Lighting to Enhance Wayfinding for Thai Elderly Adults in Nursing Homes

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effects of lighting and other environmental variables in terms of the colour, signage, and furnishings on the indoor wayfinding of Thai seniors in a nursing home. Three major studies were conducted. The first study aimed at exploring the effects of the lighting parameters in rooms in a nursing home environment, which were the opening type, luminaire type, lamp type, and the type of view-out on the wayfinding performance of Thai elderly people. Three room contexts of a nursing home were investigated: bedroom, living room, and dining room. A survey was conducted with the participation of 308 Thai seniors who experienced the indoor environments of six nursing homes with the investigated variables. The second study was to explore the effects of the colour and material of the environment on the wayfinding performance of Thai elderly people in the three room contexts of the nursing home. The factors relating to the colour and material of the environment were explored, which comprised the correlated colour temperature (CCT), room colour, brightness contrast between room’s surface and furniture, and material of the room’s surface. For this study, data were collected from 45 Thai seniors tested in a laboratory chamber at the Mittraphap-songkhro Foundation Female Nursing Home and Tharnnukhro Foundation Bangkhen Nursing Home, Thailand. The last study was an investigation of the effects of the lighting, colour, and signage on wayfinding in the corridor in the nursing homes, which were evaluated by 129 Thai elderly participants. The subjects evaluated these environments from a virtual reality environment using concrete concepts like clear/blurry, attractive/unattractive, navigable/unnavigable, and inviting/repellent. The results confirmed that Thai elderly people were increasingly dependent on a compensating environment. The significant factors included the opening type, luminaire type, lamp type, and type of view-out, as well as other factors relating to the colour, signage, and furnishings of the nursing home environments. These results produced the conclusion that appropriate lighting and architectural features in terms of the colour, signage, and furnishings promoted the indoor wayfinding of Thai seniors in nursing homes. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by solarlits.com. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).