Lots of things look different when you step into a small Green House nursing home.

The bright living and dining space, filled with holiday baubles at this season. The adjacent open kitchen, where the staff is making lunch. The private bedrooms and baths. The lack of long stark corridors, medication carts and other reminders of hospital wards.

I was visiting the Green House Homes at Green Hill, a continuing care facility in West Orange, N.J. Dorothy Bagli, who’s 91, showed me her room, looking out onto the garden and filled with artwork from home and photos of her grandchildren. (Her son, it turned out, is a reporter at The Times.)

“I’ve gotten to know most of the people that live here,” she said — an easier task when there are only 10 residents.

“It’s very intimate,” agreed Eleanor Leonardis, who declined to give her age and is recuperating from a nasty fall. “It feels a lot like home.”