Home Sweet Home - making your home dementia-friendly in simple steps

Living with Dementia can be a challenging time for the whole family, but here are five simple steps that could make a huge difference in overcoming some of those challenges:

• Putting a prominent feature to the front of the house can make it easily recognisable, particularly in a row of familiar looking properties.
   
• Inside the home, internal doors can be removed to avoid confusion as to where they lead.
   
• Cupboard doors can blend into their surroundings but putting pictures or photographs of what is inside upon the doors can be of huge benefit.
   
• Think about colour and contrast around the house. Plain is ideal as patterns can create illusions which can be disconcerting to a person living with dementia. Contrasting the colour of light switches or doors with walls and carpets so they can be easily differentiated, or painting a border around light switches can be of great value.
   
• Consider painting the edge of steps in a garden to make them stand out.

In short, familiarity is key - think about colour and contrast. Always include the person who has dementia in any decision-making and adaptions to their home to see what will work best for them, and always focus on what they can do.

Finally living with dementia affects a person’s daily life and so adaptions like these can help to reduce the impact and help maintain a sense of normality, independence and self- esteem.  

Our Trusts & Estates and Family experts are always on hand to help you with this or any other related subject - email Gill Guest or call us now on 0800 118 1500 to find out how we can help you..