Designing a room where someone’s final chapter will be spent requires a special level of skill and sensitivity. In Janie Hungerford’s interpretation, a space of this kind is neither clinical nor cold, but instead something closer to the quiet calm of a well-loved home.

The designer set out to create this comforting “sense of home” at Cottage, the newly renovated hospice facility in East Vancouver. Working within a designated heritage building, Hungerford Interior Design was tasked with something few projects ever ask of a designer: to build a warm and deeply welcoming environment where people will want to linger – for those who are living through one of the most significant passages of their lives.

In practice, the project asked Hungerford to hold two truths at once: that a building can have a past worth protecting, and that the people who will live within it need a future, however brief, worth living well.

Every heritage renovation begins with a choice. A designer can treat the original architecture as a backdrop to be smoothed over, or as a collaborator whose voice deserves to be heard. Hungerford chose the latter, and it shaped everything that followed.

Rather than modernizing away the building’s character, the team preserved what gave Cottage its sense of place from the start – original fireplace surrounds with their intricate tilework and hardwood floors that have carried footsteps for generations. These became the foundation around which the rest of the design was built.

The instinct to let existing character inform new decisions, rather than the other way around, is the difference between a space that feels curated and one that feels considered. It also amplifies the difficulty level for the designer. A hospice has real functional demands: wheelchair accessibility, durable surfaces, furniture that can withstand repeated use. Hungerford’s team had to make those requirements coexist with a 100-year-old building’s original bones, rather than asking the building to disappear behind them.

Table heights were reconsidered for the small rituals that instill a sense of normalcy – puzzles, games, shared meals – while still allowing wheelchairs to pull in with ease. Rounded edges provided an additional layer of softness and safety. Nothing about the accessibility planning reads as accommodation bolted onto a design; it reads as care, folded intentionally into every decision.

For a project built around emotional atmosphere, color could never be an afterthought. Hungerford’s palette centers on Aesthetic White SW 7035 (259-C4) – a soft, warm neutral chosen specifically for its ability to endure both aesthetically and practically.

“The color helps the spaces feel fresh and residential while also being practical for a healthcare environment that needs to be easily maintained and refreshed over time,” Hungerford notes. It’s a description that captures something essential about designing for hospitality within a healthcare setting: everything, including the palette, must perform two jobs simultaneously.

Paired with the furniture, fabrics and textiles throughout Cottage, Aesthetic White becomes less a wall color and more a kind of ambient calm – the visual equivalent of a lowered voice. It doesn’t compete with the original tilework or the warmth of the hardwood; it gives those elements room to be seen.

Natural light takes care of the rest. Large windows draw the surrounding landscape into the interior, an intentional decision for patients who may spend much of their time confined indoors. Layered textures, natural materials, and comfortable furnishings extend that outdoor feeling inward, so that even the stillness of a room can feel as restorative as a leisurely afternoon walk around the grounds.

If the architecture provided Cottage’s bones, its soul came from somewhere more personal. Hungerford turned to The HOB, the hospice’s own vintage and antique store, to source many of the accessories – pieces chosen specifically because they carried some of the area’s history themselves.

This sourcing decision speaks to Hungerford’s broader perspective on design as a discipline. “Our approach to artisan and small-batch pieces is to look for furnishings and objects that bring meaning, craftsmanship, and individuality to a space rather than selecting everything from a single source or collection,” the designer says. The theory aligns with Revive, one of the core design stories told in our 2027 Colormix^® Trend Forecast: that when someone understands where an object came from, how it was made, or why it was chosen, it becomes an integral part of the space’s own story.

Perhaps the most powerful example of that philosophy is a commissioned piece created in collaboration with artist Andrea Coop – a special light used within the hospice to mark a patient’s passing. Following a death, the light is turned on for 48 hours, a tradition that communicates, without a word, that someone has passed and invites a moment of collective reflection.

It would be easy for a detail like this to feel heavy in the wrong hands. Instead, in Cottage, it feels like the natural extension of everything else in the space – proof that meaningful design isn’t only about what a room looks like, but also about what it makes possible for the people experiencing it.

One of the quieter but no less deliberate aspects of Hungerford’s approach was extending that same level of care to the people who work at the facility, not only those receiving care there. Staff spend long hours inside the hospice, and creating spaces where they could recharge and connect with one another was treated as essential, not incidental. Comfort, in Hungerford’s view, needed to extend to everyone who uses the building – a reminder that residential warmth isn’t reserved only for the people a space is technically “for.”

What makes Cottage such a resonant project – and such a fitting example of Rewild’s design narrative around personal, storied spaces – is how unwilling it is to separate beauty from function, or history from humanity. Hungerford set out to let the past breathe new life into a present-day space built for comfort, dignity, and connection.

“Although Cottage Hospice is not a private residence, creating that residential quality was fundamental to the project,” Hungerford reflects. It reinforced, for her, the power of the personal – particularly for people moving through a significant life experience. These patients and their families are especially deserving of a space that generates an emotional response, that connects them more closely to beauty, and that encourages them to find solace in an otherwise uncertain period.

In the end, Cottage is a study in balance: history alongside contemporary need, beauty alongside performance, function alongside feeling. By preserving what made the historic building meaningful in the first place, and layering in craftsmanship, natural materials, and objects with both genuine history and thoughtful purpose, Hungerford Interior Design created something rare – a hospice that feels, above all else, like a home.

To explore the design story of Revive and the rest of this year’s Colormix Trend Forecast, order your complimentary designer-exclusive sample kit of Rewild, available with your Design+ membership.

Top image: Aesthetic White SW 7035 (259-C4) in Semi-Gloss. Design by Hungerford Interior Design. All photos by Russell Dalby.