LifeCare Furniture launches sustainable, easy-to-clean range
LifeCare Furniture has launched a new aged care range that can be dismantled for cleaning and on-site reupholstery.
Queensland manufacturer LifeCare Furniture has launched a new aged care range that can be dismantled for thorough and hygienic cleaning and onsite reupholstery.
Called SYSTM, the range of chairs has been developed with industrial engineering, academic research and collaboration to provide a sustainable, cost-effective, and hygienic solution for aged care homes and their residents.
While it will be officially launched onto the Australian market in May 2023, the SYSTM range was on display Aged & Community Care Provider Association’s state conference in Queensland last week.
Speaking to Australian Ageing Agenda in the exhibitor’s marquee, LifeCare Furniture national project manager Damien Brady said the chairs could be completely pulled apart to clean and recover.
“It’s the first chair designed to be pulled apart. And you can also recover it to refresh and revive the chair,” Mr Brady told AAA. “We’ve come up with 21 different styles of chairs, totally unique to the LifeCare Furniture’s range. And we have three different fabrics in each chair that we stock as well.”
The range was informed by a 2015 study LifeCare Furniture commissioned QUT to do on seating in aged care to ensure the manufacturer was using the right seat and arm heights and validate its range.
“Interestingly, the study came back that one of the major points of discussion was the condition of the fabric in aged care. It came back as quite disgusting with all the residue, and that it’s hard to clean. So they said, ‘if you could solve that problem, then you could solve 90 per cent of the issues in aged care seating,’” Mr Brady said.
LifeCare Furniture took on the challenge and spent many years coming up with a solution (see slideshow above). “We got industrial engineers involved to help us come up with a completely different range from our standard range so you can pull the chair apart 100 per cent to give it 100 per cent cleaning, hygienically.”
Aged care homes can also recover the chairs to freshen and revive furniture that is damaged, he said.
“If an arm gets destroyed with something that’s been spilt on it, we carry stock of those covers, so you just place an order and it can be out there in a day or two,” Mr Brady said.
Similarly, you can refurbish a room quickly for new residents while also providing them options to choose from, he said.
“You’re asking quite a bit of money for that room, but you have an elephant in the room, which is that second-hand chair, so you can get that chair recovered. Also, when that room becomes available, it also gives the new resident coming in choice. What fabric do they want? What colour they want?”
Main image: A selection of LifeCare Furniture’s SYSTM range of seating
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