Project: Pendine Care Home, Caernarfon

The new building was constructed to provide a much needed Centre of Excellence within the area, delivering a world-class, bilingual (English and Welsh) home that is the focus for community-based care with enclosed gardens, hair salon, day centre, music room and café.

The interior design team at Pendine Care wanted a floor that provided a homely, warm and welcoming atmosphere without sacrificing practicality, durability or ease of cleaning. Honey Oak from Amtico’s Spacia collection – with its golden shades and realistic oak grain – was chosen for use throughout the property.

Calming environments for residents, visitors and staff have been created in the lobby area, dayrooms and 71 bedrooms as a result. Furthermore, the whole building benefits from a high performance finish and superb durability, thanks to Amtico Spacia’s 0.55mm wear layer.

The Department of Health provides a ‘Health Building Note’, which outlines the requirements for designing flooring in dementia environments. There are some highly important areas that need consideration, including vision and touch impairments, plus the support of safe kinaesthesia, balance and movement. Floor materials and finishes should also be consistent across individual, public, activity and circulation spaces, while all finishes should be matt, non-reflective and non-patterned to help avoid confusion and encourage movement. Additionally, internal flooring should have a non-slip and non-shiny texture to reduce slips, trips and falls, and provide reassurance especially to people with particular types of dementia. The flooring should also support easy rotation, turning, forward and reverse movements of wheelchairs.