Care Home Interiors Win at the SBID Awards

We’ve won! Care Home Interiors has received the SBID Healthcare and Wellness Design UK Award for Elizabeth Gardens Care Home, created with Porthaven Care Homes.

It’s a wonderful moment for our team. There was so much excitement wrapped up in this project, from imagining how the rooms would come together to seeing the furniture installed and making those final adjustments.

But when we think about what this recognition means, we also think about a conversation Kerry had with a resident in one of the lounges.

“Do you like this lounge?” she asked.

“Well, I’m in here every day.”

Fair point!

Finding a favourite place

The lounge was a deep red room, quite different from anything we had done before. Kerry had been wondering about the colour and whether the space might feel too dark.

The resident had a rather different perspective.

“No, dear. I love it. I’ve got problems with my hearing, not my eyesight, dear.”

She explained that she didn’t enjoy big, noisy spaces. She preferred the quieter little rooms, thought this one was beautiful and loved spending time there.

Kerry had been thinking about a design decision. The lady was telling her she had found somewhere she wanted to be.

That conversation stayed with us because it brought the purpose of the project into focus. These rooms would become part of someone’s everyday life. People would have favourite places, preferences and their own reasons for choosing where to spend time.

Together with Porthaven Care Homes our job was to give them that choice.

The brief for Elizabeth Gardens was to create an uplifting environment that celebrates comfort, choice and individuality, while retaining the warmth and familiarity of home. It gave us the opportunity to explore ideas we were excited to bring to life.

Kerry remembers nights when she couldn’t sleep with anticipation, counting down the days until installation. Alongside that excitement came questions: was something too much? Would people understand it? What would families think?

Those questions mattered. We were creating a home, and every choice needed careful thought about the people who would use it.

Different lounges offered different atmospheres. There were places for conversation, quieter corners, spaces for family occasions and terraces connecting life indoors with the outdoors.

We wanted residents to be able to find surroundings that suited them. The Nook was one of the spaces we were particularly looking forward to seeing finished.

An intimate retreat within a larger lounge, it brings together bespoke seating, patterned upholstery, feature mirrors and carefully layered lighting. It has its own character and a sense of being somewhere a little special.

It was also a real collaboration, with ideas developed together over the course of the project.

After installation, Kerry went back before presenting it to the client. Something still felt missing. Some of the artwork was changed. Only then did she feel it had come together as she had hoped.

That final adjustment was a small part of a much larger scheme, but it reflects how our team approaches a project. We keep looking, discussing and considering how the details work together.

Winning the SBID Healthcare and Wellness Design UK Award is a proud recognition of the work that went into Elizabeth Gardens.

We know how much care sits behind the finished photographs: the conversations, planning, manufacturing, installation and decisions that continued right through to the finishing touches.

Thank you to Porthaven Care Homes for trusting us with this project, and to our colleagues, manufacturing partners and suppliers for everything they brought to it.

We’re delighted to have an award to celebrate. And we’ll keep remembering the resident who had already given her favourite lounge a very clear endorsement.