Concept
A retirement home – sometimes called an old people's home, old folks' home, or old age home, although old people's home can also refer to a nursing home – is a multi-residence housing facility intended for the elderly. Typically, each person or couple in the home has an apartment-style room or suite of rooms with an en-suite bathroom. Additional facilities are provided within the building. This can include facilities for meals, gatherings, recreation activities, and some form of health or hospital care. A place in a retirement home can be paid for on a rental basis, like an apartment, or can be bought in perpetuity on the same basis as a condominium. A retirement home differs from a nursing home primarily in the level of medical care given. Retirement communities, unlike retirement homes, offer separate and autonomous homes for residents. Retirement homes offer meal-making and some personal care services. Assisted living facilities, memory care facilities and nursing homes can all be referred to as retirement homes. The cost of living in a retirement home varies from 100,000 per year, although it can exceed this range, according to Senior Living Near Me's senior housing guide. In the United Kingdom, there were about 750,000 places across 25,000 retirement housing schemes in 2021 with a forecast that numbers would grow by nearly 10% over the next five years. Proper design is integral to the experience within retirement homes, especially for those experiencing dementia. Wayfinding and spatial orientation become difficult for residents with dementia, causing confusion, agitation and a general decline in the physical and mental wellbeing. Those living with dementia often display difficulty with distinguishing relevance of information within signage. This phenomenon can be attributed to a combination of fixative behaviors as well as a tendency towards non discriminatory reading. Therefore in creating appropriate signage for retirement homes, we must first consider the who, what, when, where, and why of the design and placement of signage.
