Feature By Katianne Williams
The Butterfly Effect
Peel Manor Senior Health and Wellness Village in Ontario, Canada, was designed according to the Butterfly Model, an approach to dementia care that transforms long-term institutions into vibrant, home-like environments. Bedrooms are organized into pods that branch off from shared spaces, allowing residents to move freely within a familiar layout that supports autonomy, safety, and person-centered care, while the main floor functions as a community hub that includes an integrated care clinic, fitness room, dining room, and gathering areas.
Illumination is of particular importance in this environment. The effects of lighting are magnified for seniors—age-related changes in vision increase sensitivity to glare and low illumination, and lighting misaligned with circadian rhythms can disrupt sleep, mood, and cognitive function. Dawn Brown, owner and principal designer at Ontario Aesthetic Lighting Design, worked in collaboration with Montgomery Sisom Architects to fully integrate lighting design into the facility so that when the first residents moved into the village in November 2024, they entered a long-term care residence where “every light and lighting device had been selected and positioned with purpose and meticulous care.”
To deliver enough light to support vision while carefully managing glare, Brown used layered lighting strategies. In the main dining hall, Louis Poulsen Patera pendants provide volumetric ambient light to the vertical plane, Spectrum Lighting downlights wash out shadows and enhance task illumination at tables, while Visa Lighting’s Wrap sconces accent columns and add visual interest. The result is a space that feels bright and welcoming without harshness, one that delivers the “positive psychological impact of quality aesthetics” and “encourages social interaction for optimal wellness and vitality.”
Upstairs in Resident Home corridors, surface-mounted drum fixtures by Brownlee are aligned with bedroom doors, while additional downlights and sconces sit between. This configuration allows the drums to be switched off at night while intermediate lighting is dimmed, minimizing light spill into bedrooms and supporting rest in rooms where doors are often open.
Circadian lighting is a critical component of dementia care, directly influencing sleep quality, daytime alertness, and even the reduction of nighttime wandering and sundowning.
On the main floor, large windows in the dining room overlook the terrace and atriums cast light into the lobby on sunny days. For older adults, light doesn’t reach the retina as easily to trigger a melanopic response, and electrical lighting is needed to reinforce natural circadian rhythms. Brown sought lighting options that would give a needed boost to a resident’s “daytime” signal, particularly on cloudy days and throughout winter months.
She looked to BIOS Lighting, a NASA spinoff formed in 2014. Its SkyBlue LED technology uses a spectrally optimized output with a strong peak around the sky-blue 490-nm wavelength, which means the system can deliver biologically effective light that supports alertness during the day without relying on the high-frequency, short wavelength blue energy that causes visual stress. In the evening, the spectral distribution of the light shifts to promote rest. At 3500K, the BIOS chip offered an M/P ratio of 0.84, higher than other available options at the time. “This allowed us to reduce overall light levels while maintaining circadian effectiveness, and also helped manage perceived brightness and energy use,” said Brown.
With budget constraints, BIOS technology could not be used universally. Instead, it was deployed strategically in all ambient lighting within the common areas on the first and second floors.
As one of the first projects of its size to use BIOS technology, the project required close collaboration between Brown, manufacturers, and local sales agents. Brown encountered an unexpected hiccup when the initial supplier backed out, but Brownlee stepped in and connected with BIOS to install BIOS A21 LED lamps in the first-floor drums.
Color plays a deliberate role throughout the facility. Each residential floor includes subtle variations, and within each wing, bold, high-contrast colors from lime green to bubblegum pink help residents identify and remember their home areas. This approach responds to age-related changes in photoreceptors that make it difficult to distinguish between colors of similar hue.
Brown selected the Xicato Artist series LED chip, an artist-grade light source, for downlights within the Resident Home areas. These high-CRI light sources, reaching up to 98 CRI in key areas, were selected not only to render these colors accurately but also to improve overall visual acuity: “This helped support vision and enhanced the vibrant colors used by the architect to support the needs of the residents, many of whom suffer from Alzheimer’s and dementia,” explained Brown. She found that as the color quality of the light sources improved, so did the circadian lighting design.
Nighttime lighting presented a complex challenge. Brown intentionally avoided traditional nightlights near doors or sinks as non-uniform lighting can seem unsafe for someone who is afraid of falling. Instead, she maintained night lighting within the overhead system by dimming the downlights to low levels. Careful placement of the downlights meant light was directed onto vertical surfaces at standard eye level in a way that defines the room boundaries: downlights placed close to washroom walls help residents orient themselves, judge depth, and safely navigate from bed to bathroom. “This not only saved cost, but it also lit the vertical surfaces and the space in a way that was familiar to them and that helped provide them with reassurance,” said Brown.
In the washroom, Visa Lighting’s Viola fixtures combined with Spectrum Lighting’s 3-in. downlights gently illuminate the vanity. The downlight above the toilet is positioned close to the wall to avoid casting a shadow over the commode while in use.
The nighttime goal was not complete darkness, which is rarely achievable in a care environment, but what Brown describes as “biological dark”: lighting that is minimally stimulating while still supporting safe movement. To this end, the high-CRI sources also supported nighttime navigation. As residents move from scotopic to mesopic vision when waking, improved spectral quality supports earlier activation of retinal cone photoreceptors, enhancing depth perception and spatial awareness.
The Peel Manor project began in 2018, prior to the publication of the CIE S 026 standard and the daylight equivalent illuminance metric. Therefore, Brown relied on equivalent melanopic illuminance (EML) to evaluate daytime conditions and Circadian Stimulus (CS) to assess nighttime impact. “EML was useful for evaluating sky-blue content during the day,” Brown explained, “but it didn’t indicate how stimulating the light would be at night. CS helped evaluate nighttime stimulation, but not sky-blue content.”
Average daytime EML levels exceeded 180, surpassing the project target of 150. At night, with lighting dimmed to meet IES recommendations for bedrooms, CS values were approximately 0.03, well below the target threshold of 0.1.
Achieving these outcomes required a sophisticated yet intuitive control strategy. Thousands of control groups were programmed using the Eaton Fifth Light control system, with DALI drivers specified wherever feasible. The strength of the Eaton platform, said Brown, lies in its ability to support future upgrades. “We chose a hardwired, hybrid system with a DALI backbone and a range of protocol converters,” Brown noted. “This approach reduced the capital costs by allowing the fixtures to be initially ordered with 0–10-V, ELV, or phase-dimming drivers. Over time, the owner can replace the 0–10-V drivers with DALI.”
This control system allowed bedrooms to feature three-button keypads with customized amber indicator lights and preset high and low scenes. “The simple interface allows staff to spend less time fiddling with switches and dimmers and more time providing care,” said Brown. Bedroom lighting can be adjusted to suit an individual’s needs while remaining consistent day-to-day, a concept Brown describes as “customizable consistency.” Bedside lamps from the Visa Unity series were modified by Visa with remote DALI drivers and quick-connect cabling, allowing them to be fully integrated into room scenes.
In common areas, lighting automatically transitions through morning, daytime, evening, and night scenes by transferring intensity from the ambient fixtures to the downlights, and then dimming. Manual overrides allow staff to temporarily shift modes during emergencies and easily return to automatic operation. Outdoor lighting dims from midnight to 6 a.m. in accordance with ASHRAE 90.1 and DarkSky principles. The system is fully zoned by home area and room, enabling staff to make adjustments without specialized training, and mobile access supports ease of use.
Throughout the project, lighting decisions were guided by practical restraints but mainly by empathy and research. Fixture selections, from dust-repelling pendants to glare-free downlights in memory boxes outside bedrooms, reflect a deep understanding of how lighting supports daily life.
At Peel Manor, lighting functions as part of the care infrastructure. Each fixture and control is part of a system that enhances safety, supports circadian health, and reinforces the person-centered environment of each common area, corridor, and bedroom. The lighting supports the safety, health, and dignity of all, reinforcing that thoughtful design can meaningfully shape how residents experience their environment, hour by hour, day and night.
THE designers
Dawn Brown, Member IES, is the owner and principal designer at Ontario Aesthetic Lighting Design.
Michel Ouellet is senior electrical designer at EXP.
THE AUTHOR
Katianne Williams, co-author of the STEM guide Count Girls In, enjoys writing about innovative projects and inspirational people.