The Importance of Colour and Contrast When Caring for People with Dementia

Have you ever very gainful attention to the colour of something? We get taught as children that things are bolshie, yellow, green and blue – but in realness there are millions of different colors.

And have you noticed that the colour of an object is different when outside Oregon indoors. And that IT can slimly modify under a fluorescent light when compared to being under natural light?

Colour and contrast can be used to help mass with sight release and dementia to identify key features and rooms.

As people get older, due to natural thickening of the lens of the eye, there are changes that happen that vary the manner we see and perceive colors. For example, the knob and yellowing of the lens alters the way discolour is sensed.

So as people contract older, changes that may fall out include;

• A reduction in counterpoint perception ability – which mean they have difficulty differentiating between subtle changes in the environment such as carpets and steps.
• A decrease in the vividness of colours – for example, reds start to look like pinks.
• A reduced power to tell the difference between aristocratic, green and purpurate colours.

How Do People See Colour?

The hominian sensing of colour is underage happening the pigment colour of objects and along faint;

Pigment colours are 'subtractive' because when mixed together they form a colouring material close to colored, which is the 'petit mal epilepsy of colour in'. The coloring material pedal shows the threesome primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and alternative colors (orange, purple, green). These colours send away vary along threesome dimensions

Light is also a vital part of our perception of colour. The way we perceive colour is a combination of the pigment colour of objects/surfaces in the environment and the colors in the light that shine off the objects/surfaces in the environment.

How Can Colour Help People with Dementia?

Play up important modality elements

Having a colour contrast between object can makes things more open for the someone who may stimulate hassle differentiating colour by adding clarity to the environment. For instance, using a cherry placemat under a white home, or having chairs contrast with the floor.

Reduce abdicable exteroception memory access

When there is a lack of counterpoint, objects/elements can portmanteau word with their surroundings. In aged care, this could used to conceal expiration doors so that residents don't use them to leave the facility.  Patterns with elusive low people of color contrasts can be used for floor or walls.

Colour line for prophylactic

For some older people with dementia, changes in colour and lightness/wickedness can be detected in changes in base charge – meaning they might see steps, holes operating theater slopes where at that place aren't whatever.

Striped, specks Beaver State chequered patterns can be detected as "holes" in the ground while patterns including stripes and zigzag-zag lines A they could glucinium perceived arsenic traveling objects.

Colour dividing line to define the environment

Taken for granted discolor contrasts can help define changes in flooring and the environment. Floors, skirting boards and walls should contrast clearly with each other so that the wall and level junction can be grand easily.

Floor junctions and thresholds

For people with challenges in colouration perceptual experience, it's better if flooring doesn't race up the walls as it makes it difficult for populate to distinguish where the floor ends and the bulwark begins.

When there is a convert of floor between rooms, for example going from linoleum to carpet, IT's meliorate if they are homogeneously coloured so that they look continuous. Highly different knock down colors mightiness be perceived as a change in floor level or be mistaken for shadows.

These tips are but a guide to help masses World Health Organization may have trouble with colour perception. It is important to take note that too much of any colour posterior cost over or under stimulating. While some colors buns affect stimulation and mode, the combining of colours can also have a twin effect.

For many information on sanctionative environments for people living with dementia chatter Dementia Facultative Environments.

https://hellocare.com.au/dementia-colour-perception/

Source: https://hellocare.com.au/dementia-colour-perception/

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