Making Space to Remember: Wayfinding for Enabling and Homely Environments in Dementia Care
NaDCAS and Signage for Care share a commitment to creating environments that truly support people living with dementia. Dementia-friendly signage is a vital, but often overlooked, element of enabling design, helping people to navigate spaces with greater confidence, independence and calm. When wayfinding is clear, intuitive, and rooted in familiarity, care environments feel more homely and less disorientating, supporting dignity, wellbeing and a sense of belonging.
This collaborative article developed by the National Dementia Care Accreditation Scheme (NaDCAS) and Signage For Care by Wayfinders, explores practical approaches to wayfinding that can reduce distress, support independence, and create homely, enabling spaces, all aligned with the NaDCAS Framework for Exceptional Dementia Care.
Why This Matters
People living with dementia experience the world differently. The environments around them are not simply backdrops to care, but active participants in daily life. Simple, everyday moments like finding a bathroom, recognising a bedroom, or navigating corridors, can quickly become confusing or distressing when visual cues are unclear or overwhelming.
When environments do not support orientation, people may feel anxious, unsettled, or unsure of where they belong. Thoughtful, dementia-friendly signage and wayfinding can ease these moments. When visual cues are familiar, consistent and reassuring, people are better able to move with confidence, retain a sense of independence, and feel more at home in their surroundings. Thoughtful, dementia friendly signage and wayfinding solutions can, therefore, create a greater sense of belonging and feeling at home.
Wayfinding Solutions – Signage for Care
Effective wayfinding is not about directing people, but about enabling them. Subtle, well-considered signage can help people recognise spaces, anticipate what lies ahead, and feel grounded within their environment.
Signage for Care by Wayfinders specialise in creating evidence informed signage systems that blend seamlessly into care environments while supporting independence, orientation and memory. Their designs incorporate evidence-informed approaches to wayfinding that often include:
Clear, high-contrast visual cues that are easy to recognise
Familiar imagery or symbols that feel personal rather than institutional
Consistent placement of signs so environments become learnable over time
Tactile or sensory elements that reinforce recognition and reassurance
These small, low-disruption interventions can have a significant impact. When people can navigate more independently, distress is reduced, disorientation can ease, and staff are freed from regular redirection. This creates more space for meaningful interactions, emotional connection, and moments of joy - the things that matter most in daily life.
Reflecting NaDCAS Standards of Exceptional Dementia Care
The NaDCAS Framework for Exceptional Dementia Care, developed with sector experts, leading research universities, and people with lived experience. Built around 9 core focus areas, it has at its heart a clear understanding: environments shape experience, behaviour and wellbeing.
The Nine Core Focus Areas of the NaDCAS Framework for Exceptional Dementia Care
Dementia-friendly wayfinding, and the work of Signage for Care, aligns closely with the NaDCAS Framework.
Enabling Environments: Effective wayfinding supports people to move through their environment with greater confidence and independence. Clear, familiar visual cues reduce confusion and the need for frequent intervention, allowing people to navigate spaces more autonomously and with dignity.
Homely Environments: When signage is thoughtfully designed and integrated into the fabric of the home, it reinforces familiarity rather than feeling clinical. Personalised and accessible wayfinding helps spaces feel lived-in and reassuring, supporting a sense of belonging and emotional comfort.
Light, Sound, Smell and Touch for Wellbeing: Dementia-friendly signage works in harmony with the sensory environment. By avoiding glare and visual clutter, and incorporating tactile or softly finished materials, wayfinding contributes to calmer, more settled spaces that support wellbeing.
Approach, Emotional Connection and Person-Centred Participation: When environments support orientation, staff are less focused on redirecting or managing distress, creating time and emotional capacity for connection, meaningful engagement and shared moments of joy.
In this way, wayfinding and signage is not an afterthought in exceptional care, but an integral part of it.
A Shared Commitment to Raising Awareness
This partnership between NaDCAS and Signage for Care reflects a shared belief that good dementia care extends beyond policies and procedures, into the everyday experience of the people who live and work within care settings. By raising awareness of the impact of enabling environments, we hope to support providers to see the environment and wayfinding as a meaningful, compassionate element of quality care. Small changes, thoughtfully made, can transform how a space feels and how a person feels within it.
Feeling Safe, Feeling at Home
For a person living with dementia, feeling safe is not just about physical safety. It is about emotional safety, knowing where you are, recognising what surrounds you, and feeling that you belong.
When environments support these feelings, distress softens. Confidence grows. People are more able to engage, rest, participate, and simply be themselves. Wayfinding, done well, helps create spaces where people are not constantly searching, asking, or feeling lost, but are gently supported to remember, recognise, and feel at home.
In dementia care, these moments matter, and the environments we create can make all the difference.
Registrations are now open for 2026 NaDCAS Accreditation. Register your interest here: www.nadcas.org/register
Explore the NaDCAS Framework for Exceptional Dementia Care: www.nadcas.org/framework
Find about more about Signage for Care by Wayfinders: www.signageforcare.com
