Universal Design Guidelines: Dementia Friendly Dwellings for People with Dementia, their Families and Carers.

Published by the NDA's Centre for Excellence in Universal Design in 2015, the guidelines were written by Tom Grey, Maria Pierce, Suzanne Cahill and Mark Dyer of TrinityHaus and the Living with Dementia programme at Trinity College Dublin. They support and build on the Universal Design Guidelines for Homes in Ireland, following the same structure: home location and approach, entering and moving about the home, spaces for living, and elements and systems. In 2024 Trinity College announced that the WHO had approved them for its Global Dementia Observatory knowledge exchange platform.

The guidelines explain why signs matter: short-term memory loss can make a layout hard to remember, and difficulties with spatial processing can lead to disorientation and anxiety. Clear, easily understood signs help in public spaces, on approach and entry to a building, and in internal circulation.

Inside the home they encourage labelling of rooms and objects, such as a toilet image on the bathroom door or pictures on kitchen cupboards. They describe signage and labelling as low-cost measures that can be retrofitted, but say they should be designed in from the start on new-build projects. For communal areas of apartment blocks, they show how large, bold directional signs can help people identify stairs, lifts and key spaces.

This is best practice guidance, not regulation. For the common areas of apartment buildings, TGD M remains the statutory baseline, with the NDA's homes guidelines and these dementia guidelines on top. For care settings and hospitals, look to guidance written for those settings rather than this document. The guidelines are NDA copyright, so we link rather than host.