Web Design for Retirement Homes in Ontario
A retirement residence is the only kind of business I build for whose website content list has already been written down by somebody else. The Retirement Homes Act, 2010 and O. Reg. 166/11 specify what every licensed home must disclose, post, publish on request and file into a public register. Before writing a word for this niche I read all of it, and I counted the market it applies to.
Licensed retirement homes by community — Ministry of Health dataset, top twelve
Counted from the Ministry of Health Service Provider Locations layer on the Ontario GeoHub, extract effective 24 April 2026, read on 14 September 2026. The dataset keeps Toronto’s former municipalities as separate community names: Toronto, Scarborough and Etobicoke all appear above, and adding North York and East York brings those five labels to 74 of the 778 — so the city’s real total is roughly double the row shown. The regulator itself describes the register as covering “all 750+ licensed retirement homes across Ontario”.
What makes a retirement home website different?
Three things, and none of them is tone. The content is specified in legislation rather than argued over in a kickoff meeting. The price list must be handed to anyone who asks for it. And a public register already answers eleven questions about the home before a visitor reaches the site.
Section 54 (2) lists twenty substantive items for the information package every incoming resident receives, and O. Reg. 166/11 section 10 prescribes twelve more. Sixteen of the thirty-two read as website pages word for word.
Section 55 (3) requires the list of accommodation types, care services and their prices to be made available in print or electronic form, or both, to any person on request. Producing that list is required; publishing it on the website is not.
Section 106 requires the Registrar’s register to carry capacity, sprinklers, licensed care services, licence class and conditions, inspection summaries, orders and convictions — and subsection (2) opens all of it to public inspection.
Which parts of the Act turn into website pages?
Seven provisions do most of the work. Each one already obliges the home to produce something in writing, which means the page has no research cost and no invented content — the material exists in a binder at the front desk. Putting it online is mostly a formatting job.
From statute to sitemap
A statutory list of rights every resident holds, which the home must also post in a conspicuous place under s. 55 (2).
Residency runs on a written agreement between the resident and the licensee, and s. 54 (2) (j) requires the package to explain what that agreement contains.
O. Reg. s. 10
Thirty-two required contents, from sprinklers and night staffing to languages spoken, the complaints procedure and any non-arm’s-length relationship with an outside provider.
Inspectors’ final reports, Registrar’s orders and Tribunal or Divisional Court decisions from the previous two years, plus the most recent Residents’ Council minutes with consent.
The Bill of Rights, the licence itself, the fire measures, and by regulation the regulator’s contact details, an evacuation explanation and a statement of the languages services are offered in.
The itemised list from clause 54 (2) (k) — accommodation types, care services and prices — in print or electronic form, or both. In force since 16 March 2022.
Everything from resident capacity to convictions, open to public inspection. Nothing on the website can contradict it, and anything the website leaves out, the register answers instead.
Which of the thirty-two belong on the website?
Sixteen, by my reading. The Act says the package must contain each item; it does not say the package is the only place any of them may appear. So I sorted all thirty-two by one test — whether a family would type that question into a search box before ever phoning the home.
The Bill of Rights, the complaints procedure, the regulator’s contact details, the itemised price list, sprinklers, night staffing, the call system, the languages spoken, the programs offered, the assessments behind a plan of care, and how a resident is helped into long-term care. Each is a question with a search behind it.
What the residency agreement contains, how outside providers are arranged, what happens if care services are reduced, falls measures in common areas, the six-monthly reassessment and the local Service Organization. A paragraph each on the site; the full text stays in the package.
The devices policy, the whistle-blowing explanation, trust-account terms and the audit statement, the restraint prohibition, infection-control guidance, and the notice about inspectors removing records. Required in writing, and nobody searches for them.
The split is my judgement and nothing about it reduces the statutory obligation — the package still has to be given to every incoming resident under s. 54 (1), accurate and revised as necessary. The full thirty-two, numbered and tagged one by one, sit at the top of the Orillia page.
Retirement home or long-term care home?
Families arrive with this question, and the two answers lead to entirely different processes. A retirement home is private rental housing with licensed care services bought on top; a long-term care home is publicly funded and entered through provincial placement. Ontario has 778 of the first and 612 of the second, so a family is genuinely choosing between two systems.
| Question a family asks | Retirement home | Long-term care home |
|---|---|---|
| Can I just apply? | You sign an agreement with the operator directly | You are assessed and placed; the home does not decide alone |
| Who pays? | The resident, privately | Publicly funded accommodation with a regulated co-payment |
| What care comes with it? | Only the care services on that home’s licence | A different statutory standard of nursing and personal care |
| Is there a waiting list? | Suite availability, decided by the home | A placement process outside the home’s control |
| Where is the public record? | The Registrar’s register under s. 106 of the Act | A separate provincial inspection and reporting system |
This is the cheapest thing to fix on a retirement home website, because the answer is two sentences and it does not depend on anything the operator has to gather. A family that has been told the difference plainly can tell whether they are in the right place before they call.
The closest work I have actually done
A private nursing and home care company in Toronto
I have not yet built a website for a licensed retirement home, and I am not going to imply otherwise. The nearest project is a private nursing and home care company in Toronto — the same family, the same decision, made earlier in it. I designed and hand-coded that site around comparable care-service pages, accessible forms, real contrast and scalable text, and no third-party trackers near anything a family types. The full home care case study is on this site.
What transfers to a retirement residence: the accessibility work, the service-page structure, the enquiry flow and the local search setup. What does not: the statutory content list, the price table, the thirteen licensed care services and the long-term care explainer. Those are new work and I price them as new.
Retirement home web design by city
Every city page is built on that city’s own numbers from the same dataset — how many licensed homes there are, how many long-term care homes sit beside them, and how far a family realistically searches. Orillia is the first.
Common questions
How many licensed retirement homes are there in Ontario?+
778, spread across 223 communities, by my count of the Ministry of Health Service Provider Locations dataset, extract effective 24 April 2026. The same dataset lists 612 long-term care homes. The regulator describes its own public register as covering more than 750 licensed retirement homes, which is consistent with that count.
What must an Ontario retirement home disclose in writing?+
Thirty-two things at a minimum. Section 54 (2) of the Retirement Homes Act, 2010 lists twenty substantive items plus a catch-all for anything prescribed, and section 10 of O. Reg. 166/11 prescribes twelve more. They range from the Residents’ Bill of Rights and the complaints procedure to sprinklers, night staffing levels and the languages services are offered in.
Can a retirement home keep its prices private?+
Not from someone who asks. Section 55 (3) requires the itemised list of accommodation types, care services and their prices to be made available in print or electronic form, or both, to any person on request, and that has been in force since 16 March 2022. Publishing the same list on the website is a business decision rather than a legal one.
What information is in the public retirement home register?+
For every licence: the licensee and home details, resident capacity, whether there is a sprinkler in each resident’s room, the care services made available, the class of licence, any conditions, a summary of every inspection report, any orders, any conviction under the Act and any licence termination. Section 106 (2) makes it open to public inspection.
How many care services can a home be licensed for?+
Thirteen. Section 2 (1) of the Act names administration of a drug, assistance with feeding, bathing, dressing, personal hygiene and ambulation, continence care and the provision of a meal, alongside prescribed health care services. O. Reg. 166/11 prescribes physician, nursing and pharmacy services, a dementia care program and a skin and wound care program.
Have you built a website for a retirement home before?+
No. The closest is a private nursing and home care company in Toronto, Nurse, Concierge & Beyond, whose site I designed and hand-coded around care-service pages, accessible forms and family-facing enquiries. The accessibility and structure transfer directly. The statutory content work is new and I price it as new rather than as something already solved.
How much does a retirement home website cost and how long does it take?+
A build of this scope is $899 to $2,999 one time and goes live in 5 to 7 days once content is ready, the same range and timeline as every other build on this site. The variables are how many care-service pages you want and how many surrounding-community pages. Google Business Profile management is priced separately from $149 per month.
10+ years designing SEO-ready websites for Ontario businesses, including care and regulated work where a statute decides what a page is allowed to promise. About the studio · Get in touch · Packages and pricing
Tell me your community and I will send back that city’s numbers
How many licensed homes, how many long-term care homes, and what the public register already says about the homes around you. Packages from $899.