Nightingale Hospital. Modern safety in historic walls.
“I was genuinely blown away by the Safehinge Primera team. Whatever challenge I set, they came back with a solution that worked. The responsiveness, professionalism, and willingness to push boundaries made the whole experience outstanding.”
Marc Sycamore, UK Operations Director, Nightingale Hospital
Care provider: Nightingale Hospital (Private Mental Health Hospital, London)
Project type: Ward Refurbishment (Historic Building)
Mental Health discipline: Adult private psychiatric inpatient facility
Products supplied:
Nightingale Hospital: heritage care, modern responsibility
Nightingale Hospital has provided specialist mental health care in central London for more than 170 years. Set within a historic early-1900s building, the hospital is known for its discreet, high-quality therapeutic environment and its commitment to patient dignity.
When the decision was made to refurbish one of its inpatient wards, the leadership team saw a chance to strengthen safety, empower service users, and support staff, without compromising the calm, residential atmosphere that defines the Nightingale experience.
Watch the full project story.
The Challenge: Balancing premium care and robust safety
Designing a modern mental health space within a historic, high-end facility posed a unique balancing act. Key challenges included:
- Safety without institutional feel: How to significantly reduce risks (ligature, barricade, self-harm) in patient bedrooms without making the space feel clinical or restrictive. The solution needed to be discreet – maintaining the warm, therapeutic ambiance expected by patients. For example, typical anti-ligature fixtures or visible screws could detract from the high quality care and environment.
- Personal autonomy vs. safety: As a voluntary-care hospital, many patients are active participants in their recovery. The hospital wanted to empower service users with more control over their personal space (such as the ability to lock their own room for privacy), while still ensuring staff can quickly intervene in emergencies. Achieving this required integrating state-of-the-art access control and override capabilities into each door.
- Fitting modern solutions into historic fabric: The ward sits in a building “dripping with history,” with architecture dating back over a century. Upgrading doors meant working within old structural openings and strict fire and safety regulations. The project team had to ensure new doorsets fit perfectly and met all compliance standards, without damaging the heritage features of the site. Logistics were also challenging – bringing heavy doorsets into a busy central London location and working around an operational hospital demanded careful planning.
- Uncompromising expectations of quality and detail: Nightingale’s team, had very specific design requirements. Every detail, from the wood finish to the vision panel style, had to align with the hospital’s brand and quality standards. They sought a partner willing to co-produce solutions and iterate on designs to get them just right. The challenge was to marry the client’s custom design ideas with proven safety functionality, creating something truly bespoke.
The Solution: Co-production and cutting-edge door safety
Every aspect of the Nightingale ward refurbishment was developed through close collaboration between the hospital and Safehinge Primera. From the initial concept, the project embraced co-production – ensuring the end users’ vision and feedback shaped the outcome. The result was a blend of advanced safety features and tailor-made design touches that met Nightingale’s high standards.
What was delivered:
- Bespoke Anti-Barricade doorsets (Swiftstop): Each patient bedroom was equipped with our Swiftstop anti-barricade doorset – a robust timber doorset featuring a unique collapsible doorstop that allows staff to gain emergency access within just 2 seconds. This solution lets staff quickly open a barricaded door with a single discreet release, all while remaining safely to the side. Crucially, the mechanism is built-in and invisible during normal use, preserving a homely look. In day-to-day operation, the doors feel and function like standard high-quality room doors, but in a crisis, staff have immediate entry.
- Co-Designed flush vision panels: Nightingale’s team and Safehinge Primera co-created a completely new vision panel design for these doors. The hospital wanted it refined to fit their aesthetic. Together, we developed a mounted soft closing vision panel with no visible screws, a clean, elegant look that had never been done before on our doors. Each vision panel was then customised with therapeutic graphics chosen by the hospital (such as calming sunflower fields and sunsets) to give each room a unique identity. This personal touch provides a comforting focal point for patients and echoes Nightingale’s holistic approach to healing. The vision panels still offer staff a clear, safe and quiet way to observe inside the room when needed, but they now do so in a way that complements the interior design rather than detracting from it.
- Electronic locksets with Paxton integration: To support patient autonomy and modernise safety, we installed electronic locksets on every bedroom door, integrated seamlessly with Nightingale’s new Paxton access control system. This means each service user can lock and unlock their own room using an electronic fob or card – enjoying a sense of privacy and control over their space – while staff retain master access via the same system. All doors are connected to one network, so staff can use a single credential to access any room in emergencies or for routine checks. The system is unobtrusive and easy to use, avoiding the need for clunky key management and ensuring that safety never impedes care. For the patients, it’s empowering: their room truly feels like their personal safe haven, not just a hospital room.
“CQC were really supportive of the new doorset, not only for patient wellbeing and recovery, but for how practical the anti-barricade design and electronic locking are in everyday care.”
— Mark Sycamore, Hospital Director at Nightingale Hospital
- Premium finish and build quality: The doorsets were finished in a rich dark woodgrain, echoing the door that first caught the hospital’s eye at the Design in Mental Health exhibition. This premium finish aligns with Nightingale’s hospitality-like environment. Despite incorporating heavy-duty safety hardware, the craftsmanship and finish make the doors visually blend into the historic decor. All components (hinges, handles, closers) were specified to be anti-ligature where needed, yet maintain an everyday look and smooth operation. The end product not only performs under pressure but looks warm and normal, reinforcing the therapeutic milieu.
- Collaborative Installation & Training: Recognising the complexities uncovered during an initial trial installation, we took extra steps to ensure the main project ran smoothly. We coordinated closely with Nightingale’s preferred contractor throughout. Before the full installation, Safehinge Primera conducted on-site training sessions with the installers, sharing best practices on fitting the Swiftstop door frames, electronic locks, and aligning the doors in the old masonry. Lessons learned from the trial door (such as navigating tight delivery access in London’s West End – it’s a squeeze for sure) were applied to our planning. Improved communication between our team, the contractor, and the hospital meant that when the time came for the full rollout, everything was delivered and installed in one go without a hitch.
“The Door is one part of the journey, but it really goes a long way.”
“Safehinge Primera are able to adapt across high secure, medium secure, low secure, and acute settings, in both NHS and private care. They understand that each setting brings different pressures, and their solutions genuinely work across them all.”
— Mark Sycamore, Hospital Director at Nightingale Hospital
The Impact: A safe therapeutic environment
Though only recently completed, the refurbishment of Nightingale’s ward is already making a positive impact on both patient experience and operational safety:
- Safer outcomes, discreetly achieved: The new doors have enhanced safety on the ward without any detrimental effect on its atmosphere. Staff now have confidence that if a patient is in distress or barricaded in a room, they can reach them within seconds – a critical capability that can save lives. Importantly, there have been zero incidents involving barricades or self-harm on these doors since installation, helping maintain Nightingale’s excellent safety record. Patients remain unaware of the hidden emergency features, so they simply experience a beautiful, normal door.
- Empowered patients, greater dignity: Giving patients control over locking their rooms has been a game-changer for autonomy. Service users report feeling more at ease knowing they can secure their personal space when they need privacy or quiet time. This level of respect and trust in their independence is especially valued in a private setting. At the same time, staff appreciate that the unified Paxton system simplifies their workflow – no more fumbling for the right key; their badge gives instant access if they need to check on a patient, enabling quicker response with less fuss.
- Positive feedback from staff and management: Early feedback from clinicians and the estates team has been very encouraging. Nurses have noted that the new silent shut vision panels make routine checks less intrusive – they can discreetly observe if a patient appears calm or needs anything, all without having to knock or open the door unnecessarily. The hospital management was also pleased with how smoothly the main installation went. By addressing the trial run issues, we built a strong trust – the facilities team remarked on our “professional response and willingness to learn,” which ultimately delivered a snag-free result.
- Foundation for future-upgrades: The success of this ward refurbishment has already spurred further improvements at Nightingale. The hospital is looking at a second phaseto extend the same safety and experience benefits to the entire hospital. This continuity not only ensures consistency across the hospital but it also demonstrates the confidence Nightingale has in these solutions. By creating a template of what “good” looks like (in terms of product and process), the project has cemented the way for faster, smoother implementations going forward.
“Working with Safehinge Primera was refreshing. They really listened to our ideas and turned them into reality. We wanted doors that felt high-quality and homely for our patients, while keeping everyone safe. The result is exactly what we hoped for.”
— Mark Sycamore, Hospital Director at Nightingale Hospital
Conclusion: Tradition and innovation, hand in hand
Nightingale Hospital’s latest renovation project shows how an institution with a rich tradition embraces innovation to enhance care. By focusing on people-first design and genuine collaboration, the hospital transformed a venerable ward into a space that is both safer and more uplifting. The environment does not feel like a hospital at all – but families and staff have peace of mind knowing that advanced safety measures are in place, ready to act in the background.
Our lesson: the best outcomes happen when providers and clients work together, blending expertise with experience. Nightingale’s team brought a clear vision of what “good” looked like for their patients, and Safehinge Primera brought the technical solutions to match. We weren’t afraid to adapt and improve along the way.
“We know our role is to be there, to be responsive, and to get it right first time. When you do that properly, it shapes people’s working lives every day, and by extension, it influences the wider mental health ecosystem. Being seamless in the background, always ready, always reliable, that’s fundamentally what we’re about.”
Philip Ross, Co-Founder, Safehinge Primera
As Nightingale Hospital continues to welcome patients into its new ward, it stands as a shining example of what’s possible: a place where heritage architecture, humane design, and modern safety technology coexist to support people going through a vulnerable time.
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