In Beaupréau, a retirement home where the room answers to your voice.
It is 7 p.m. at La Roseraie. A resident walks into her room, says a word, and the shutters come down, the light turns soft. Her room follows along, without her having to get up.
Photo: © Jérôme Pouponnot
The place: 82 rooms in Beaupréau-en-Mauges
Head to western France, to Beaupréau-en-Mauges. This is where La Roseraie stands, a retirement home of 82 rooms. A.I.D.S 85, a company specializing in smart home installation, chose Nice as its partner to equip it.
The renovation happens in stages: 42 rooms were fully equipped in 2022, and another 40, now under construction, will follow. The goal comes down to one line: improve residents’ safety and well-being, ease the work of caregivers, and keep energy costs under control.
The idea: technology that steps aside
A retirement home is not a hospital. Here, nothing should weigh on anyone. Good technology is not seen: it makes the room simpler, softer, freer.
Every room is now run by the Yubii Home hub, at the heart of the Nice and FIBARO world. The resident manages their own space alone, with a word or a button, and keeps a hand on their own corner.
What it changes
Everyone at home, at their own pace. Lighting and shutters answer to the voice or to connected buttons, to each person’s taste, without effort.
Fewer movements. No need to get up, to reach out, to move across the room for the smallest thing. The room avoids tiring or risky movements and leaves room for what matters: feeling well.
A call that does not wait. Each room has a voice assistant and push buttons. With one word, the resident alerts the care staff, and care arrives sooner.
Warmth, well set. More than a hundred smart thermostats manage room temperatures in real time, by zone and by time of day. Only what is needed gets heated, when it is needed.
A building that keeps watch. Smart plugs even monitor the home’s IT network and send an alert as soon as something goes down.
That watchful eye of family from afar, our article [Family caregiver, the house keeps watch while you’re far away](/?p=1645) tells it for the home.
The room in your pocket
At home, the same Yubii Home hub can also be controlled from a phone. For an older parent living in their own house, it means family can follow the home from afar, adjust a setting, and feel reassured.
Franck Pichereau, President of Nice France, puts it simply: Nice is “the ideal partner for implementing appropriate, efficient and easy-to-use solutions.”
The line that sums it up
A room that understands without you having to get up is a little freedom that stays.
AND HERE AT HOME?
From Antigua to Barbados, from Sint Maarten to St. Lucia, our elders often stay in their own homes, surrounded by family. Here is what that idea changes for us:
- Staying at home longer. Here, we hold on to the family house. A home that lightens the small daily gestures means more years of living at home, in peace.
- Night that falls at 6 p.m. When daylight goes all at once, lights that come on gently and shutters that close on their own save a great many steps in the dark.
- Heat and sun. Shutters, blinds, air conditioning: the house takes to the shade and the cool at the right moment, on its own, at the height of the day.
- Family watching from afar. A son in London, a daughter in New York: at your fingertips, you follow your parents’ home and you are told if anything changes.
Here, family is close, homes stay wide open, and we like to know our own are well surrounded. Technology never replaces a hand held out. But when it steps aside, it leaves more room for all the rest.
And when night falls at 6 p.m., the house can light the way on its own too: our article [the light that goes before you](/?p=1733) covers it.
It is evening. The light turns soft, the shutters come down without a sound, and the home keeps a quiet watch. Here, the evening waits for you, instead of asking something of you.
Source: niceforyou.com, “La Roseraie retirement home”.
