Marni Jameson: Borrow hospital's wellness-inspired decor ideas

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The new tower at Orlando Regional Medical Center was designed to be hospitable and to make those inside feel as if they were at home, rather than in an institution. The lobby area features lots of natural light, live orchids, richly colored damask seating, art of water lilies and a whimsical light fixture made of blown-glass balls.

As homes go, the place was large -- 245 bedrooms and 345,000 square feet. And though it looked and felt like a home in many ways, the new 10-story building I toured recently was really a hospital in disguise -- a feat of decorating ingenuity, to be sure.

The architects' objective was "to create a home for 245 patients," said the news material handed to those of us previewing America's newest hospital tower, a $300 million structure at Orlando Regional Medical Center in Florida, which on Monday admitted its first "overnight guests."

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then we who care about making homes beautiful, comfortable and nurturing just got a Dallas-size compliment. The designers get this universal truth: There's no place like home, especially when you're sick. Much of what they've done to make the large institutional space feel homey they learned from home designers.

"Our biggest design challenge was to make the hospital feel hospitable," said Karen Guindi, the interior designer at the helm of the project, who designed high-end hotels before hospitals.

It was with great curiosity that I checked out what sleight of hand was used to take the edge off the facts that your bed is a gurney with side rails, that people talk in the hall at all hours and leave the lights on, that everyone who visits you needs to wash their hands and that just when you fall asleep somebody sticks you with needles.

Seems to me it would take more than pretty art, high-definition television and a comfy sofa to gloss over such facts.

"Our mantra was: This is not an institution," said Guindi, who chatted with me in the art-filled lobby after the tour. "It's a healing environment, designed with home, hospitality and nature in mind."

But Guindi also had to adjust her designs to stand up to heavy traffic and heavy use -- the kinds our homes endure (spilled coffee, dirty shoes on nice furniture, facedown pizza), only more so.

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Marni Jameson: Borrow hospital's wellness-inspired decor ideas