Inside Assisted Living: The Surprising Amenities Nobody Talks About
Sep 26, 2025
Starting an assisted living business means you'll be providing care to your residents, but families today are looking for more than safety and support—they want comfort, community, and quality of life for their loved ones. That’s where unique amenities come in.
In this blog, we’ll cover the often-overlooked amenities that can set your assisted living home apart and help you stand out in a competitive market.
Check out this video, too:
Why Amenities Matter in Assisted Living
Care is essential, but it’s not the only thing families consider when choosing a facility. When you offer extra amenities, you:
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Improve resident quality of life ๐ก
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Boost satisfaction and referrals
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Differentiate your home from competitors
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Add value without adding huge costs
If you want your care home to thrive, thinking beyond “basic care” is a must.
Unique Amenities Families Love (But Many Homes Overlook)
Here are some standout amenities that can make a big difference in your assisted living business:
1. Outdoor Spaces ๐ณ
Fresh air and sunshine improve health and mood. A garden, patio, or even a small courtyard can help residents stay active and connected.
Action step: Even if you don’t have a large yard, create container gardens, seating areas, or shaded walkways to add comfort.
2. Pet-Friendly Policies ๐พ
Many seniors see pets as family. Allowing small pets or even having a community dog or cat can create joy and companionship.
Action step: Set clear pet rules to balance safety with comfort. This can be a low-cost way to make your home stand out.
3. Engaging Activities ๐จ๐ถ
Activities aren’t just “nice to have.” They improve mental health, reduce loneliness, and give residents a sense of purpose, and in most states, they're required. But don't just play BINGO, try some unique activites like:
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Art classes
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Music therapy
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Gardening clubs
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Chair yoga
Action step: Poll your residents to see what they enjoy most, then build a rotating schedule.
4. Technology Access ๐ป๐ฑ
Many families want their loved ones to stay connected. Wi-Fi, video call stations, or simple tech support can mean a lot.
Action step: Have staff or volunteers help residents with Zoom calls, streaming, or even online games.
5. Transportation Services ๐
Mobility matters. Having a van or shuttle service for outings, appointments, or community events makes life easier for families and residents - it can also become a great secondary income for your assisted living business!
Action step: Start small by offering scheduled weekly trips to the grocery store or pharmacy.
6. Dining Options ๐ฝ๏ธ
Food is a big deal. Offering flexible dining times, themed meals, or family-style dinners can make residents feel more at home.
Action step: Ask families for recipe suggestions to add a personal touch.
Bringing It All Together
Unique amenities don’t always require massive investments. Small touches—like pet-friendly policies, outdoor seating, or reliable Wi-Fi—can transform how families view your care home.
If you want to attract more families and stand out in the assisted living industry, don’t just provide care—provide comfort, connection, and community.
Free Resource to Help You Plan ๐
Want a clear roadmap to starting your assisted living business the right way? Download the free Business Plan Checklist and make sure you’re covering all the essentials.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Let’s Connect ๐ฌ
What unique amenities do you think make the biggest difference in assisted living? Drop a comment below—I’d love to hear your ideas.
Show full transcript ๐
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:00:45
Hey friend, it's Brandon Gustafson. I help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. And today's video, we're going to be getting into some unique amenities that you can offer your residents to attract high-paying residents for your assisted living facility. If you're interested in learning about that, make sure you stick around for today's video. Hey friend, welcome back to Assisted Living Investing. Before we get started, I want to remind you to go and grab the
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free underwriting calculator at assistedlivinginvesting.net. We'll have it in the big blue box in the top right corner of the website. Make sure you go and grab that free resource to help you understand if this is actually going to be a profitable opportunity for you as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. Now, with that, let's get into the topic of today's video. I want to get into some unique amenities that you can offer your residents to get high paying residents or attract residents so you
00:00:53 - 00:01:53
can keep your occupancy levels really high inside of your assisted living facility. Now, the first one that I want to talk to you about is wellness or relaxation spaces. So, this is putting in things like maybe a massage chair or having mini spa days at the facility, maybe like yoga or stretching classes, aroma therapy with diffusers that are throughout the facility. Though, you do want to make sure that you don't have any residents that have any smell sensitivities that would not allow you
00:01:22 - 00:02:16
to have that inside of the facility. Um, and also like kind of a quiet meditation or prayer room or space. And that could be inside your facility or it could be outside of your facility. Having these features inside of your facility can really promote wellness, which is something that a lot of the people that you're probably uh going to be marketing to, which are the family members, the daughters and and the sons of of the residents that are going to come into your facility, they're probably getting
00:01:49 - 00:02:55
more aware of how important it is to have wellness in these spaces. And if you're able to offer some of those little features and those amenities, it doesn't cost you hardly anything, but it adds a lot of value to people as they're looking for places to go. So, if I'm looking at somewhere for my family member, for my loved one, and I have one location over here that offers yoga classes and offers a little meditation space or like a nice garden to go in and and sit and and just kind of think and
00:02:22 - 00:03:16
and and process and meditate. And I compared to the other one across the street that doesn't have any of those things and prices are pretty much the same, I'm definitely going to the one with the wellness space. even if I don't use it, I want to have the option and can visualize myself doing that, which is going to help out quite a bit. So, wellness spaces is a great inexpensive way for you to add that as an amenity to really up your level at bringing in residents into the assisted living
00:02:49 - 00:03:41
facility. Next one is personalized dining experiences. So, personalized dining experiences could be something along the lines of different diets that you're offering. could be maybe you you have restaurant style meals rather than just like you know here's a tray of food. You're offering it to them on a plate and and you know making it look really nice. You could have a customizable menu that is specific to maybe different eating requirements that a resident has gluten-free or kind of
00:03:15 - 00:04:14
like a ketobased diet or maybe it's like liqufied food. Offering those types of options for people is going to really help them feel confident and comfortable eating inside of your facility. Another one is doing fun events. So things like maybe you do a taco bar or like an ice cream sundae, you know, kind of bar type of of a thing. Build your own pizza. There's a lot of options that are out there that you can implement that aren't going to cost you anything that make it a lot more fun when it comes to eating
00:03:45 - 00:04:42
with your residents. And that can make all the difference in level of satisfaction in their ability to like retaining them, but also telling their friends, "Hey, we do taco Tuesdays every Tuesday." And it it's super exciting. We we have a taco bar and and it's great. Those types of things are little tiny tricks that you can implement that will really make residents want to stay at your facility. Another thing that you can offer is unique social activities and and just other activities that
00:04:13 - 00:05:10
you're holding inside of your facility. As a facility, you're required to provide activities on a daily basis to your residents. And so that's why having kind of a person that's over activities, whether it's one of your caregivers or a dedicated person to it can be a really good idea because you want to have these activities and keep your residents happy but also uh keep them engaged and keep their satisfaction level high so that they stay at the facility. A few things that I've seen our facilities do as fun
00:04:42 - 00:05:36
activities that are a little outside the box are painting and crafts. Not just like, you know, water. It could be watercolor, but it's not just like the the little tiny things that you get at Walmart that are for kids. It's like bringing in a person to do watercolor painting or canvas painting or something along those lines or getting maybe, you know, you can get the crafts where you get a a coffee mug and you can draw on those and paint on those and then you put it into the oven so it like gets it
00:05:09 - 00:06:03
on there and it will stay and people have a personalized coffee mug. Those types of things can go a really long way with residents. Another one is music therapy, uh, which is a lot of fun. Kind of goes back to the wellness that we were talking about just a minute ago, but doing some music therapy can really help people out as well. Storytelling or poetry nights. And that could be things that your residents are writing themselves. Maybe you have a story writing workshop or a poetry workshop and then you do a poetry night and the
00:05:36 - 00:06:31
residents can stand up and they can read their poetry or their short story to the other residents. or maybe they're not comfortable doing that and so somebody on the staff is going to do it or something along those lines, but they're stories that come out of the minds of your residents, which is really exciting. Another one is themed dinner nights. Like you could do murder mystery type things or maybe it's like a senior prom type of an activity where you do these themed nights or these themed
00:06:03 - 00:06:56
meals that get people really excited and they have a lot of fun. Uh you can also do things like dances. They're not formal dances, but you can have dance parties where you're playing music. Maybe go back to the era where they grew up and you're playing that and people are dancing and having a really fun time. Another one is game nights. So, this could be like a weekly game night. Maybe you could do bingo for sure, but I would encourage you to look at other things. Could be card games, could be a
00:06:30 - 00:07:21
trivia night, could be any number of games that these residents are going to want to do. doing those types of activities. Again, not going to cost you a lot, but when you're talking with residents and and their families when they're trying to come in, you can say all of these fun things that you're doing and get them excited about wanting to stay at your facility. Another one that I want to tell you about is outdoor spaces and gardening areas. So, we talked a little bit in the wellness area
00:06:56 - 00:07:44
about maybe you have like this little dedicated garden space. I want to hit on that a little bit more. So, you want to have comfortable seating, you know, not just like the the really stiff wood or metal benches. You want to have something that's nice. Remember, you're you're trying to make this a space that will be used by the residents. You you could have a smoking space, which is something that's very common um in facilities. You want to make sure you understand the rules and regulations
00:07:19 - 00:08:14
around having spaces for smoking in your state. Typically, there's like a distance from the building. Often times about 25 ft. Um but you want to understand what that is. But don't just like make it a spot where you're like shunning the people that that want to smoke. Give them a nice space because those that do smoke are going to want to be out there on a consistent basis. And so providing them with a a fun and a nice place to do that and enjoy and have conversations pe with people can really
00:07:46 - 00:08:48
go a long way and also just makes it look nice when people are coming to tour the facility as well. uh doing a garden for growing flowers or fruits or veggies, a fruit trees, having a vegetable garden, having a flower garden, and allowing them to care for those plants is something that's really good. Plants are are tricky, specifically fruits and vegetables. Some states do not allow residents to eat the foods that are grown on the property. You know, it is what it is. It seems like that would be the best type of food
00:08:18 - 00:09:02
for them to eat, but some states don't allow it. So, that's something that you do want to be aware of, but they can still care for it and that is great. Maybe you could take that what they've grown, sell it at a farmers market or or something along those lines. Like, there's some really cool ways that you can implement that into your facility. Walking paths, if you have enough space in your outdoor area, have walking paths. It could be just like, hey, here's a little trail that goes around
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the house, or maybe it's a walking path that goes out to the smoking area or something like that. But you want to make sure that it's something that they're not going to trip on and that there's dedicated walking spaces which can also improve the care of your lawn so you don't have random trails or getting things stomped down throughout the house. So if you're in an area that has grass, having a trail can actually improve your ability to maintain the the yard, which is just an added benefit of
00:09:05 - 00:10:02
that. It makes it look a little bit nicer. Uh having like maybe a small fountain or a pond or something like that in inside of the area. I know some of you that do this, you have swimming pools, which I think is great. And that's another option that you could offer is, you know, like swimming therapy type of a feature, but if you maybe don't live in an area where you can have a pool, but you could put a little pond, like a koi pond or something along those lines, that can really make residents feel happy and
00:09:32 - 00:10:22
excited to just utilize the space and be happy in in this place where they are living. And the last one that I want to talk to you about is having pet friendly options. So pets are can be really key to houses. You do have to be a little bit careful. When you have pets, you're going to have to take care of them and you're going to have to let them out. You're going to have to feed them. You're going to have to clean up after them when they make a mess. Those types of things. So if you want to have an
00:09:58 - 00:10:48
animal in the home, then you need to be aware that's something that you would be handling. Uh but you have a couple options when it comes to working with animals in the home. This could be residents bringing their own animals or maybe you have a house animal. Maybe you have a pet that's for the house that's a dog or a cat or a bird or something along those lines that is just kind of a community animal and can help out. Another benefit of having animals, especially like cats, could be if
00:10:23 - 00:11:18
there's a potential rodent problem or potential for a rodent problem, a a cat might be something that could come in and help you manage, you know, manage pests, which is often times a nice thing rather than paying somebody to to take care of all those pests. Uh maybe have a cat that can take care of that depending on where you're at and your comfort level with having animals in in the home. And if you don't want to have pets inside of the home in one of those scenarios, you can still do pet therapy.
00:10:50 - 00:11:46
You could bring in like goats or horses or any even dogs or cats and bring them in for specific days like once a month, once a quarter, something like that where you bring in the animals there. And and that can really uplift a lot of residents who uh some of them aren't going to want to have animals, but some of them have loved them their entire lives and now they're in a home and they can't have them. And so being able to have that interaction can really help them out a lot. So that was a lot of a
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lot of ideas there for you to add some amenities to your home. If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button, subscribe, and ring the bell as well. We do content like this. On Tuesdays, we do a live and on Thursdays, we put out content exactly like this video and have a lot of other content. So if you're subscribed, you'll get notified every time we put out information like this to help you as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. To recap, we've been
00:11:42 - 00:12:36
talking about some of the amenities that you can implement inside of your house to attract residents and keep residents in your house. These are wellness and relaxation techniques, personalized dining experiences, holding unique social events, which is a lot of fun, outdoor spaces and gardening areas, and also working with pets. If you found these tips and tricks helpful, I've got another like great group for you to consider joining. If you go to assisted livinginvesting.net/basics, /basics. Our
00:12:08 - 00:13:00
ALI basics membership is an incredible way for you to build out relationships with people, get weekly tips and tricks on how to launch your assisted living business, and get all of your questions answered and specific videos just for you for your questions. Great resource to help you, plus a bunch of other little goodies and things in there to help you really start making some progress in launching your assisted living business. We'll have a link down below, but go check that out as well. Does residential assisted living sound
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interesting to you, but you don't know how to get started? At assisted living.net, I'm here to help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. I love helping and coaching people, and I would love to help you out as well on your journey to launching your assisted living business. And remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do, and you're consistent and persistent, you're going
00:12:55 - 00:13:07
to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]
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