The importance of colour is important in everyday life for everyone, but even more so for those with dementia.
Colour has an impact on mood and feelings, with different colours and tones meaning different things to different people. Contrast is the most important part of living with dementia. This helps draw attention to hazards, key features and helps people recognise important places.
Our painters had an exciting project in which they painted a dementia home. This was an interesting project as doors and rooms were painted in specific bright colours to allow those in the home to not get confused by when trying to find there way around. Bathroom doors were painted in a contrasting colour to the main bedroom door, green rooms and contrasting corridors also help with the dementia patients.
A couple of examples include, coloured doors are important to help people identify their own bedroom as wells as easily identify bathrooms. If the door is the same colour as the wall, then those with dementia will walk straight past and not see the door. Highlighting the edge of steps with colour draws attention to the danger that the stairs my pose and hiding the exit doors is also important to make sure individuals don’t leave the premise if they become confused.
Importance of Colour:
Blue – makes the room feel bigger and have a calming effect, which would be used for quiet areas and bedrooms.
Red – warming colour which would make room feel smaller to be used in activity areas to improve brain stimulation – increasing brain activity and stimulate production of adrenaline.
Green – reduces activity in the central nervous system so helps people feel calmer.
Yellow – like red helps increase brain stimulation to trigger memories.