Heidan Construction

Blog

By

Update Your Outdated Medical Office with Heidan

After a number of years of regular use, a medical office really needs a facelift. It’s fairly often that one can stumble upon a medical office that looks like it hasn’t seen an update since the eighties. Heidan Construction is looking to fix that by extending our remodeling services to medical offices. Make your office look professional and attractive again with a little professional help.

Aesthetic

One of the most obvious parts of updating an old building is improving the aesthetic. After all, most people don’t much appreciate the look and feel of the seventies and eighties anymore. That’s especially true when things haven’t been upkept properly. Chipped paint, cracked tiles, and stained carpet aren’t doing you or your business any favors. It’s time to do a little touching up to breathe life back into your office.

Functionality

After a number of years, the functional bits of an office begin to wear down and break. There are so many things that fall victim to the passage of time that it’s hard to find a place to start. From sink faucets to filing cupboards and from windows to medical equipment, functional features need to be replaced.

When new clients show up to a medical office and feel that it’s been neglected, they’re going to worry that they, too, will be neglected. Investing in the functional parts of your office is a way of showing that you’re committed to quality and care about your clients. It isn’t just a show of up-keeping the building, it also means providing comfort and ease to those visiting the office.

Have your windows replaced so that that cold draft stays outdoors where it belongs. Have sink fixtures upgraded to be more sanitary and functional. Replace out of date or broken down medical equipment to ensure your patients get the best care possible. Get new cabinets for storing file boxes and other equipment. Your staff will appreciate working doors that don’t squeak and the new fixtures will look nicer too.

Hire Heidan

When you decide it’s time to put forward the money to invest in your office and the future of your business, Heidan will be ready. Our team of friendly and efficient workers will be glad to turn your medical office back into the beautiful, up-to-date building it once was.

Heidan Construction provides efficient and professional service with a focus on doing things right the first time. Nearly two decades of providing quality remodels in Toronto has made us one of the best in service. We’re ready to take on whatever level of project you throw at us and we’ll really give it our best. One of our best features? We leave everything ready to go and with no mess left behind. Your office will be able to go right back into business when the work is done!

Contact us if you have any questions or would like to inquire about a quote for your medical office project.

By

The Importance of Accessible Medical Office Design

Designing a medical office means taking into account a whole lot of factors. From the psychology of paint color to the layout of a building, many things impact an office’s functionality.
Because of that, we want to take a look at how important accessibility is in medical office design.

A Variety of Disabilities

The first thing we should note is how varied disabilities can be. Many people, when designing their offices, only take into consideration the obvious things, like wheelchair users. While wheelchair accessibility is incredibly important, especially in a medical setting, there are other disabilities to consider as well.

  • Blindness makes it hard to navigate in a world made for the sighted. One way to make your medical office more accessible to those affected is by including braille at the bottom of each door placard. Doing this ensures that the blind can find their way around a building without finding themselves in the wrong room by mistake. It’s also important to keep braille copies of forms or provide assistance with filling out paperwork if needed.
  • Deafness can also make navigating public buildings difficult. Something to keep in mind for the safety of your deaf patients is including visual signals for things like smoke alarms and whatnot. If an emergency occurs and a deaf patient is unable to hear an alarm, it could have devastating consequences.
  • Something of huge importance that is often overlooked are invisible disabilities. These are the disabilities that aren’t visible to the outside observer. Things like Ehlers Danlos Syndrome(EDS), Fibromyalgia, and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome(POTS) are a few invisible disabilities that can make navigating public spaces incredibly difficult. EDS is a connective joint tissue disorder that can cause partial and full dislocations many times a day. Fibromyalgia causes severe pain in muscles and joints. POTS causes a person’s heart rate to rise 30+ BPM when they’re on their feet. All of these have something in common. People dealing with these invisible disabilities need adequate access to seating to prevent injury.

Making Your Office Accessible

So, now that we’ve taken a look at some under-represented disabilities, let’s consider how we can accommodate them.

  • Make signage and forms accessible to the blind by providing them in braille.
  • Ensure the safety of the deaf by making emergency signals visible to the eye.
  • Provide seating for those who suffer from body weakness and/or chronic pain. Allowing enough space in your medical office is incredibly important for this reason among many others.
  • Allow enough space in your office for wheelchair users to navigate freely and without difficulty. This one is very important. Many buildings offer ramps inside the building without ensuring enough space to navigate once inside. Make sure you have a wide enough main path that a wheelchair user can pass by someone walking without the two having to climb around each other or reroute.

Hire Professionals

The best way to ensure your medical office is as accessible as it should be is to hire a company that’s experienced in producing accessible results. Because Heidan Construction has nearly two decades of experience in bringing building designs to life, we know how to make a medical office its best. Therefore, we make a good choice for medical office design. Contact us today with questions or to get a quote.

By

Design Choices that Make a Room Feel Smaller

An important part of designing an interior is keeping in mind how design choices affect the perceived size of a room. Everyone has unique tastes in how they want their interior. Some prefer large and spacious rooms while other prefer small and cozy. Whether you use this as a checklist or a what-not-to-do list, we want to inform you of what design elements make a room feel smaller.

A Lot of Furniture

One of the first things that will make a room feel small is having a lot of furniture or decor. The more floor space that’s taken up by belongings, the less space there is to move around. Not having much walking space will make a room feel smaller.

This can actually be used to your advantage. If you have a wide open space that feels too large and cold, adding some more furnishings can help. Try putting down a rug or two. Move your second couch or armchair to sit across from the first instead of cornered to it. Fill empty corners with plants or empty walls with bookshelves. Filling out empty space can be a great way to make a room feel more lived-in.

Dark Paint

One of the known taboos of home design is using dark paint. This seems to be a love it or hate it concept. While many say dark colors or black used on walls makes them feel too closed in, others love it.

Whether you want your room to feel bigger or smaller, dark paint is actually worthwhile to consider. While using black on all of your walls is bound to make a room feel smaller, there’s actually a use that does the opposite. Painting the back wall of a room with black can give the illusion of a bigger room. The black paint doesn’t display shadows very clearly. This dark wall can give the impression of a room that’s deeper than it really is. It’s as if you’re hiding extra space behind whatever furniture is standing in front of it.

Obstructive Layout

Even if you don’t have a lot of furniture in a room, you can still make it feel smaller with the arrangement. Because our brains equate floor space with overall size, an obstructive layout will make a room feel smaller

In a room that’s already small, this effect probably isn’t desired. Remedy this by rearranging your furniture so that it lines the walls instead. This will give you an easy path from one thing to the next, the middle of the room being more open. If you’re struggling with small rooms, it might be time to consider an addition.

However, if your room is large as it is, an obstructive layout can give it more dynamic. As long as it’s not difficult to maneuver around the room, it works as a positive filler. Have couches face each other and leave space between them and the wall. Use a coffee table instead of a side table, so it’s less compact. Bring your dining table away from the walls a bit. These things can fill out free space nicely.

By

Making Your Home Feel More Spacious

When your house feels cramped, it can really be stifling. Maybe you’ve had kids since moving or maybe your hobbies have been accumulating. No matter what the circumstances, a crowded home isn’t a happy one. So how do you make your home feel more spacious?

Organization

The first step to creating more space in your home is organizing. It may seem like you need everything you own. However, if you haven’t looked through it in a while, you might be surprised what you forgot about. Checking through your belongings, especially those in closets or your back room, can lead to rediscovering lots of space.

Donating or selling old items and organizing what’s left in storage bins can free up closet space. But, before you get to using up the new closet space, make sure what’s joining the old is worth it.

Prioritizing and Rearranging Furniture

One of the things that can make a room feel small is the amount of furniture and the way it’s arranged. If a room feels cramped with what’s in it, try rearranging. Keep furniture along the walls to allow for easily traversable space in the center. The easier it is to move around a room, the less the size will get in your way

If you have trouble making more space by rearranging, consider donating or selling some unnecessary furniture. Maybe the side table makes the coffee table obsolete. Perhaps the potted plant in the corner is taking up space where the bookshelf could go. Prioritize what you’ve got and remove what’s unnecessary.

Lighten the Room

When you’ve minimized the contents of your room, adjust the lighting. Ample light in a room will give it a more open feeling. Utilize windows and consider investing in some lamps.

Actual light isn’t the only important thing. Using lighter paint colors will make your room feel less closed in. There is one exception: using black as a focus wall. Painting the furthest wall from the door with black or a dark color of your choice creates the illusion of depth. Because dark paint hides shadows, it can give the impression that the room is deeper than it really is.

Expand Your Home

Sometimes going through closets and rearranging the living room just doesn’t cut it. If you’re in need of some more genuine space, it might be time to expand your home. Adding on additional bedrooms or expanding upward with a second floor is completely possible.

Moving can be a huge hassle, especially if you want to remain at your current job, keep your kids in their current school, and hold on to the house you’ve grown attached to. Many people don’t realize they can expand their home. The truth is, it’s really as easy as calling professionals who know how to get the job done. Heidan Construction has nearly two decades of experience finishing the exact kind of projects you’re looking for help on.

Give us a call and we’ll help begin the process of designing and building whatever additions you may need.

By

What Psychology Says About Your Medical Office Interior

The amount of things a person only processes on a subconscious level is astounding. Our brains work overtime to process all of the smallest things going on around us. It’s because of this quick thinking that we get impressions from even the smallest things. It’s what gives us our ‘sixth sense’ so to speak – our intuition. Our intuition is just our brain processing things we don’t notice on a conscious level, and trying to warn us about them. When designing a medical office where people will be getting treatment of one kind or another, it’s important to keep psychology in mind. Let’s see some of the design aspects that make a difference to clientele.

Color Choices

One of the first things to leave an impression on someone due to subconscious processing is color. The psychology of color is a well-known topic by now due to its pervasiveness. Our minds associate different colors with different feelings and events.

While there are, of course, exceptions, most people are affected in a similar way. For instance, the reason red, orange, and yellow are considered warm colors is entirely based on our associations. They remind us of things like fire or the glow of hot metal. For the same reason, blue, green, and purple are associated with the cold. Consider ice, water, and the purple tint to your lips when you’re too cold.

Just the same, these colors can have emotional associations too. This is why it’s important to keep paint and decor colors in mind when designing a medical office interior. Colors like red or orange can remind people of heat, anger, or emergencies. They’ll have your clients feeling anxious to get their appointment over with. Blue, on the other hand, can leave people feeling cold, or like they’re in a place of negativity. This is why we suggest warm, light purples or a light, earthy green for paint or decor. These colors are usually calming and don’t float too far toward either extreme which makes them perfect for a medical office.

Decor Shapes

Something you might not have heard of is the way shape also affects people on a psychological level. Rounded edges and bubbly shapes are more comforting and safe than sharp shapes or squares edges. Consider the way a clown paints their face. It’s a known rule that a clown should use round shapes to outline their mouth or eyes to appear friendly. If you think about the kind of clowns used as villains, they tend to paint their face with slashes of color or with pointed shapes. These shapes are known to the psyche as dangerous shapes, perhaps due to their resemblance to weapons. The exact reasons aren’t fully understood, but we can make our guesses based on statistical facts.

The facts are that people are more comfortable around soft or rounded decor. So when deciding on a painting for your medical office, or what kind of vase to buy, keep this in mind.

Contact us at Heidan Construction if you’d like some professional help with your medical office design and construction in Toronto.

By

Custom Home Design Options You Should Know Of

When people go into buying a custom home, they tend to have an idea of what they want in mind. However, that idea is usually based much on what they’ve already seen. They just put their own personal spin on the things they know. But what if we told you that there’s more to custom home building than what you’ve seen? Cookie-cutter houses have little that’s unique about them. Therefore, we want to inform you of the things you could have when letting Heidan build for you.

Transitional Homes

If you’ve never heard of transitional homes, you’re in for a real treat. Transitional homes are the perfect blend between tradition and modernism. With a cozy and standard exterior, these homes give you all of the amenities behind their walls. Fitted with modern technology and design, they’re great for people who enjoy architectural advancements without wanting to stick out. The traditional exterior will let you fit in with your neighbors while your interior is more enviable.

Open Concept

Something more and more people have grown to appreciate in recent years is open concept design. Much different from your standard suburban house, open concept breaks down barriers – literally. Instead of having walls all throughout the house, open concept makes your home have a little more breathing room. You can make dinner in the kitchen with a clear view of the living room. Bathrooms attached to the master bedroom are often only separated with a small divider rather than a wall. Some are covered with large, slidable barn-style doors. Stairways will be lined with railings or glass and not walled in.

The whole goal of open concept design is to make a home feel like one living space rather than many living spaces glued together. Open concept design makes cleaning, socializing, and relaxing easier than ever. Bring up open concept when you talk to us about custom home design and we’ll be glad to incorporate that into the plans.

Extra Suite

Something that many people find use in but many don’t consider as an option is an extra suite. These are often called ‘nanny suites’ but can be used for a number of things. The overall concept is having an area of the house with its own entrance, bedroom, bathroom, leisure space, and kitchenette. This will usually be situated on the bottom floor of a split-level house but can be fit into many different home designs.

Having an extra suite can be an advantage in a number of ways. Some of the ways you can use this to your advantage are:

  • A nanny suite. As the colloquial name implies, this suite is great for housing a live-in nanny if you need someone to care for your children much of the day. It not only gives your nanny a private space to host visitors and keep their belongings, it also gives you breathing room. Sharing your home with a stranger can be a hairy affair, but having separate spaces makes breathing a little easier.
  • A place for parents. Many a couple ends up housing their parents in their old age. Sometimes a parent will end up widowed or in need of occasional assistance with daily living. Instead of sending them to a retirement home, letting a parent live in an extra suite can be a huge burden off both of your shoulders. It’s also nice to have family around.
  • A guest space. Extra suites make fantastic guest spaces. When hosting extended family or long-time friends, giving them a suite to themselves is a gift to everyone. They can get comfortable in your home and feel as if the space is theirs at the same time. Neither of you will have to worry about anyone infringing on anyone else’s privacy or watching TV too late. It’s a win-win.