And if you’re already spending the money to remodel a bathroom, it’s worth thinking about what that room might need 10, 20 or 30 years from now — not just what looks good today.
That doesn’t mean your bathroom needs to look like a hospital.
In fact, most accessibility features can be worked into a good bathroom design without calling much attention to themselves.
The tub is often the first thing that becomes difficult.
Stepping over a tub wall isn’t a big deal until balance, strength or mobility changes.
A low-threshold or curbless tiled shower eliminates or reduces that step and makes the shower easier to enter. A larger shower also gives you room for a bench if you ever need one.
A handheld shower head is another small upgrade I like. It’s useful now and becomes even more useful if somebody eventually needs to shower while seated.
The 1844 restoration in Trevorton has a curbless shower in the primary suite — a freestanding tub, quartz counters, and no step to get into the shower. It doesn’t read as an accessibility feature. It just reads as a good bathroom.
You don’t necessarily need grab bars everywhere today.
But if we’re opening the walls anyway, we can install solid blocking behind the tile in the places where grab bars could eventually go.
Then five or ten years from now, you’re not trying to figure out how to securely fasten one through a finished tiled wall.
The best time to plan for accessibility is before you need it.
Accessibility isn’t only about fixtures. It’s also about space.
In a small existing bathroom, we can’t always create ideal clearances without changing the footprint. But when we’re designing a larger bathroom or primary suite, circulation is worth thinking about from the beginning.
That’s one of the arguments in what a primary suite costs — a first-floor suite can change how long a house works for you, and the bathroom is the part that decides it.
Bathrooms get wet.
Highly polished flooring may look great in a showroom and be a terrible choice for somebody whose balance isn’t what it used to be.
We generally want a bathroom floor with good traction when wet, especially when aging in place is part of the plan.
The same thinking applies inside the shower.
A comfort-height toilet can make sitting down and standing back up easier.
Vanities deserve some thought too. Depending on the homeowner’s needs, that might mean changing the height, providing better access underneath, or simply making sure the layout doesn’t make the sink difficult to reach.
There isn’t one universal “accessible bathroom” layout.
We’re designing around the person who’s going to use it.
This one gets overlooked. As we get older, good lighting becomes more important.
A bathroom should have even general lighting along with good lighting at the vanity and shower. Switch locations matter too.
Night lighting can also be useful, especially in a primary bathroom you’re going to walk into half asleep at 2:00 in the morning.
None of that makes the room look institutional.
It just makes it easier to use.
There’s a big range between a standard bathroom and a fully accessible bathroom designed around specific mobility needs.
For many homeowners, aging-in-place design is simply about removing unnecessary obstacles now.
If somebody currently has specific accessibility requirements, that’s a different conversation — and we wrote it up separately in designing around the person who uses the room. The bathroom should be designed around those actual needs and any applicable requirements rather than relying on generic rules of thumb.
You start your day in the bathroom and usually finish it there.
If you’re remodeling the room at 50 or 60, there’s a good chance you’re hoping to still be using it at 70 or 80.
Aging-in-place design doesn’t have to make your bathroom look like it was built for aging.
Done well, it’s just a good bathroom today that’s a little easier to live with tomorrow.
And if we’re already opening the walls, moving plumbing and rebuilding the shower, that’s the time to think about it. What that work costs is broken down in our bathroom pricing guide.
Fifteen minutes on the phone. You’ll have a realistic range before we hang up — and if we’re not the right people for it, I’ll tell you.