ABSTRACT
Finding the way and navigating environments represent crucial abilities for individual’s everyday autonomy and wellbeing. Wayfinding skills display clear age-related decline in older adults, which is even more marked in people with dementia. Wayfinding issues pose challenges to a person’s health and wellbeing when coping with dementia, especially when a relocation to a new living condition, such as a long-term care facility, occurs. This chapter discusses the contribution of cognitive and environmental psychology to dementia-friendly design capable of minimizing spatial disorientation among people with dementia living in long-term care facilities. It also summarizes the existing evidence on environmental features that can facilitate navigability in such buildings. The importance of assessing care homes navigability and applying design principles capable of improving it is also discussed, given the implications for promoting autonomy and wellbeing in older residents with dementia, and in terms of reduced workload and costs of care for caregivers.
