How much light is right for people with dementia?
To help create architectural guidelines for dementia-friendly housing, an Auckland researcher is interviewing people who live with the condition.
In low light, people with dementia can find it hard to distinguish individual objects from the space around them.
To discover just how much light is helpful, Auckland architect and academic Jane Waterhouse is enlisting Kiwis living with the condition for a study.
Hearing from the people who actually experience these challenges is crucial for understanding how to design dementia-friendly housing, she tells Nine To Noon's Kathryn Ryan.
Ramiro PIanarosa
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Waterhouse’s study is part of her groundbreaking new PhD project, which has financial backing from Auckland University and the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ).
Although an estimated 170,000 New Zealanders will be living with dementia by 2050, stigma around dementia is still pretty intact. Waterhouse says.
Adding to that the schedules of overloaded carers and it has been hard finding enough interviewees.
“It takes quite a bit of courage to be able to go, 'Oh yes, I have dementia and I'm comfortable talking to a stranger about my experiences'."
Part of why Waterhouse is keen to hear from these people directly is that the visual challenges of dementia can vary a lot from person to person, she says.
“It might be harder to see in low lighting conditions. You could be more sensitive to glare. You might need more contrast to be able to see that chair from the background. You might get more disturbed by extreme shadows and extremely bright spots of light.”
Do you know someone with dementia who’d be open to talking about their experience? Anyone interested in participating in this study can email Jane Waterhouse at j.waterhouse@auckland.ac.nz.
Jane Waterhouse is researching how to design houses suitable for New Zealanders living with dementia.
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