3 Rules to Choosing Furniture When Working With Dementia
Check out all that “round” furniture. Albeit, now that we’re looking at it, this pattern on this couch is a little crazy.
When it comes to dementia and good memory care, everything counts. Sometimes a simple shift in a bedroom or changing the time of day of a meal can change behavior several times over.
According to author, architect, and gerontologist Mark L. Warner in his book The Complete Guide to Alzheimer’s Proofing Your Home, there are many ways we can alter the home environment to better suit the needs of loved ones.
Whether you’re looking to make your home safer for a visiting loved one or if you’re taking care of someone yourself or if you want to know about our process when we just want a new color swap, here are some ideas on furniture considerations based on Mark Warner’s book.
Furniture Shape. “Soft cushioned furniture without sharp edges or corners will result in fewer & less injuries in cases of falls.” (53)
When you walk into our living room, some people might feel like our furniture, being plump and plush, is a bit dated. It’s not really that as much as it is the aesthetic of our generation (at least us Millenials) to be sharp, minimalistic, and clean, as opposed to older generations that had more rounded furniture. Either way, when we look for furniture pieces, we look for furniture with rounded edges which tends to originate from the late 90s.
These soft cushions and edges are invaluable to the elderly though, making it so that everything is easily and comfortably holdable. If a guest at your house is falling, he might think twice about grabbing a low-frame, jagged couch, but not at all if that couch is big, plump, and rounded.
2. Color Contrast. “To make pieces of furniture easier to see, modify their colors to improve their contrast against the floor & the wall behind.” (53) “... when the floor and wall are similar colors, making it difficult for those with visual impairments to tell where the wall begins.” (52)
More than just choosing colors or soothing colors themselves, we have to consider color contrast. In our own home, you’ll notice that our walls tend to lean towards a beige with sun yellow highlights, and our carpets are a deep navy blue. Being that Yellow and Blue are nearly complements to each other, the blue serves to clearly delineate the point at which the wall ends and the floor starts.
3. Patterns vs. Solids. “Too much patterned upholstery in a room can be overwhelming for your loved one, offering too much environmental information to be digested and understood. Solid colors for carpeting, furniture, walls, and curtains are better.” (53)
There’s no doubting that sometimes, even as a 30-some year old, noisy fabric patterns can feel overwhelming or even hypnotizing. Keeping it simple with patterns is ideal, not only for myself, but definitely for elderly residents.
I might counter argue here that sometimes, patterns serve to help a space feel like home -- both to dementia and non-dementia residents. So, in our home, we do have some lightly patterned upholstery and curtains. That said, we keep these to a minimum and even the patterns we have are relatively subtle. We don’t have anything that’s too noisy or overwhelming or too visually confusing even. So don’t feel like you can’t have any patterns. Just play it conservatively, and avoid anything that could be visually kaleidoscopic or distracting.
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There’s already so much to consider when it comes to choosing furniture; taking dementia into consideration can add another layer of complexity but is certainly worth it in the long run. To sum up, hopefully, these three tips will help you along:
Go for rounded furniture
Contrast the color of the wall with the floor
Be conservative with your use of patterns in upholstery and curtains
There’s still a wealth of knowledge to mine out of Mark Warner‘s book that we’ll dive into here and there over the next few weeks. These small considerations are a great set of standard rules to get you started though!
Sources Cited
Warner, Mark L. The Complete Guide to Alzheimer’s Proofing Your Home. West LaFayette: Purdue University Press, 2000. Print.