Dr Shelley James on ‘Why should lighting designers care about Residential Healthcare?’
Lighting professionals all know that great lighting is not just about aesthetics, but can transform how alert, relaxed and motivated we feel. Great lighting design is good for the planet – reduces energy and maintenance costs and lifetime carbon footprint too.
Nowhere is the lighting more critical than in residential healthcare environments, where older adults living with dementia spend an average of three minutes per month outside, and dedicated care teams, often working rotating shift patterns are at high risk of burnout, obesity and even cancer. Residential Healthcare runs on wafer-thin margins, so every penny saved on maintenance, recruitment and temporary agency staff can make the difference between staying afloat and selling up.
So this enclosed and closely-monitored sector is the perfect environment to test the impact of lighting on physical and mental health- sleep and night-time wandering, falls, cognitive decline and agitation, medication errors, staff absence and turnover. There is clear and growing evidence that the right light at the right time can indeed shift the needle on all these critical measures. The next generation of smart lighting infrastructure goes further, with AI-driven tracking and integration with other care protocols can reduce long lie falls by 84% and free up staff time from fire-fighting to care and connection.
Anyone with a family member or friend living with dementia, or working in healthcare will find the stories shared by the scientists and healthcare providers in this free online event inspiring.
But if you’re passionate about making the case for investing in lighting, you may find the arguments from the healthcare setting valuable in your business too: whether you’re working on an office that wants to attract neurodivergent colleagues, a school that wants to support students with Special Educational Needs or an industrial warehouse or production line that needs to sustain performance 24/7, 365 days of the year.
Join us to learn from these experts and ask them questions in real time. The insights could transform how you approach your next project.
