Hospital Signs
Wayfinding can be crucial in hospital and healthcare environments. We design clear and legible wayfinding and directional schemes for hospitals.
Hospital Signs for Modern Healthcare Institutions.
Our innovative sign products provide easy wayfinding and navigation for staff and visitors. A range of fixing systems provide versatility, creating modern hospital sign packages.
Why is Hospital Signage Important?
Signage in Hospitals plays a vital role in ensuring patient safety by providing an easy-to-navigate wayfinding scheme for visitors to the hospitals and for staff members.
Guide Patients and Visitors
Hospitals can be large and complex, with many different departments, wards, and floor levels.
Effective hospital signage can help patients and visitors easily navigate the facility and find their way to their destination quickly and efficiently. This is especially important for visitors who may be under stress or in an emergency situation.
Ensuring a Safe Environment
Hospitals have strict safety and security protocols to protect patients, visitors, and staff.
Clear signage can help communicate important safety information, such as the location of emergency exits, directions to emergency facilities such as A&E, or areas that are forbidden, such as x-ray departments.
Provide Essential Information
Hospitals need to communicate important information to patients and visitors, such as visiting hours, policies around food and drink, and rules around photography or use of electronic devices.
Signage can help to communicate this information clearly and effectively.
Enhance the Patient Experience
Hospital signage can also be designed to enhance the patient experience, for example, by including calming imagery or providing information about hospital amenities, such as restaurants or gift shops.
Hospital signage can help to reduce stress for visitors and provide distractions for young children.
Interior and Exterior Signage in Healthcare Environments.
Combining skillsets is paramount in signage design. xsign combines product design, manufacture, project management and installation to create long-lasting wayfinding schemes in hospitals.
Our signage products are well-suited to the medical environment. Ultra-high quality direct digital print is a popular texting method because it provides longevity and superior legibility.
Hospitals are rapidly changing environments and our jigsaw, puzzle, folio and talky products combine to offer real choice to interior designers and hospital managers.
Creating Accessible Signage Schemes in Hospitals and Medical Environments
Accessibility in hospitals and medical environments is vital for successful wayfinding and patient safety.
Use of Large, Legible Fonts
Signs should use a large, easy-to-read font, with high-contrast colors for maximum legibility. This can be especially important for people with visual impairments.
Including Braille Signage in Wayfinding
Braille signage can be provided for individuals who are visually impaired, to assist with wayfinding and identification of rooms or areas.
Using Tactile Lettering in Hospitals
Tactile lettering, which can be felt by touch, can also be used to indicate room numbers or wayfinding information. This can be helpful for individuals who are both visually and hearing-impaired.
Use of Pictograms and Symbols
Pictograms and symbols can be used to supplement text on signs, making them more easily understood by individuals who do not speak the local language or who have difficulty reading.
Hospital Signs and Wayfinding for Healthcare Organisations.
xsign has built a reputation for designing, manufacturing and installing modular sign systems across entire healthcare departments.
Our modular sign systems are well suited to healthcare institutions that are looking for a mix of fixing methods and materials, combined within a consistent theme. Healthcare environments often have different departments with different colour schemes. We can help to provide some consistency through texting methods, colour variations and visual displays.
Wayfinding in hospitals is crucial. Hospitals are environments that feature a high proportion of people who have never visited the building before, sometimes in a rush to get from A to B. It is also critical that wayfinding is clear and easy to understand in medical emergencies. We work closely with architects, contractors and specifiers to ensure that wayfinding is situated in spaces where schemes are easily legible and referenced.
Great Medical Signage Projects Delivered in the UK
>>An excellent internal and external signage scheme for a medical facility in Liverpool.
>>A flagship signage scheme for a state-of-the-art medical facility in Cambridge.
>>Clean and functional internal and external signage scheme for a client in Suffolk.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are many different types of signage used in hospitals and healthcare facilities, from large panel signs upon entry to hospital grounds, to the small signs on doors denoting who is using that room. Healthcare settings are often large and multipurpose environments that require an assortment of purposefully chosen signage systems.
Hospital wayfinding signage best helps visitors and patients when it is clear, accessible, and easy to understand. Healthcare and medical environments are understandably stressful places to be for visitors and patients, so it helps to make finding their way around as simple as possible.
Bespoke signage has several benefits in healthcare and hospital settings as each place is unique and standard signage cannot keep up with the complexities of such environments. Benefits cover the choice of materials, wayfinding systems, improvement of accessibility, increased flexibility, and the ability to capture the values and ethics of the institution too.
The information that should be included on hospital signage needs to be kept clear and concise whatever it is. Maps, written directions, time to destinations, current location, departments, and facilities nearby are just some of the possibilities when planning out what types of information people would find helpful to see on their hospital signage.
The understanding and accessibility of signage is absolutely essential when it comes to hospital wayfinding signs, and the same is true in any medical setting. The hospital environment is an uncomfortable, stressful, and often scary place for people to be, which makes the ability to navigate successfully so important. Ways that xsign make sure signage is understandable, comes from decades of experience, testing, and feedback. We put the utmost care and considerations of fundamental wayfinding principles into our designs.
Successful wayfinding systems are created through experiencing the intended spaces, careful analysis, and rigorous testing. Following the principles of wayfinding design and the decades of relevant industry experience, xsign are able to plan and execute bespoke wayfinding solutions that are safe, secure and enhance patient, visitor and staff experiences.
The different materials used for healthcare signage should be carefully considered for maximum longevity, cleanliness, and impact. When planning external signage in hospital grounds, materials that are weatherproof and not prone to rust, such as stainless steel are essential. Internally, materials that are lightweight, affordable and can be kept hygienic are needed. The materials chosen need to be versatile and able to be affixed in a variety of ways.
Accessibility comes in many formats. On signage, one of the main ways is to design signs around the size of the fonts needed to be read clearly. Fonts should be legible and consistent across the hospital. The use of tactile lettering, braille, audio, and digital features can give freedom and confidence to people with impairments. Specific colours and images are aids to people with dementia as well as other neurological conditions. Clear guidance on where people are and how long it will take to get them to different parts of the hospital is another way signage can be more accessible.
The environmental impact of hospitals can be considerable so where possible, it’s essential they make sustainable choices. Signage is one of the areas where ethical and environmentally selections can be made, both with the materials and signage company responsible for designing them. xsign are part of the ISO 14000 family and can advise on ways signage projects in hospitals can be made sustainable.
Hospital Signage Articles in the xsign Blog
>>Navigating a large hospital can be a daunting task for patients, visitors, and even healthcare professionals.
>>One of the most important features of a hospital or healthcare setting is the signage.
>>Hospitals are one of the most complex environments to navigate.
>>Dementia encompasses a group of symptoms related to “an ongoing decline of brain functioning.”.