• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.200-210
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• 2009

The Sign system of nursing home plays an important role when an elderly adapts to new environment and gets on daily life autonomously. Common living spaces are expecially important in maintaining social nature, adequate signage should be installed to aid them in finding their ways. Sign system is a comprehensive system consisted of various factors. In this research, it has been categorized as signage and cueing. Signage includes text and graphic signs, and cueing consists of floor plan configuration and sensual mechanism of visual, auditory, olfactory senses. Using this framework, held investigation and analysis were held in common area(shared living room, shared dining room, toilet) of 14 Korean, 8 Northern European, and 10 Japanese nursing home facilities. The result revealed that even though sign system should work as a combined unit, each factor was planed without relations to each other and did not perform mutually complementary role. Signage was installed too high, without considering the posture of elderly. Korean facilities used abundant and diverse signage compared to other countries. Japanese nursing home preferred cueing method over signage, and those of Northern Europe used plentiful visual cues such as color and ornaments.