Assisted Living Facilities Should Consider Adding These 3 Features in Westchester County, NY
The need for a comfortable home-like assisted living facility is often a major draw for people to move to a community. The average assisted living facility might get by with just the basics, but for a truly happy senior residence, you’ll need to go above and beyond. With various safety enhancements, on-site medical capabilities, landscaping features, and community activities to add to your assisted living facility, you’d be doing everyone a great service. Here’s why assisted living facilities should consider adding these three features in Westchester County, NY.
Since nature is known to have positive influences on people’s emotions and wellbeing, putting an emphasis on outdoor living could be a big draw for residents considering your facility. Even a small outdoor space will give residents a healthy choice of where to relax or recreate. Aside from attractive landscaping, several features will enhance the experience for residents, staff, and guests.
Paved Surfaces
Due to the wellness concerns of the residents of your assisted living facility, you’ll need to have a facility that takes pride in safety first. Beyond the normal safety regulations of any typical residential building, employ further methods to ensure the safety and wellbeing of your residents.
For outdoor spaces, choose smooth, modern patio pavers with absolutely zero variations in height and non-slip textures. Consider permeable pavers which allow any surface water to seep directly into the ground rather than collecting and puddling on the surface. The pavers themselves aren’t permeable; but they feature slightly larger spaces between them, which are filled with special jointing sand that allows water to filter through. Permeable pavers are attractive and a safe choice for all your outdoor walking surfaces.
Adequate Seating
With a population that frequently needs to rest, you’ll want adequate seating areas throughout all of the outdoor areas of your assisted living facility. These should be placed fairly frequently throughout. The more opportunities for gathering, the better, to foster a sense of community.
Add some sturdy tables for gathering to give your residents a positive start to beneficial outdoor experiences.
Seating that is placed in the vicinity of well-kept green spaces is particularly helpful at fostering positive feelings among the residents and their guests.
Shelter
While being outside is generally pleasant, adding a pergola for shade or a pavilion that offers shelter from rain and sun will encourage residents to make the most of their outdoor spaces.
Smart Outdoor Lighting
Above anything else, proper outdoor lighting will provide safety for the residents of your assisted living facility. Floodlights may produce a lot of light, but it’s a harsh glare for anyone that accidentally makes eye contact with the fixture, and the brightness creates contrasting shadows that could obscure potential obstacles on the ground.
Again, start from the ground up. Add a series of solar-powered light-emitting diode (LED) light fixtures that line the edge of all your walkways and outdoor spaces. Not only will these lights create substantial illumination that promotes safety, but they’ll show off the beauty of your facility’s landscaping. Best of all, solar-powered light fixtures aren’t connected to wires. Thus, they aren’t connected to the electricity grid and they won’t incur any further costs except for the occasional replacement. Beyond this strategy, use lighting strategies such as spotlighting to create an appealing layered effect in the landscape along with a safe and elegant environment.
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