Materials Private Life

Carnegie’s Panorama privacy curtains use innovative manufacturing methods to offer better aesthetics and performance in health-care spaces.

- Avinash Rajagopal

In recent years, as part of the push toward personalized health care, hospitals have built more single-occupancy rooms. An unexpected casualty of this trend has been the formerly ubiquitous privacy curtain. “We saw a lot of designers saying, ‘We’re just going to take the privacy curtain out of the room,’” says Mary Holt, executive vice president of creative at textile firm Carnegie. However, health-care facilities soon began reintroducing curtains to satisfy nurses, who prefer that room doors stay ajar, and patients, who want privacy.