Pattern designs for hospitals and institutions

When establishing Patternsfrom Agency, the other owner Jenni had a secret dream: to introduce Scandinavian pattern designs for hospitals, institutions, and other places where colors and pattern designs could have a positive effect on people’s well-being. Last year has definitely shown that dreams do come true!

One of the projects that we were working on last year was a super-exciting one – designing patterns for clothing for patients at hospitals and institutions. Sakupe Oy is one of Finland’s biggest laundry service providers with almost 10 million kilos of laundry the company is handling every year. Among its customers, there are several institutions and hospitals in central parts of Finland.

The project began with a meeting where we went through the customer’s technical and visual needs and wishes. Based on that information, we suggested 24 potential patterns in our Design pitch. As the patterns were ready-made and the reports were available in our pattern library, the customer had our initial pattern suggestions in less than one week. The Design pitch was delivered as a link so that the customer could share the presentation easily with all relevant parties – the manufacturer Image Wear and the final customer City of Tampere included.

Before the second meeting, the pattern designs had already been evaluated. Anna Kuukka’s pattern design Mattolaituri had been chosen as the favorite one. Some adjustments were requested for color options and the size of the repeat to better fit the purpose of use and the final manufacturing process. Also, Anna created a mockup image where the customer would see how the pattern would look in the real life on the intended product.

Dyes, auxiliaries, and their combinations have improved very much in recent years, so the tolerance for frequent industrial washing and drying cycles is much better than before. In test washing, there were no signs of the colors fading away. It is great to notice that pattern designs are about to make a greater invasion into hospitals and institutions in the future.