By Joel Soelberg
Published in the February 2025 Issue of Memento Mori
In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving marketplace, staying ahead requires a keen awareness of emerging trends. Businesses that actively monitor and adapt to shifts in consumer behavior, technology, and industry innovations position themselves for sustained growth and competitive advantage. Whether it’s leveraging new digital tools, responding to changing customer expectations, or embracing sustainability initiatives, following trends is essential for making informed decisions and maintaining relevance in an increasingly dynamic business landscape.
Top Five Trends in Care Center Design
As we move into 2025, care center design continues to evolve, blending functionality with aesthetics, new technologies, and new multiuse spaces. With technological advancements, a customer-driven focus on adding services and revenue streams, designers are examining the top five trends as the key to planning 2025 projects.
- Crematory additions and added crematory services
The need for funeral directors to meet the increasing demand for cremation over traditional burial has focused many firms on the addition and improvement of crematory spaces. We see those firms without in-house crematory offerings racing to add them to their facilities or campuses. Those firms that already boast a crematory are in a race to improve the crematory offerings and services through renovations and remodels. But it’s not just because the spaces are old and tired.
In an effort to gain market share (and replace declining burial service-related revenues), firms are seeking to offer crematory spaces that are comfortable enough (in space and décor) to receive family. Having family-friendly crematory spaces allows the firm to increase its service offerings and to enjoy revenue from offering viewings, witness cremations, and ritual use of the crematory.
We are seeing a move away from crematories being built clumsily in a back parking lot garage. Instead, we see the serious firms embrace crematories as part of their combined care-center footprint and funeral home. Outfitting a crematory goes beyond just choosing a retort and fire suppression system. It includes choosing furniture, flooring, wall coverings and lighting that fits the firm’s brand and preferences for the families to experience.
- Aquamation additions
Another design trend we expect to continue strong into 2025 is the addition of Aquamation spaces in the care center. Aquamation utilizes the process of alkaline hydrolysis to break down a chemically immersed body, leaving only the bones. The bones then are processed into cremated remains and provided to the family after the process. Aquamation is being offered as an “eco-friendly” alternative to fire cremation as well as being added to existing crematories as a complimentary service, which allows these firms to provide options to families interested in burial alternatives.
- Multi-use rooms and prep room flexibility
A common ask from firms for renovations and additions is to ensure each room can be used for a variety of needs. An example would be decorating and outfitting intake hallways and corridors to be both a pass-through for decedent load-in and to be family friendly so they can be used for identification rooms, limited ritual purposes, and third-party services (i.e., ritual dressing and cosmetic spaces).
Designs are factoring in the family experience in these spaces, as well as family and third-party ingress and egress from the spaces. Additionally, planning includes how to secure the adjacent spaces to avoid accidental access by family and third parties to other areas of the care center and facility.
Another example of flexible, multi-use rooms is the prep room. More and more firms are going away from a dedicated embalming lab, and instead they are using the room as a complete prep room—a “one-stop shop” for all prep, body washing, dressing, cosmetics, and casketing. Added features of these rooms might be laundry and ritual equipment such as bucket- fill stations for body wash.
Since third-party hairdressers, cosmetologists, and religious representatives may ask or be asked to participate in portions of the one-stop shop processes, firms are looking for the spaces to be comfortable, safe, and yet still be able to secure chemicals, equipment, and decedent dignity. Proper planning of multi-use spaces includes planning the equipment, storage, layouts, aesthetics, and how third parties and staff will efficiently access those spaces at the time of service.
- Ritual Services infrastructure
A growing trend of the last few years has been the desire for firms to better engage with ritual customers. Many firms already specialize in offering niche services and specialized infrastructure to ritual customers. Focusing on these important customer has led to greater investments in crematory and preparation room spaces.
Proactive firms ensure the interior design, furniture, art, and equipment packages are adapted to accommodate ritual requirements and religious and/or cultural preferences. Two examples include:
- Remote turn-key cremator buttons, or control panels in the witness area to allow family and religious leaders to control the cremator door and the timing for loading of the cremator/retort. This sense of control in the cremation process allows the religious leaders or family to perform the service, the desired rites, and ceremony ordinances, giving the family and bereaved a fuller experience.
- Jewish Tahara ritual prep rooms, outfitted with bucket fill stations, overhead body wash reels, and/or immersion tubs for Mikvah.
- Smart Rooms and Tech Integration
With the rise in utilization of smart technology, interior designs are adapting to accommodate new gadgets that enhance convenience and connectivity. More and more care-center remodels and new constructions are requiring the addition of:
- Monitors and Data Entry consoles: Be it the utilization of flat screen TVs, wall mounted computer monitors or smaller tablets, many firms are bringing tech into the care-center. Firms want to see decedent info, pictures, and data available to staff in the care-center via in-room monitors and technologies. These devices connected to the firm’s computer systems (or via remote or cloud services) allow staff to perform data entry, form signing, and reporting in the same care-center spaces as where the services are performed.
- Usage of funeral home software systems are being planned into the room’s design with goals to integrate the technology seamlessly into the workflow and without compromising aesthetics. Purpose-built standing desks, rollable or fixed data entry kiosks, and more traditional sitting desks are becoming a must-have feature in newly designed care-center spaces.
- Energy-efficient appliances and lighting: Smart thermostats, low-energy LED lights, and energy-saving appliances are common choices for environmentally and budget-conscious firms. This extends to HVAC systems, such as the greater use of HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilator) systems, and the use of heat pumps (mini-splits) in lieu of traditional AC condensers.
- Overhead electric powered Lifts: Overhead lifts, which are either fixed in place or mounted on tracks, allow staff to pick up and move decedents during transfers. Whether the transfer is from cot to table, table to table, or table to casket, the lifts allow one staff person to do the transfer no matter the weight of the decedent. These lifts are an answer to the trends of decreased care-center staffing.
In 2025, care-center design trends are all about blending room aesthetics and flexibility with greater variety of offered services and equipment offerings. The key trends–additions of Crematory, Aquamation, and Ritual Services–plus ensuring spaces are multi-purpose and equipped with the latest tech reflect a desire for firms to adapt to the current industry and a desire to safely position themselves as market leaders into the future.
Joel Soelberg is the Managing Director of Duncan Stuart Todd Ltd, (DST) a building design and mortuary equipment manufacturer that specializes in OSHA compliant funeral home, coroner lab, crematory, and mortuary care center renovations and new constructions since 1991. Joel can be reached by phone; 720- 583-1886 or email at; info@duncanstuarttodd.com.
