10 Skilled Nursing & Senior Living Designs That Win the Tour

In skilled nursing, census is won on the tour. A family arrives—often within days of a hospital discharge, often exhausted—and decides in the first few minutes whether a building feels like recovery or like an institution. Discharge planners make the same judgment at a distance, from photographs. The clinical program matters enormously, but the lobby, the dining room, and the therapy gym are what get a facility onto the short list in the first place.

HH Designers has built one of the country’s deepest portfolios in skilled nursing facility interior design—more than 27 SNF and senior living projects across a national footprint of 21 states, from Florida rehab campuses to a medical resort outside Seattle. We design these buildings the way hospitality designers approach hotels, then engineer every finish for the realities of infection control, wheelchairs, med carts, and 24-hour operations. The result is a category we helped define: skilled nursing that tours like a boutique hotel and survives like a hospital.

The ten projects below are all real HH Designers work, each verified against our project archive, each linked so you can see the full set of images. Together they cover every space that decides an admission decision—arrival lobbies, therapy gyms, dining rooms, nurse stations, and the exterior curb appeal that shapes a family’s expectations before the front door opens. For the broader thinking behind these rooms, see our senior living design guide and our companion pages on senior living and rehabilitation center design.

1. The Lodge Health and Rehabilitation Center — a lobby that resets expectations

The Lodge is a 40,000-square-foot Florida facility whose arrival sequence does exactly what its name promises. Vaulted timber trusses lift the lobby ceiling, arched French doors pull in daylight, and a grand piano signals that this is a social room, not a waiting room. The reception desk—the single most photographed element in any skilled nursing tour—is a sweeping curve of blush stacked tile under a white marble top, lit from a suspended timber canopy hung with brass drum pendants.

The design logic is deliberate: every material a family touches in the first sixty seconds is residential or hospitality grade, while the durable, cleanable performance specs stay invisible. Wood-look flooring stands up to wheeled traffic; the tile desk front shrugs off cart impacts that would destroy drywall. Nothing in the first impression says institution—and that first impression is precisely when most admissions decisions are actually made.

2. Carlton Shores Health and Rehab Center — the therapy gym as centerpiece

At Carlton Shores, a 100,000-square-foot campus in Daytona Beach, we put the rehabilitation gym where most buildings put a courtyard—under a cathedral glass gable that floods the space with Florida daylight. The centerpiece is impossible to forget: the USS Carlton, a full-scale boat mock-up set into a glossy water-blue floor, used for real transfer training. Patients practice stepping in and out of a boat—the same balance, grip, and sequencing skills they need for cars, tubs, and daily life—in a setting that turns therapy into an event.

Sunset beach murals wrap the walls, turf-tone flooring defines the exercise zones, and parallel bars and recumbent equipment are arranged so families watching a tour see activity, progress, and light. That is the strategic point: outcomes are the product in short-term rehab, and a gym this photogenic sells outcomes to every hospital discharge planner who sees it. We explore this further in our piece on therapy gym design.

3. AVIA Skilled Nursing Facility — resort common areas at nursing scale

AVIA in Leesburg, Florida is a 100,000-square-foot building whose common spaces would read as a resort lobby if the photographs were unlabeled. A coffered wood ceiling runs above marble-look flooring with contrasting inlays; a two-story water feature shimmers behind cascading pendant lights; a grand piano anchors the lounge; and the bistro seating—taupe velvet chairs with brass frames around marble tables—belongs in a hotel restaurant.

None of this is decoration for its own sake. Skilled nursing residents spend weeks in these buildings, and their families visit repeatedly—the common areas are where guilt is either relieved or confirmed. Giving residents somewhere genuinely beautiful to take visitors changes the emotional mathematics of a stay. Operationally, the great room plan concentrates activity where staff can see it, and the durable-but-warm finish kit—stone-look porcelain, velvet-look contract fabrics, brass-tone metal—holds its appearance through years of daily cleaning. This is the standard the Florida market now tours against.

4. Gulfshore Health and Rehabilitation Center — branding the arrival

Gulfshore, a 50,000-square-foot Florida facility, demonstrates how far a focused arrival moment can carry a building’s identity. The reception wall is a book-matched marble composition whose veining fans out symmetrically behind the burgundy Gulfshore logotype—an instant, ownable image. The desk repeats the marble body but inserts a chevron of warm wood slats across its face, and a flowering tree in a simple planter softens the geometry.

For operators running multiple facilities, this is the template for brand consistency: one signature wall, one logo treatment, one desk detail—repeatable at every property while local palettes shift. It photographs perfectly for the website and referral packets, which matters because most families see a skilled nursing facility online before they ever visit. The rest of the arrival suite stays quiet—cream roman shades, blush-toned plank flooring, warm white walls—so the single strong gesture does not have to compete. One wall, disproportionate return.

5. South Campus Health and Wellness — dining that drives census

South Campus, a 30,000-square-foot Florida project, treats the dining room as the restaurant it needs to be. A channel-tufted emerald velvet banquette runs the length of the window wall, topped with a continuous planter of greenery; blush upholstered chairs with brass legs gather around wood-topped tables; and the servery sits inside a deep arched niche painted forest green, so meal service has a stage rather than a steam-table wall.

Dining is the most-used amenity in any skilled nursing building—three times a day, every resident, every family meal visit—and it is where nutrition outcomes are won or lost. Restaurant-caliber design measurably changes behavior: residents come earlier, stay longer, and eat more in a room that feels social instead of clinical. The marble-look floor with its graphic border defines the dining zone without a single wall, keeping sight lines open for staff. We wrote about this link between dining design and outcomes on the journal.

6. Lady Lake Health and Rehab Center — biophilic calm in the common wing

Lady Lake, 40,000 square feet in Florida, shows the quieter register of our healthcare work. The family lounge is organized around a wall of framed botanical panels—oversized palm fronds in soft greens—set into pale wood paneling. Cream sofas with sage pillows and wood-framed armchairs in olive upholstery keep the palette in the landscape register, while sculptural pendant lights add warmth without glare.

The evidence base for biophilic design in healthcare is long-settled: visual access to nature, or even credible representations of it, lowers stress markers for patients and—just as important in this building type—for the adult children making placement decisions. The practical detailing matters too: a two-tone wall treatment puts a durable, wipeable finish below chair-rail height where wheelchairs and carts strike, with the softer material above. Roller shades manage the strong Florida light so the room stays usable for aging eyes all day. Calm is a design output, and it is specifiable.

7. Fort Lauderdale Health & Rehab — curb appeal as the first tour stop

The tour starts in the parking lot. Fort Lauderdale Health & Rehab is a 100,000-square-foot facility whose exterior we shaped in a Mediterranean vocabulary—warm stucco, a landmark tower element, arched loggias with balcony rails, and a deep entry canopy under mature palms. It reads as a South Florida resort long before it reads as healthcare, which is precisely the point: a family’s expectation is set at the curb, and everything inside either confirms or fights that first frame.

Exterior architecture also does quiet operational work. The arrival canopy shelters wheelchair transfers from sun and sudden rain; the tower gives the building a memorable identity on a commercial corridor and in every referral photo; balconies and loggias give upper-floor residents usable outdoor moments without ground-floor supervision trips. In a market as competitive as Broward County, a building that looks like a destination earns the visit—and the visit is where census is won.

8. Arcadia Medical Resort of Renton — naming, and building, a new category

Arcadia in Renton, Washington—150,000 square feet, completed in 2020—calls itself a medical resort, and the architecture is what makes that claim credible. The entrance composition pairs a crisp columned portico with a two-story glass entry volume, flanked by stone-clad accessible ramps that are integrated into the landscape design rather than bolted on. The signage says resort; the ramp geometry says universal design done with pride.

The category matters commercially. Post-acute patients choosing between facilities—and the adult children driving those choices—respond to positioning, and a building that physically delivers on the resort promise justifies premium payer mixes and shorter sales cycles. At 150,000 square feet, Arcadia had the scale to back the name with amenity depth inside. It also proves the model travels: the same design thinking we deploy across our Florida portfolio works in the Pacific Northwest, one of the 21 states our studio serves from New Jersey, supported by structured site visits through construction.

9. Golden Hill Nursing and Rehabilitation Center — the nurse station, elevated

Golden Hill in Kingston, New York—60,000 square feet—concentrates its design investment on the element residents and staff interact with more than any other: the nurse station. Ours is a sculptural, angular desk in black marble over a white stone plinth, backed by a backlit agate-look feature panel and a wood-slat column, under a brass globe chandelier. It reads as a hotel concierge desk, and that is a functional decision, not a stylistic one.

Staff spend their entire shift at this station; giving them a beautiful, well-lit, well-organized workpoint is one of the most cost-effective retention signals a building can send in a sector where turnover is the operating challenge. The surrounding corridor detailing shows the same discipline—two-tone walls with timber handrails and dark impact rails at cart height, plank-look ceiling fields that warm the standard grid. Families walk these corridors on every visit. When the hardest-working zones look cared for, the whole building feels trustworthy.

10. Doral Health & Wellness — the community-facing front door of the continuum

Doral Health & Wellness on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn is the outpatient, street-facing end of the senior care continuum—a 5,000-square-foot center where design has to earn trust from the sidewalk. The lobby leads with color and pattern: a teal modular sofa against marble wall panels inlaid with teal metal reveals, molecule-style chandeliers overhead, and a bold black-and-white geometric floor that gives the room graphic energy a suburban campus would never attempt.

The reception zone is a composition of angular marble-and-wood desks beneath a wood-slat ceiling canopy—clearly wayfound, impossible to miss from the entry. In an urban storefront setting, the design is the marketing: the room communicates modern, organized, well-funded care to every passerby on one of Brooklyn’s busiest corridors. For operators building referral pipelines between outpatient centers and skilled nursing campuses, a front door like this is where the relationship—and the brand—begins. See our medical office design practice for more of this work.

The pattern behind the ten

Every building above wins the same three moments: the curb, the lobby, and the room where families imagine their parent living. The finishes are hospitality-grade where hands and eyes go, healthcare-grade where wheels and carts go, and the two never trade places. That is the discipline—and it is documented, down to every finish and fixture, in the Spec Book that closes each of our projects.

We serve skilled nursing, assisted living, memory care, and rehab operators in 21 states, with particular depth in Florida healthcare design and the Northeast. If you are planning a new building, a renovation, or a portfolio-wide refresh, our process is built for operators—phased, occupied-facility aware, and budget-honest. Start the conversation with a proposal request.