Lighting plays a significant role while designing for seniors and assisted living communities. As people grow old, they face problem to distinguish things, objects, and colours due to changes that happens in eyes. Hence, there is a need for a distinctive approach towards lights designing for seniors and assisted living communities. This would help enhance their quality of life. Lighting design also plays an important role in reducing the risk associated with accidental falls. There are certain elements of designs that need to be addressed, while designing a community for seniors.
- Maintaining high lighting level – Lux levels of 300 is generally recommended for senior living communities for home interiors and common areas. This needs to be done at the design stage when the positions of light fittings and specification for lamps need to be defined and validated with a lux level calculation to ensure the required level of light can be maintained within houses and common areas. Task lighting shall be planned in addition to ambient lighting within rooms. In addition, maximizing the natural daylight within the space can help improve the quality of space.
- Uniformity of lighting levels – In senior living communities, it is also recommended to balance the lighting level between spaces as it would be difficult for seniors to adapt to sudden changes in the lighting level in adjacent spaces.
- Reduction of glare – While selecting light fixtures, the glare should be reduced. For natural day light, blinds or curtains should be planned to manage the quality of light.
- Maintaining contrast – Maintaining the contrast between furniture and wall, or floor surfaces is important. It will be helpful to easily identify the differences, thereby reducing risks.
- Emergency lighting – Places, where power failure is common, it is extremely important to provide provisions for emergency lighting for minimal lighting during power transitions, or switchover from regular power to backup source. The purpose of the design is to avoid complete darkness at any point that increases the risk of falls.
- Switch controls for lights – Planning for switch controls for lights within a house is of great importance to improve the comfort level for seniors. Providing two-way switches, positions and height for the switch control should be carefully reviewed with respect to ease of accessibility and limitations associated with ageing. The height of installation should be suitable for a person on a wheelchair too.
(The author is VP – Design and Development, Columbia Pacific Communities.)