With patient- and visitor-friendly themes such as butterflies, sunflowers and cowboy boots, the new acute-care patient rooms are 20 to 25 percent larger than the hospital’s current rooms and are flexible in their design for patients with varying degrees of illness.

Each new floor houses 22 rooms, compared to 24 rooms per existing floors, allowing for the larger patient rooms. Aimed at promoting a healing environment, the room design allows for natural light and additional family support space for parents choosing to stay by their child’s bedside.

Each room is stocked with amenities such as television sets wired for closed circuit broadcasts and tables for homework or drawing. The rooms also cater to visitors with safe, extra storage space and a sofa that converts into a bed. In addition, a new wayfinding system, which uses a series of colors, textures and Texas-themed icons such as the armadillo and the cactus, will help visitors easily navigate through the hospital.

The halls are painted in pastel hues of yellow, purple and green and have features such as ceilings lit with shooting stars and colored projections of jackrabbits and bluebonnets.

With the use of indirect lighting in the halls, bright lights have transformed to dim, soft lights. On the eighth floor, a balloon mural greets patients and visitors. Children’s also finished construction on the skybridge that crosses Motor Street, connecting the adjacent Children’s Pavilion and Pavilion Surgery Center to The Bright Building and main hospital building.

Children’s enjoys a stellar reputation as one of the finest pediatric facilities in the United States, recognized by organizations such as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The hospital’s service to the thousands of children who come each year to be treated for various ailments continues to be the hospital’s primary concern, therefore making life better for children.