Signing a Whole Home: A Worked Example
A worked example, not a customer story: how a 40-bed home with almost no signage would be specified from end to end -- what is wrong at the start, what the scheme contains, how the 78 signs are counted, and how a weekend installation runs.
Meadowbrook House is not a real care home. It is a worked example -- a composite 40-bed home of the kind we are most often asked to quote: built in the 1990s, converted from a former residential property, grown by extension, with repurposed rooms and a layout nobody designed. Nothing below is a customer outcome or a measured result. It is a specification exercise, written out in full so you can run the same exercise on your own building.
The Starting Point: Environmental Challenges#
Prior to the transformation, Meadowbrook House had minimal signage. Bedroom doors were identified only by small, low-contrast number plates. The dining room and lounge had no pictorial signage. Toilet doors were painted the same colour as surrounding walls, with small text-only signs that many residents could not read. Corridors were long, with identical decoration on both sides and no landmarks or visual cues at junctions. In other words: almost nothing in the building told a resident which room was which, and the two places that most needed to be findable -- bedrooms and toilets -- were the least identifiable of all.
What the walk-round of the building found:
- 40 bedroom doors identified only by small, low-contrast number plates
- 9 communal toilets and 40 en-suites, none with a pictorial sign, several painted the same colour as the surrounding wall
- No pictorial identification on the dining room, lounge, activity room or hairdresser
- 11 corridor junctions and 2 lift lobbies with no directional signage at all
- Two long corridors with identical decoration on both sides and no landmark at either end
- Back-of-house doors -- sluice, laundry, store, office -- unsigned and indistinguishable from bedroom doors
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The Signage Scheme#
Working with dementia-friendly signage suppliers, the management team developed a comprehensive signage plan covering every area of the building. The scheme included personalised bedroom door signs featuring each resident's name and a chosen photograph, high-contrast pictorial signs for all bathrooms and toilets, dining room and lounge identification signs, directional corridor signs at every junction, and garden access signage. The signs used high-contrast icons on carefully selected colour backgrounds, mounted in hardwood frames that complemented the home's interior decor.
The scheme comes to 78 signs for a 40-bed home, at roughly 3,200 GBP, or just over 80 GBP per bed. The count is the part worth copying
40 personalised bedroom signs, 22 room and toilet door signs, 11 directional signs at junctions, and 5 projecting signs where a flat door sign cannot be seen in time.
Implementation Process#
Installation was completed over a single weekend to minimise disruption to residents. Staff received a two-hour training session covering sign placement principles, how to use signs as wayfinding reference points when guiding residents, and the maintenance routine for keeping signs clean and unobstructed. Residents' families were informed in advance and invited to contribute photographs for personalised bedroom door signs. The positive response from families was immediate, with several commenting that the signs made the home feel more welcoming and professional.
What the Schedule Looked Like#
The 78 signs, by type:
- 40 personalised bedroom door signs -- resident's name, plus an image chosen with them or their family
- 9 communal toilet and bathroom door signs, high-contrast and pictorial
- 13 room identification signs: dining room, two lounges, activity room, hairdresser, quiet room, visitors' room and the rest
- 11 directional signs, one at each corridor junction and lift lobby
- 5 projecting signs on the two long corridor runs, where a flat door sign presents its face to the wall rather than to the reader
- Plus en-suite door decals, specified separately because they are rarely on a corridor-based door schedule and are therefore the item most often missed
Pro Tip
Write the schedule down before you price it, and keep it. A dated sign schedule -- what is signed, where, to what specification, installed when -- is the document an inspector can read and the document a new manager needs when a room changes use.
Recommended Products
The scheme above is specified with our oak-framed dementia-friendly door signs throughout, with the coloured range for bathrooms and communal areas. The same signs are available for your own schedule, and a free mini sample lets you check the material and the contrast before you order.
Lessons Learned#
Four things come out of running the exercise this way. The count is the whole job: get the door count right and the scheme and the budget both follow. En-suite and back-of-house doors are the ones that get missed, because they are not on a corridor. A short staff briefing is worth doing, so that staff point at signs when they guide someone rather than walking them there. And families engage with the personalised bedroom signs more than with anything else in the scheme, so collect the names and images before you place the rest of the order.
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