Charlotte Goddard took a trip to the south coast to talk to Barchester head of interior design Holly Rance about how she brings her visions to life

When Holly Rance shows up at a Barchester new-build it’s just a shell, but by the time she leaves, it’s become a home. As head of interior design at Barchester, Rance oversees everything from the colour of the walls and carpets to the positioning of the smallest ornament in a corner of a lounge.
When Caring Times visited Bere Grove Care Home in Horndean, near Portsmouth, Rance had been on site for around a week, getting the home ready for opening. This was the end of a two- and-a-half year process, during which she worked closely with the home’s architects on details including the positioning of sockets and radiators.

At any one time Rance might be working on 10 new-builds, all at a different stage of design, as well as overseeing the refurbishment of around eight existing homes. Before she arrives at a new-build Rance knows exactly how every space should look, enabling her to whizz through the home at double-quick time. “I like to have different heights, different textures, different finishes, so if somebody is sitting for a while just chilling, they have interesting things to look at,” she explains.

Rance has a story about every ornament, picture or piece of furniture, and can tell you how much it cost and where it came from. Animal designs are always a hit, she says. “You may notice a few sausage dogs around because I have one, that is a little nod to my personal life,” she laughs. “I always buy the animals because they end up getting named by residents.” Animal prints are also a favourite, with a textured wallpaper reminiscent of snakeskin decorating one of Bere Grove’s dining rooms.

Rance has been working for the interior design team for 13 years, heading it up for the past six years. She has transformed the look of the organisation’s 200-plus homes with her bold approach, overseeing the adoption of three core colour schemes, known as Windsor (red), Hampton (turquoise) and Buckingham (purple).

Home managers can refer to an evolving manual detailing the accessories, furniture and colours that go with each scheme, if they want to redecorate a lounge area, for example. “I choose bold colours, but they’re warm, easy-to-live-with colours,” she explains. “People will be spending a lot of time in the home, and I think they have got to feel really at ease and comfortable.”

The three schemes suit Barchester’s diverse portfolio. “We have some massive buildings with really high ceilings, and the red scheme really suits those kinds of homes,” explains Rance. “The turquoise scheme is more urban, and the purple scheme bridges the gap between contemporary and traditional.”

The 60-bed Bere Grove Care Home follows the Buckingham scheme – the key colour is woven through the home to give unity, but a range of accent colours including greys, pinks, golds and blacks ensure it’s not overwhelmingly purple.

Rance combines experience in luxury interior design, including time spent within the superyacht interior industry and designing high-end residential interiors, with a deep passion for the care sector. “Care is in my core,” she says. She is able to draw on her own experiences, as she has a disability herself.

“When I went to hospital as a child, it was so clinical, and I found solace in small things like a rainbow drawn on the wall,” she remembers. “I never make the homes feel clinical. If you are feeling unwell, you want your surroundings to be like a big hug.”

Bere Grove has two 15-bed dementia communities, each with their own dining room, lounge and outdoor space. Rance works closely with Barchester’s in-house dementia specialist and spends a lot of time observing how people with dementia use the spaces. Lavatories are set against darker tile colours to make them stand out, for example. “We stick with the same tone of flooring throughout a corridor, because when residents reach another colour, sometimes they can think they are going to fall off a cliff,” she says.

The tour takes in a spa bathroom with a twinkly ceiling and a photographic mural which gives the impression of looking out of a window. Descending to the ground floor, which is a residential community, we move into a large orangery, with an impressive light fitting.

The annual ‘Tell Barchester’ survey, which is completed by residents, family and staff, gives Rance an insight into design-related likes and dislikes, which she feeds into future homes. “For inspiration, I look at the best of the best, whether that is a hotel or a superyacht, and then I work backwards and find how I can do that within my budget,” she says. Choice and variety are key, with a range of different chairs in lounge areas, for example, so people can choose to have a nap, or sit and chat, or read a book. Bringing the outside indoors was a key inspiration at Bere Grove, with plants, nature-inspired artwork and green fabrics.

Everything that Rance buys for the homes is majority manufactured in the UK. Many of the furnishings are bespoke, including footstools which open up to provide storage space and can double as “softer coffee tables”. “The artworks are framed in Edinburgh, the curtains are made in Darlington, all of this oak furniture comes from Devon,” she says, indicating a solid-looking wooden side table. When she’s not travelling the length and breadth of the UK, Rance can be found in a warehouse in Salisbury, full of fixtures and fittings waiting for a good home.

“Having everything stored in one place makes fitting out a home so efficient,” she says. “We can get things at a good price because we can bulk buy – I might buy 100 lovely woollen throws at time.”

Every fabric used in the home is flame retardant, waterproof and antibacterial. “Nothing will get through that fabric at all. It’s just completely bulletproof,” says Rance. “This new paint finish we are using is amazing, the home just needs to wipe it so we are not constantly repainting.”

As well as designing new builds from scratch, Rance is overseeing a rolling programme of refurbishment across Barchester’s existing portfolio. This is often trickier, as she is not presented with a blank canvas but a home with people already living in it, who may have concerns about change. To tackle this, Rance tries to engage residents and families and listen to their concerns and preferences.

“When I was in West Abbey, which is in Yeovil, we had pictures of the local area from the 1950s and one guy said ‘I used to live in that street.’ So I put that picture outside his bedroom and every time he was so thrilled to see it,” she recalls.

The team tackles one room at a time, to minimise disruption, and only revamps unoccupied bedrooms. Rance is often moved to tears to see the difference that her revamps make to residents’ quality of life. The impact can be huge, particularly for residents with dementia who are often better able to navigate spaces. In one case a resident who never left their room suddenly started coming to the lounge after a refurbishment.

“I love my job so much because it makes a difference to people,” Rance concludes.