When a parent, spouse or friend moves into residential care, the room often has just one week to become someone’s home. The bed and mattress are already there; everything else has to come in the car: a chest of drawers, a couple of cushions, a photo album – and the walls are bare. A poster is one of the quickest ways to fill them with something familiar, but the rules are different from those in an ordinary home, because drilling is rarely allowed, floor space is limited, and the room is also the staff’s workplace. Here we go through what actually works and what research on recognition and memory images has to say.
Quick facts: According to the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare’s statistics for the full year 2025, published on 21 April 2026, 6.1 percent of women and 4.0 percent of men aged 65 and over lived in residential care for older people. The Cochrane review on reminiscence therapy for dementia was updated in 2018 and found small improvements in quality of life, cognition and communication. Tranås Municipality’s 2026 brochure for residential care states that tenants bring their own pictures and lamps, that holes must not be drilled in the walls, and that there should be 80 centimetres of clear space on both sides of the bed if two staff members need to help.
One room, two functions: home and workplace
The first thing to understand is that a room in a care home is two things at once. It is a person’s only private space, and it is an environment where staff need to be able to work safely with lifting, repositioning and assistive devices. Tranås Municipality explains in its brochure that each apartment has a bed with a mattress, that tenants must bring everything else themselves – lamps, curtains, potted plants, pictures – and that they should furnish the room sparingly. Rugs should be avoided because of the risk of falls, and there should be 80 centimetres of clear space on both sides of the bed in case two people need to help.
For those choosing a poster, it means two things. First, the image must not take up floor space: all artwork stays on the wall or on an existing surface. Second, drilling is normally not allowed. The municipality’s brochure says that drilling holes can lead to compensation claims when the apartment is vacated, and that picture rails are often provided instead. Rules vary between municipalities and care homes, so always ask the staff or unit manager first. You can find more about hanging things without screws in our guide to poster hanger or frame, and a wooden poster hanger with magnets is often the easiest way to hang a picture from a picture rail without making anything permanent.
What research says about recognition – and what it doesn’t say
There is no study showing that a particular poster improves the health of someone in a care home, and no credible source should promise that. But research points in the same direction: familiarity matters. The Cochrane review on reminiscence therapy for dementia, first published in 1998 and updated in 2018, found that reminiscence activities can lead to small improvements in quality of life, cognition, and communication, and possibly mood. The effects were small, but they were most often seen in studies of care homes, and the authors suggest this is because reminiscence helps people maintain their identity when life has moved to a new place. It is a modest finding, but a useful one: an image that sparks a conversation is worth more than one that is merely beautiful. The summary is available on the Cochrane website.
Another study, conducted at an urban hospital, showed 37 patients with an average age of 78 twelve realistic photographs for about ten seconds each. All patients rated familiar images more positively and remembered them more often, and patients with cognitive impairment responded even more positively to familiar images than patients without impairment. Those with cognitive impairment also recognized about three-quarters of the images, while those without impairment recognized almost all of them. The authors suggest choosing images with a familiar connection – local buildings, plants, or personal history. The study was small and conducted at just one facility, so it is an indication rather than a definitive answer, but it aligns with what many family members notice for themselves.
Learn more about why old, familiar subjects feel reassuring in our overview of the psychology of nostalgia.
"The best picture in a room at a care home is the one that makes someone say: I remember that."
Familiar subjects: places, nature, and art from another time
Start with the person’s own story. What have they seen, lived near, and liked? A couple of questions for the person or their family go a long way: Where did you grow up? Which landscape did you like best? Which artist’s work hung in your grandparents’ home? Based on the answers, you can choose from a few clear themes.
Places the person has known
If the person grew up in Dalarna, Gothenburg, or Skåne, there are subjects they’ll instantly recognize. Our selection of posters and artworks of places in Sweden includes cityscapes, coastlines, and landscapes that many people feel personally connected to. An image of the city where they spent their working life or vacationed every summer can spark a conversation at every visit.
Nature and the seasons
Lakes, forests, fields, and flowers are a safe choice because they rarely cause distress, and they work like a window view when the actual view is limited. Our nature prints often have clear compositions, making them easy to take in even when vision is impaired. Consider choosing an image that shows the person’s favorite season, and changing it with the seasons if needed.
Artists many people grew up with
For many older Swedes, Carl Larsson’s family scenes and Claude Monet’s garden paintings are familiar from schoolbooks, calendars, and relatives’ homes. They are clear and warm, and full of little stories that people can point to and talk about. Feel free to ask the family which images hung in their grandparents’ home – the answer is often a good starting point.
Tip: Turn the image into a conversation before it’s even hung. Let the person choose between two or three subjects, and consider writing a note on the back of the frame explaining why that particular image was chosen. Then the next visitor or staff member can read it and continue the conversation.
What to set aside for now: images that are hard to interpret
No study we found identifies abstract art as harmful, and for someone who has always loved Rothko or Kandinsky, an abstract image may be just what makes a room feel personal. But for someone with cognitive impairment, images that are hard to interpret can create uncertainty. A blurry shape may be perceived as something else, and dense patterns can be tiring to look at. If you’re unsure, choose something that clearly depicts a place, an animal, or a flower, and save abstract art for people who have asked for it.
Also avoid motifs that could be frightening or sad—dark storms, solitary figures, war scenes—and pictures that are very detailed but small. A motif that works from two meters away, with a few large areas of color and a clear focal point, works better than one that requires close inspection.
Size, height, and lighting in a room with limited space
Since the room is small and the floor needs to stay clear, most of your options depend on what you can do with the walls. Here are some practical rules of thumb based on the constraints of the facility, not on any single study.
Height: consider someone sitting or lying down
Many people living in residential care spend much of the day sitting or lying down. So hang the picture with its center about 110–125 cm above the floor, which is eye level for someone in a chair or wheelchair, and considerably lower than the usual 145 cm. Above the bed, where the person lies down, the picture can hang a little higher or on the side wall facing the window.
Size: one large picture or several small ones
In a room with one or two free walls, a 50x70 or 40x50 works best as the main picture, since it can be seen from both the bed and the chair. If you’d like a small series of family pictures and other motifs, three 21x30 prints in matching frames, hung close together, work well. Avoid using 13x18 prints on their own—they’re easily too small to make out from a distance.
Frames and lighting
Choose a light wooden frame or a magnetic strip instead of heavy metal, and avoid glass that reflects the window or lamp—a reflection can make a picture disappear or look like something else. Matte paper and acrylic glass, or no glass at all, create the fewest reflections. Position the picture so that daylight falls on it at an angle, not straight into the viewer’s eyes.
Giving a poster to someone who is moving
The gift may be one of the most important you give, but it’s easy to get it wrong despite your good intentions. Always ask in advance, preferably the person themselves, or otherwise their loved ones or the facility staff, whether there are any rules or preferences. Bring the picture already framed so no one has to hang anything using tools on site, and give it as part of the move rather than as a follow-up. Read more about how to choose a gift for the occasion in our guide to posters as gifts.
Also keep in mind that the room changes over time. Needs change, and pictures that worked during the first month may need to be replaced. That’s why an easy-to-remove option, such as a magnetic strip or picture rail, is better than something that’s difficult to take down. A poster is also easy to replace with a new one at little cost.
Frequently asked questions about posters in care homes
If you need help finding familiar images, you can start with our nature prints or works by Carl Larsson, and pair them with a wooden poster hanger with magnets. Start with a single image the person helped choose themselves - it's often the one that makes the room start to feel like theirs.