We’ve long understood that interior design is a powerful tool for supporting health and wellbeing in the home. The way an environment is designed can make a huge difference to how we feel.
Carefully curated interiors can impact the brain in a multitude of ways, from colour therapy benefits and reconnecting with nature through patterns like floral fractals, to adding elements of nostalgia to provide a sense of comfort. In care homes, colourful wall designs can instantly transform a space, making it a safe place for residents to spend their time.
But our dementia wall murals can do a lot more than just make people feel safe. Our lovely colourful wall designs can make people happy. Here we look at Wallsauce murals in action at Blaenos House, a nursing home in Wales – and they’re already making a big difference for its elderly residents.
What are dementia wall murals?
Mural in photo: Cake Shop
Dementia murals combine life-like scenes and stimulating graphics to provide an enhanced atmosphere for dementia patients. These murals, which are usually façade style murals, represent recognisable, everyday places such as a street, a shop front, or a café.
In care settings, these life-like façades help to evoke certain memories for those with dementia, which can bring a feeling of safety and comfort when the rest of the world can feel very confusing. The key theme with dementia-friendly murals is nostalgia. Not only does this delight residents and bring colour to plain walls and corridors, but they can also be used for the purpose of wayfinding around care environments.
At a nursing home such as Blaenos House, where there’s a big focus on dementia care and specialist memory care, having these recognisable murals can make all the difference to everyday activities.
Wallsauce Murals at Blaenos House
We delivered a range of beautiful façade murals to Blaenos House to help them transform their corridors. Not only have our murals helped to inject colour, fun and excitement to the nursing home’s plain corridors, but they have also provided residents an easy way to find their way around.
This initiative was brought about to install vibrant and meaningful dementia murals that could act as more than just decorations. In addition to brightening up the residents’ day and helping them locate different rooms, the murals are also a window into the past.
Mural in photo: Post Office
With facades such as an iconic-looking post office, an old-fashioned grocery store, a cake shop, a chemist, a florist and a barber shop, dementia residents are helped to feel more grounded with memories that haven’t been lost yet. Older memories, which are usually recalled and spoken about more often, are firmly established. This means that someone with dementia may forget things that have happened recently,but may still be able to recall details from earlier life.
When façade murals like ours are strategically placed around corridors of a nursing home, they can bring joy to anyone who walks through them, helping with memory care and therapeutic engagement, as well as creating catalysts for conversations.
Positive communication not only helps a person with dementia maintain their self-esteem, but it also helps them keep a sense of self. So offering talking points through art and interior design is truly invaluable within these care environments.
Using nature to improve mood in care homes
Mural in photo: Orchid Garden Waterfall
In addition to delivering a range of nostalgic shop / high street style façade murals to Blaenos House, we also helped them promote an indoor ‘outdoor’ space, which mimicked the real layout of a town or village centre. For instance, our ‘Name of Mural’ helps to create a calm and engaging atmosphere, which has been enhanced with beautiful faux flowers to enrich the sensory experience of walking through the corridor.
The use of window murals can bring an opportunity for escapism through scenery in window-less areas of a building. For corridors they are perfect because they open up the space, making them feel brighter and airier, which is vital for improving mood.
We also delivered some landscape wallpaper to recreate a public garden scene. Our ‘Orchid Garden Waterfall’ is the perfect spot to sit and relax, giving residents a way to connect with the outdoors no matter the season. Dementia wall murals like this one are used to design a calming space, one where scenic views are easily accessible. Just the sight of water can be therapeutic, and according to research, using flowers within interior design can trigger happy emotions, making it a great emotional healer. This includes real flowers, where there’s the added sensory experience of smell, as well as faux flowers, realistic imagery of flowers, or just the application of floral fractals in patterns.
Choosing dementia-friendly murals
Mural in photo: Retro Chemist
When it comes to choosing the right dementia wall murals – whether for a home or professional care environment – it’s important to remember the importance of older memories. It’s often the older memories that stick around when someone with dementia struggles to recall events. So murals that ignite a sense of nostalgia can be a fantastic solution.
Traditional shop fronts often work well, and they bring colour to the space too. It’s important to note that behavioural disturbances, distress and low mood are often caused by boredom and loneliness, so something that is bright, stimulating and engaging is key.
We love how Blaenos House has transformed its corridors with Wallsauce murals. The team wanted to design a space that enhances cognitive stimulation while providing a joyful and fulfilling experience for residents. Furthermore, our murals have boosted the level of social interaction in the nursing home.
As described on its website:
“Residents and their families find joy in reminiscing about shared experiences prompted by the visuals on our walls. The murals have become a communal touchpoint, bringing people together and fostering a sense of belonging.”
We can’t wait to see more transformations like this one! If you are a manager of a nursing home, you can see more of our wall murals for care homes.
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