Circadian Lighting Design: Ashmere Care Home, Heanor Park

The project:

Ashmere Care Home recently built its eighth home in Derbyshire. Heanor Park offers 60 care beds split over five ‘households’ providing general elderly residential care, specialist elderly dementia care, and five luxury suites. Heanor Park is committed to using new technology to improve its operation and facilities for residents and staff. They required a lighting solution that would help address this.

The brief:

Our brief was to design a lighting scheme to support human circadian cycles and improve sleep patterns and the comfort and general well-being of residents.

The result:

Highly Commended at the Lux Awards 2020.

There has been a significant reduction in the amount of falls a care home would usually experience since our highly flexible, easy to control, Circadian Plus solution has been installed throughout the home. Providing complete control of the colour spectrum through multiple colour channels – each fitting is designed for precise delivery of the right colour mix at the right time of day for human circadian cycles.

The lighting algorithm runs 24/7 and is suitable for elderly residents with little or no natural daylight exposure. The morning starts with the highest light levels and colour temperatures (750 lux or greater, 6000 – 8000K). In the afternoon, blue light content is faded out, maintaining as close as possible to white light in the region of 3000K (600 lux). Later in the evening, it moves to the night-time setting at the warm end of the spectrum.

David Poxton, Managing Director commented: ‘We’re seeing a greater level of engagement from the residents during the day because the lighting is helping their body clock become alert and ready for the day…we’re not seeing people falling asleep in their chair or not wanting to engage in activities’ 

Luminaires: Swann Lighting

Control: AMBX Smartcore