Interior designer Jacqui Smith, co-director of Sussex-based practice HomeSmiths, outlines the importance of collaboration in achieving successful care home design
When it comes to the design of environments for older people, residents benefit hugely from designers who share and collaborate. I have always subscribed to the view collaboration is so much better than competition and I genuinely feel that in care home design, there is no room for ego.
If a design concept effects a positive change in the wellbeing of a resident, why wouldn’t you want to share it? At the end of the day, care home design is about creating supportive and engaging environments for people in which to live and build communities.
In my experience, the best projects are those which encourage a collaborative approach. A designer who fully understands the vision of the operator, the challenges they are facing and of course crucially, the sensory and cognitive needs of the residents and how the built environment can support them, will be able to add value right across the project.
Designers are often brought into the process to take care of the FF&E side of things by which time decisions may have been made on finishes and so forth, but the earlier in the project process an interior designer is brought on board, the better. Many years ago I remember reading a piece by world famous interior designer, Nina Campbell, who declared that interior designers should be a “reassuring rather than a bossy presence”.
So true. At the time it resonated with me and has stayed with me. Care home design is a specialist area of commercial design where my overriding aim is to work with, inform and support my clients and the wider project team, never to take over.
Collaboration does, of course, go much wider than the immediate project team. I love nothing more than working in partnership with specialist designers and manufacturers, producing something unique, which absolutely meets the needs of the residents and those caring for them.
We commissioned wallpaper designer Elizabeth Ockford to work with us last year. I have known Elizabeth for a number of years. We live in the same village so it was inevitable that our creative paths would cross at some point and indeed, people who know us both have often declared, “You two should work together!” And now we have, and it was fantastic.
As an incredibly talented fine artist, Elizabeth has created numerous wallpaper collections, many of which we have used in the past for our residential, show home and care home projects. While the team at Elizabeth Ockford design their own collections, they also take on commissions and can recolour designs, as well as enhance or remove certain design details to meet the brief.
When we were appointed by Hallmark Care Homes to design Henley Manor, we knew that Elizabeth would be able to help. Of the many wallcoverings which Elizabeth produced for us, my favourite is the Baxter, shown here in one of the corridors in the nursing community.
While I love the original design, inspired by botanical illustrations from the 19th century University of Oxford’s curator William Baxter, we felt that the shadowed and overlaid text might be confusing for a resident living with a degree of cognitive decline. Elizabeth removed the script, resulting in a fresh and eye-catching design that sits perfectly with the Oxfordshire gardens theme of this part of the corridor.
From one talented artist to another: Beth Lewin at Bespoke by Evans. Back in 2017 we commissioned Beth to design an upholstery fabric for the main lounge in a residential care home in Oxford. Yes, another Oxfordshire project, but we do work in other counties!
The client wanted to create an elegant, relaxing and tranquil lounge space, away from the hubbub of the rest of the home. I knew exactly what I was looking for but could not find it anywhere in a performance fabric. We briefed Beth who produced this beautiful, fern leaf design in watercolour, which Evans Textiles then printed on a waterproof upholstery base cloth. The fern, together with a bespoke colouring of Skopos Tatton for the curtains, helped to create a space which residents love spending time in.
We turned to Beth again for some of the fabrics at Henley Manor, my particular favourite being a toile de Jouy, which involved Beth drawing iconic landmarks from Henley-on-Thames. I was so excited to receive the sample – can you tell?!
We also love working with Panaz. Their seemingly endless archive of designs, together with their recently launched ReMake service, opens up massive opportunities for designers to create their own fabrics and wall coverings.
I shall admit to being completely pedantic about colour matching so this service is perfect for me. At Henley Manor, I had a very particular aesthetic in mind for the main reception area. Having found initially what I felt was the perfect paper, by the time it was needed on site, it had of course been discontinued.
Any designer reading this will, I am sure, relate, having found themselves in a similar boat, be it tiles, feature fabrics or lighting. By working with Panaz, we were able to ensure that the finished wallcovering was absolutely spot on since we supplied them with the Dulux references for the panelling and internal doors, which they matched to. My design detail box was well and truly ticked.
As well as suppliers of wall coverings and fabrics, we have also worked with furniture manufacturers. David - my husband and business partner - spent the first 30 years of his working life as a cabinetmaker and whilst his days of being behind the bench are a thing of the past, he still designs all the bespoke furniture for our care home projects, including free-standing pieces such as the garden bench and fitted pieces such as bookcases and TV units.
For Henley, we were also looking for a certain style of scroll armchair - one for the bedrooms and another for two of the lounges. We approached Edison & Day to see if they would be interested in producing some chairs to meet our brief.
We had a couple of very specific styles in mind so we sent their head of business development, Steve Nixon, our wish list and worked closely with him during the development of the new models. A few months later, Steve arrived at HomeSmiths HQ with the chair prototypes ready for me to road test and later in the year we saw the finished articles in their new home.
Most of our clients engage us since they do not have an in-house design resource. From time to time we are appointed to work with an internal interior designer. It is always great to receive testimonials from clients, yet this one from Georgie Williams-Wynn, interior design manager at Savista Developments, meant a great deal to us. Not only was our relationship with Georgie collaborative, her feedback very much underlines what HomeSmiths is all about.
“I had the pleasure of working with Jacqui and David on a recent care home installation - from construction through to completion. They were extremely professional and thorough, honing in on intricate details that emphasised their fantastic schemes. Jacqui is especially meticulous with her design for dementia. I would highly recommend their design services for future projects,” she said
Contact Details:
Telephone: 01444 440880
Website: www.homesmiths.co.uk
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/homesmiths
