In 2017, Art+ commissioned Morag Myerscough to design the interiors of 46 bedrooms for the hospital’s new wing. Myerscough worked across four colour-ways - from bright to calm – to create an environment that all patients and their carers can find comfortable and homely.

This project was two years in the making and involved some technical challenges - using standard hospital materials in a new way - but we believe the rooms make a real difference to the experience of being in hospital.

“Although the rooms are for children, I didn’t want them to be childish because children of all different age groups will be staying in them – I also wanted to create somewhere parents would be happy to spend time too. It was just about making a bedroom that you felt good to be in.”

- Morag Myerscough

The layout of the rooms, created by Avanti Architects, are in the hospital’s newest wing and were created specifically to help make the clinical feel more comfortable. By hiding plugs and wires away behind Formica panels, the rooms have a softer, domestic touch.

Due to the clinical environment, everything Morag produced had to be sterile and easy to clean – which meant painting straight on to the walls wasn’t an option. “The brief I was given was that whatever I wanted to do I would have to do on Formica,” said Morag. 

“The wood grain on Formica is actually screen printed on to paper and then laminated. So to get the really pure colours that I wanted, I had hoped to screen print my own pattern onto the existing wood grain. Unfortunately we couldn’t do that because you can only screen print one or two colours on to the paper before it disintegrates.”

“In the end we scanned the wood grain and then digitally printed the patterns, making sure it all matched up. Then we printed it onto paper and laminated it like normal Formica. We pushed the process to ensure we kept the warmth of the wood grain. We managed it – but it did take a year!”