Six home design tricks to steal from an unlikely place: Hospitals

A swirl of flooring hues at Orlando Regional Medical center cues patients and visitors about directions a trick that can be used in your house. (0Provided by Orlando Health)

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 last week was really a hospital in disguise a feat of decorating to be sure.

The architects' objective was "to create a home for 245 patients," said the press materials handed to those of us previewing America's newest hospital tower, a $300 million structure at Orlando Regional Medical Center, which will admit its first "overnight guest" Jan. 26.

If imitation is the best form of flattery, then we who care about making homes beautiful, comfortable and nurturing just got a huge compliment.

Everything the designers did to make the large institutional space feel homey, they learned from home designers. They get this universal truth: There's no place like home, especially when you're sick.

"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 she began designing hospitals.

So it was with gallows curiosity that I went to see what sleight-of-hand design 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, that just when you fall asleep somebody dressed in monochromatic pastels sticks you with needles and messes with your hardware, that you're likely there because you're deathly ill and that down the hall people are routinely being cut open.

It would take more than pretty art, high-definition televisions and a comfy sofa to gloss over that, I thought.

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

But Guindi also had to bear in mind that the place needed to stand up to heavy traffic and human abuse. You know, all the assaults our homes endure spilled coffee, dirty shoes on nice furniture, face-down pizza only more so.

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Six home design tricks to steal from an unlikely place: Hospitals