design, I say, for around the world.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
I was going to make a snide comment…and it’s also because it gets dark at three o’clock in the afternoon becomes a very, very integral part of our, of our lives. I’m going to throw a curve ball in here. What role does vitamin D, or as we say in England, vitamin D, have to play, specifically in our eyesight, and why is it important?
Kam Dhatt
Well, so I’m, I think it’s a difficult one for me to answer, because I’m not, obviously, I’m a lighting design I’m not medical. I’m not I’m not in that field, but I, from personal experience, I’ve had to look into vitamin D because of health issues in the past. Vitamin D generally, how is something that helps overall health.. Let’s just say that there was something I read before, where does the synthesis of vitamin D come is most effective when your eyes are exposed to blue light, which indicates that there’s enough UV out there. Therefore, it’s more likely to help that you’re more likely to be able to synthesise vitamin D through sun exposure. So again, you know, we’re learning so much about what daylight and what light does to us, not just neurologically, but physically. And obviously, Vitamin D is something that we naturally get from sun exposure. And unfortunately, because we are living in a more urbanised environment nowadays, we don’t get that natural light, and artificial light can’t give us that level of UV needed. So the question…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Thus supplements come in, into play as a part of health, vitamin D supplements. I mean, I always when my cats are laying out in the sun, because they just naturally do this, and then they lick their fur, and apparently that’s how they get their vitamin D. Is from their fur absorbing the light, and then them getting the D that way. So it’s important for humans as well, just from an absolute standpoint. And again, it comes through the eyes and the light levels. But as I understand what you just said, Kam, the artificial light, even if it’s circadian, wouldn’t help that, or it would help that a little bit.
Kam Dhatt
Not necessary. So, yeah, you do not get any UV from from there. So there, when I spoke to a professor and inventor of the artificial skylight called Tollux about this, one of the things he did say was that while his his product literally recreates sun and sky, and you look up and you see a blue Mediterranean sky, beautiful gives you that melanopic Lux watch, Which is something I’ll mention in a moment. But what he believed is that that engagement of the of the brain, that it’s daytime, means that you’re more likely to be able to process vitamin D through supplements. So he’s still recommending supplements, but again, the timing. So when you think about when does the body produce most of its vitamin D. And I have this argument with my family, you know, I’ve got family members who I’ve made sure they have vitamin D. You know, coming from an Asian background, living in in the Northern Hemisphere, we are generally quite deficient in vitamin D. So and during Covid, I made sure everybody would get a good bump up of vitamin D. But I found it funny when someone taking it at midnight, you know, before in the last in the for the last meal, or after last meal, or some taking it, you know. And when you think about again, circadian rhythms, you think about timing. Our bodies would synthesise vitamin D during the day when it’s been exposed the most to the sunlight. So midday, you know, that’s probably when we’re more likely to get the sunlight. So probably that’s the time to think about taking vitamin D, because your body’s more anticipating that there’s going to be, you know, an element of indeed coming in. So this is the key…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
about Asian families having less vitamin D is that, because of the amount of melanin in does not allow as much of the vitamin D to to get into the body as a pasty white person such as myself, (exactly).
Kam Dhatt
Yeah, that’s pretty much. It is. You know, the darker the skin, the longer it takes for vitamin D absorption, for the sun absorption to work, just sent up to to synthesise the vitamin D . And compounding that is the fact that we are just spending more time indoors, you know, like, even if you’ve got daylight coming through the windows, it’s going to have a UV sort of protection as well. And so, yes, so we saw this in in Covid. We saw how, particularly Asian and Black groups, were disproportionately suffering from Covid, severe Covid, more than, you know, the rest of the population. And there was a lot of talk about, you know, what is talking about? The…areas that they maybe come from the but really, it makes sense when you think about who’s going to be more deficient in vitamin D, who then hasn’t got that or that immune response needed to fight off the covid and similar disease and things like that.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So talking about something electro or something (melanop). Yes, what is that? So going back to your name and then tell us what it is, yeah,
Kam Dhatt
melanopic luck, so it’s interesting. So when you talk about, you know, I don’t like you found, you probably realise that I don’t like answering that question too much about what the lux levels do. Yeah. So ask lux levels. Is like talking about calories. You know, what calories should I consume today? You know, you can fix your calorie level, but I can, you know, I could have low level of calories, but there could be the worst type of foods. You can imagine. It’s the same with light and same with lux levels. So what we what’s coming around now is this idea of measuring light in specific spectra areas. So one way to create an efficient form of lighting that gives us that circadian response is to maybe produce the light or give us light during the day that has more blue content, and that we call melanopic Lux, because blue light triggers a melanopic response. It’s more likely to trigger melanopic response, which trigger which signals the brain. So we are now looking at ways in which we can indicate what the melanopic Lux should be, which then tells us quite clearly… Then, you know, if we got 1000 melanopic Lux, that means there’s going to be quite a lot of blue content available, rather than just saying 1000 Lux, where you might have lots of warm light and not have any blue light, and yet, you know, you’re still hitting 1000 Lux, because lux, lux covers the entire spectrum…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
…the amount of light, rather than the …yes, rather than the specific.
Kam Dhatt
So this is a nice way of, sorry, this is an interesting way to start looking at lighting design. You know what? What’s the melanopic Lux needed during the day? And how do we reduce that melanopic locks at night? And therefore that already indicates to us that, yes, okay, we’re looking to change the colour of the light, in the colour spectrum of the light, and yeah, it’s, I’m hoping that as we see more of it into the in the standards.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Well, that is, that is, that is my final question. It’s your your crystal ball moment, which is, what would you like to see in the future of lighting options for older people? How? How would you like it to change for the better?
Kam Dhatt
I think taking lessons from neuroscience and learning about how specific light spectra affects the response. I would like to see lighting controls be a bigger part of implementing lighting, especially for care homes and dementia care. Mental…, in fact, everywhere, you know, I think everyone will benefit from having a system in this in place, where we have light that helps regulate our circadian clocks, so the sooner we can bring it in, the less likely we’re going to need to go to care homes. Because, you know, we’re not able to and less likely we are to develop diseases like dementia. It’s just like diet. The sooner you start a healthy diet, the less likely you are to go to a place where you need assistance later on in life. It’s the same with light. You know, we talk about it as a light diet, so and a key element to that is lighting controls. And something that you probably realised when I mentioned the timing of light, it really is that’s that’s the key ingredient that that seems to be missing from a lot of regs at the moment, when I look at the lighting guides or lighting regs, the notion of circadian, it’s like a nice to have, or something you can consider, or (very much so(. But really it’s part of our human nature, is that we, we are adapted and programmed to have lighting that go that that that changes throughout the day and time.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So it sounds a component of wellness, absolutely as simple as that which, which means, yes, it’s you were saying that older people’s eyes react more slowly to change, you know, changes in light levels. But it wouldn’t only affect older people. It would affect everybody, because it’s a wellness thing that’s tied to our general nature as human beings, from the sounds of it.
Kam Dhatt
Yeah. And I guess where we learn this, where lessons are learned, is when we’re implementing this sort of lighting systems into, you know, elderly healthcare spaces or dementia care spaces, and once we start seeing the results, I’m sure it’s going to filter through down. It’s all about wellness and you know, and really it’s about nature. For me, it’s about reconnecting to nature, because nature has the answers. I think human civilization has kind of detached itself away from what our natural home used to be, and we’re learning, you know, we live in the safer places now, yes, but we also realise what we’re missing.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
You make a very compelling case. And Kam, I would like to thank you so much for being a guest on the Third Age Design podcast.
Kam Dhatt
Thank you very much for having me.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
You’ll find more information on this topic and a link to Kazzar limited on the podcast page for this episode at Third Age Dot Design. In today’s Innovation Spotlight, I’m speaking with Luke Otton of the international firm HEWI. Luke, thanks for joining me on the Third Age Design podcast.
Luke Otton
Thanks for having me.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
I mean, before we get into some detail, could you just give us a brief introduction to HEWI. How long has it been around, and where do you manufacture?
Luke Otton
Yeah, absolutely so. Huey, we are a German manufacturer. We’ve been around for 100 years. We’re based out of a little place called Badarleson in central Germany, which is very much in the countryside, there, we have a 500,000 square foot manufacturing plant where we design and make all of our products in house. Yeah. So we’ve been around for a long time. We used to be famous for door hardware and door handles, and now these days, more sanitary wear, bathrooms, that sort of thing.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes, and I, I’m a designer source, so I knew you back when, when your company was doing a lot of the hardware and a lot of the sanitary products involve metals and things, and the fact that you’re doing in-house production means that you probably have a level of oversight on quality control and things that maybe a lot of other manufacturers don’t have, because I know we’ve not ever had issues with your products. Personally. (That’s good to hear, absolutely.) So speaking of products, and you mentioned about the sanitaryware today, I’d really like us to focus on inclusive design principles, and a lot of listeners will already know what that means, but it’s basically where people with specialist needs can use equipment or sanitaryware or whatever, without adaptations that are obvious. They are, in other words, products that I’d be happy to have in my own home, because they’re very, very stylish and beautifully designed. Now, would you say that inclusive design is a specialty of HEWI, or is it a sideline? Or how do you guys focus on that as a topic?
Luke Otton
Yeah, I would absolutely say. Is our specialty really? As I say, 100 years ago, we started off life as a plastic injection moulding company. So we were making all sorts of equipment, from Formula One parts to clothes, you know, buttons on your shirt, for example. It wasn’t until the 60s and 70s where we really honed in onto this niche of accessible product design, noticing that it’s a global issue with people not knowing what products are available on the market, and what if anything they can get that’s better than your classic blue and white, obviously clinical, you know, sad looking disabled spaces. So we’ve then extended that from helping end-users in their own home when they need smaller adaptations and discretely accessible things, as you say, all the way through to commercial environments, like, how do you make your restaurant disabled toilet look, you know, in keeping with the rest of the building, or the hotel or student accommodation and everything else, really.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yeah, and no. I mean, nobody wants to live or interact with a restroom of any kind that looks like it belongs in a hospital. It’s not. It’s not conducive to, conducive to health. Oddly enough, it kind of, it kind of puts you off. Now, I know my favourite products of yours are the basins and the the handrails are there other examples that of the inclusive design that you that maybe I’m not aware of.,
Luke Otton
Yeah, yeah. Possibly, I know you’re, you’re well versed in the HEWI range, which, which we appreciate. But there’s other things that we, we provide to anybody, basically, not just people with any additional needs, like, for example, you may be aware one of the most cluttered areas is often an accessible shower area, where there’s your standard off the shelf riser rails on the wall, and then vertical and horizontal grab rails and shower seats and this and that. And it becomes quite s soap dishes, you know, all the accessories we do, a lot of supportive riser rails, for example, ones that, if you were to slip and grab onto it, it’s not going to come off the wall with you, but it just looks like a nice, you know, well-designed product, and it’s also easily adjustable for height. So so many people say to us, they’re sat down on the shower seat and the shower head is on its highest setting, and it’s more torturous than it is relaxing. And actually, you need to be able to easily adjust these products up and down to suit you, especially if you had limited dexterity or something. Like that, but also it it meets the compliance points of having that support whilst, you know, holding the products in place. So it’s all about dual purpose and secret, secretly accessible products, I would say. exactly, marrying it all up and making it look and feel the same. Because the feedback from speaking to end users, and I’m sure you hear this all the time, is, yes, someone, let’s say, with with disabilities, may go out for dinner and use a disabled toilet before they go and sit down, but they may, out of pure nosiness, poke their head into the standard male or female toilet after dinner, and this is often just to find out what is the big difference between my bathroom and everyone else’s bathroom. And actually, {why am I being treated like this? )Yeah, exactly. And they, they know what to expect at the moment. What to expect is something low budget and, you know, sad and uncomfortable and hygienic and and sort of elegant, not elegant at all. Yeah, you’ll know, I mean, you can, you can download an app on your phone and type in your postcode and say which of my local hotels are accessible. And they’ll most likely say, Well, this one has a ramp or a ride a wide doorway. But it won’t say, this one’s lovely, has a lovely, designed, accessible bathroom with all these features, you know. So we’re so far off it at the moment, in my opinion. And this is also relates to the handrails that I mentioned a moment ago. The handrails that take a full weight of a person, they look like a beautifully designed, contemporary towel rail, and in fact, can be dressed for that purpose, even if you were doing guest rooms in a care facility or in a retirement community or in your own home and you have elderly visitors, you would you would want to have something that you could dress as towel rail, which could take the full weight as indeed the shower rail does. Can you describe the basin, which I find quite revolutionary as a designer, in that it does away with some grab rails? Could you describe what that looks like and how that functions to the listeners? Yeah, definitely. So sad as it may be, I’m quite passionate about the basins as well. Before I joined HEWI, I spent some time with an accessibility consultant, so I was lucky enough to speak to the end user, or people in their own home. And like you say, it’s often, maybe older people that are, let’s say, embarrassed to have friends and family come to visit because they don’t want their own bathroom to look more like a hospital ward. And they want to hide disguise these products. And also, let’s say people that have their grandparents come to stay on the weekend or on the holidays, and then they want to hide these products away. So back to your point, on the basins. I mean, these are weight bearing up to 150 kilos. They’re made from a marble and stone dust with a resin finish. So they’re extremely durable. They have integrated hand grips, either at the front or on the sides, and all different locations, because, as you know, let’s say you take someone with arthritis, not everyone has the same aches and pains in the same position, so you can really adapt that product, you know, in fine detail. And they’ve got shallow bowls so that you can help someone comfortably get their legs underneath so it’s not obstructive.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So if you’re if you’re in a wheelchair, you can pull, you can pull right up, right up to it, but it’s very slender profile, as you said, the base the bowl is not particularly deep. What keeps it the water from splashing? If it’s that shallow?
Luke Otton
I’ll just say it’s the design, the nice, curved nature of it is just designed to take that, take that flow of water, really, as you say, it’s wheelchair users. But also some people are ambulant users, let’s say, who just need to rest on a stool or or perch underneath the basin. It’s not always, as you know, wheelchair use. Sometimes we have a picture of one type of person using these spaces, done some research recently. And the number, you know, the percentage of people with disabilities where that actually use a wheelchair, I believe now, is around seven and a half percent of all people with disabilities. So I like to get people to flip that on its head and think about the 90 odd percent of people that are therefore stood up in that area, leaning on the product right and going back to your point about removing the need for grab rails. Well, if you have wet hands, and then you grab onto the wall for dear life, then quickly, the water’s rushing down your wrists and making your shirt wet, or you can’t hold on to one grab rail and wash the other hand independently. So actually being able to lean on these products is often more attractive to people, as well as being able to drape a towel on the front. So it looks like just a nice design like feature.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
It looks like a design feature. The other thing that I think is really important about these basins, particularly for dementia, is the they are a low-sheen product. So if you do have lights at the mirror or overhead, you’re not going to get a glare for macular degeneration, for example, that would would blind people, whereas a lot of the basins that are considered appropriate for care or dementia are glossy white, which is actually not what you want in that instance. Yeah. So it ticks a couple of couple of boxes there. Let me just ask one final question, what sort of inclusive design products do you think we might be able to look forward to in the future from you.
Luke Otton
It’s tricky without giving too much away, but we hope to do more of the same, more special finishes. I mean, we just launched our own PVD finishing, if you’re familiar with that. It allows us to offer things like copper and bronze and brass and really push the boundaries of what people expect when they look at specifying a disabled or dock em bathroom, it’s far more you know, we’ve fought the battle against blue and white plastic now. Then we’ve done stainless steel and chrome, and now we’re really saying there’s no excuse not to push this as far as you want. So yeah, more colour matching, special finishes, more collaborations with brands. We even recently, recently collaborated with Barbie. I don’t know if you saw so we could, if you’ve got a Hawaiian style plan, then we can do the same. But no, (You never know), it’s always just broadening our horizons. We just released a baby changing table, which is quite special in the way it looks and the way it feels and works. We and also I like to remind our customers that we do far more than just grab rails all day long, as much as that’s what we bang on about. You know, we just released our first countertop basin called the duo basin, which is a ceramic basin that’s really nice design. And the point with that is going back to one of your other questions about, How can architects and designers push this message to their clients and and also make sure that these products do actually end up on site? On the back end is, is linking the standard rooms and the accessible rooms in terms of design and using products that work in both. Absolutely. Well, Luke, I’d like to thank you very much for joining us on the podcast, and just a note to listeners for more information, you’re going to find links to HEWI on the podcast page for this episode at Third Age (dot) Design looking now at our international calendar of events, London Design Week will be taking place from the 10th to the 14th of March in the UK capital city. And let me tell you, it’s a very buzzy event. And looking ahead to April, Lyon France will host the global conference of Alzheimer’s disease international from the 14th to the 16th of April, which is a perfect time of year to be in France. If you’re planning a trip to coincide. You’ll find much more on our website. And, if you want to send us information about an event you’d like to see listed there, just send the details via the site. Thank you to today’s special guest Kam Dhatt of Kazzar limited, and to Luke Otten of HEWI. Also to our partners, Park Grove Design, interior design specialists and consultants in design for the Third Age. Park Grove design, large enough to cope, small enough to care. Thanks also to our editor and producer, Mike Scales, to Valerie Adler of the Right Website, to Peter Thorne, who composed our theme music and was playing the piano with Mary Blanchard on flute, and to you for listening. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet, and next month, we’re kicking the new year off with an all new TAD initiative. And unusually, I will be the guest interviewed by former NPR announcer Valerie Adler. I do hope you’ll join us for this very special episode, and in the meantime…we’re wishing all of you a very Happy New Year.