Keymer Hall Named Finalist for National Design Award

Keymer Hall, the 68-bedroom care home in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, has been named a finalist in the Care Home Design of the Year category at the Leaders in Care Awards 2026, run by Care Home Professional magazine.

The home, part of Boutique Care Homes, welcomed its first residents in December 2025. “We designed Keymer Hall from the landscape inward, not the floor plan outward,” said Tom Duck, Development Director at Boutique Care Homes. “Good design isn’t just about how a building looks. It’s about giving residents the confidence to move around independently, find their own way, and keep living life on their own terms. That’s what we set out to achieve at Keymer Hall, and it matters more to us than any finish on its own.”

That beliefe runs through every part of the building. Working with design partner Catalyst Interiors, Boutique Care Homes chose olive and mustard tones, soft linens, cottage-inspired patterns and French-weave flooring, drawn directly from the South Downs National Park on Keymer Hall’s doorstep. Local identity shapes the wayfinding too: Bedelands Mews on the ground floor takes its name from the nearby nature reserve, Ditchling Way on the first floor honours the Ditchling Artists’ Guild, and Hassocks Heights and Hurstpier Heights complete the second floor.

The first floor is dedicated entirely to residents living with dementia, replacing uniform corridors with distinct, recognisable destinations: a park setting beneath a digital skylight, a recreation of Burgess Hill’s high street, a woodland reading cabin, a library celebrating local poet Elizabeth Bartlett, and The Burgess Hill Florist, a screen-free lounge where residents can select bouquets to take back to their rooms.

“You can feel the difference it makes for our residents,” said Christine Bunce, Home Manager at Keymer Hall. “Instead of a corridor and a room number, they have a florist to visit, a high street to recognise, a library that reminds them of home. It gives people places to be, not just places to pass through, and that shapes how our team can spend time with them too.”

The building carries the same care into its detail: average bedroom sizes of 21 square metres, 2,750 square metres of landscaped gardens, six balconies giving every community outdoor access, and solar panels that help power the building. The team was asked what would help them care for residents better, and their answers shaped the finished home, so more of their time and energy goes to residents.

The results are showing. Keymer Hall holds a carehome.co.uk Review Score of 9.2 out of 10 from eight reviews, and its 2026 annual survey recorded 100% of families saying they would recommend the home, 100% saying residents are treated with kindness, dignity and respect, and 100% praising access to the gardens. One family wrote: “Keymer Hall Care Home is everything you would wish for. My mum is happy here.” Another described “a huge sense of relief to find such a beautiful and friendly care home where residents with dementia are treated with such kindness and understanding.”

“Being named a finalist means the industry recognises what we set out to build: somewhere that could only be Burgess Hill,” said Ameet Kotecha, Founder and Managing Director of Boutique Care Homes. “A home earns that kind of recognition by belonging to its community, not just standing in it.”

For Boutique Care Homes, the shortlisting is proof of what the group calls “Not just care. Life, thriving”: a belief that a well-designed home does more than house people well, it gives them reasons to keep choosing, connecting and living each day.

Winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Forest of Arden Hotel and Country Club on 6 October 2026