Interior design tips for children’s hospices

Children’s hospices need to provide care and support to both kids and their families at every opportunity. But they’re a bit different from traditional hospices.

When looking at interior design for children’s hospices, you need to consider a few different factors that will help a hospice feel comfortable and unintimidating to children. Here are a few interior design tips for children’s hospices.

1/ Make it colourful

Hospices will usually have their signature colours that are used throughout the building, but children’s hospices should be particularly colourful to make them feel more comfortable. What’s more, having a vibrant, colourful environment can help to make the hospice feel less clinical and intimidating.

Children’s hospices should have colourful communal areas (the reception, cafe, any family areas) as well as bright and vivid bedrooms. It’s easy to make any room feel more colourful with some vibrant furniture.

Couches, armchairs, and other loose furniture can be supplied in different fabrics and colours to make any room look brighter.

You might also want to consider having colours wall stickers and motifs in the bedrooms. You could change every room to be a different animal or city, etc. depending on the ages of the patients and what would suit their interest the best.

2/ Sensory stimulation

Particularly in children’s hospices, sensory stimulation is integral to providing a good quality of life. Sensory stimulation can be used to help kids develop and relax.

You could include an entire sensory room in your designs to give children a full room of activities that will help to keep them engaged and stimulated. Whether it’s a few squeaky toys or a full built-in playmat, it will help kids to relax and learn.

Sensory rooms can also include things like lava lamps or colour-changing lights. These things can help to distract kids in what can be particularly upsetting and stressful situations.

Find out more about the benefits of sensory stimulation in hospices.

3/ Hide the hoists

A lot of children’s hospices will have built-in ceiling track hoist systems to make it easier to move patients around. You can see the hoist tracking installed in the ceiling and the hoist unit hanging beneath.

Whilst many systems now boast discreet design, any sort of healthcare equipment can be particularly intimidating to a child. We highly recommend that any children’s hospice interior design includes plans to hide hoist systems and make them as subtle as possible.

You could include a design for a ceiling height cupboard to go in the corner of the room to store the hoist unit in when it’s not in use. It’s also worth specifying inset hoist tracking in these systems that there are no under-hanging rails that could feel obtrusive in children’s hospices.

If you don’t need to install a ceiling track hoist system but still need something to help with transfers, the Integralift is a good option. This is a hidden hoist that’s disguised as a bedhead unit or a big L-shaped cupboard.

The hoist simply unfolds from the cabinet and gives carers the ability to hoist the patients to and from bed with ease. The Integralift can also be installed in a range of different wood finishes and colours to keep the room feeling bright and vibrant for the children.

4/ Get the right equipment

To keep bedrooms feeling as homely and cosy as possible, you should also make sure that you choose subtle equipment so avoid a clinical atmosphere.

Care beds can be supplied in a range of wood colours to feel like a standard bed. Something like the Liberta would probably be the best option because you wouldn’t know it was even a care bed.

The Liberta offers all the same functions as a normal care bed as well as subtle mesh sidepanels that you can easily see through when in bed. This will help kids feel less trapped or panicky in the hospice because they can clearly see their surroundings.

Summary

These are just a few interior design tips for children’s hospices, but there are lots of other ways that you can make the building feel more comfortable. If you’re needing any further advice on interior design or equipment for children’s hospices, then get in touch with our team.