I have a neighbor who spent three weeks attempting to renovate a bathroom. In the end, the bathroom was reworked to include new tiles and an enlarged doorway, all for $15,000 which was far above her budget. In the end, she managed to complete the changes required to make good use of the bathroom for under $80.
Someone asked her what was stopping her from entering the bathroom as it was and she replied two grab bars and a non-slip mat. All three cost less than $80 and took less than a week to arrive. She had almost spent $15,000 to make her bathroom more accessible when in fact she only needed two grab bars and a non-slip mat.
Three weeks of delusion to find out she needed to pull the bathroom apart and have it totally rebuilt from scratch at a cost of over $15,000 only to find out that 3 items costing under $80 to install, 2 grab bars and a non slip mat could have allowed her to use the bathroom as needed all along.
The myth of the “accessible bathroom”
Accessibility is not a design category. It is a spectrum of dozens of small changes that collectively create a space that is livable. The common image of an “accessible bathroom” is a cold, sterile space with chrome rails and a roll-in shower. This is the extreme of the spectrum where most bathrooms could exist and be much more livable. The perception that creating an accessible bathroom requires reconstruction and the tearing down of walls is based on this extreme and not where most bathrooms currently reside. Most people do not need a bathroom to be accessible in this extreme sense. Rather, they need a space that does not “punish” them for being tired, older, with an injury or disability on any given Tuesday. This is a far more achievable design space.
Most bathrooms can be made to be fully accessible for people of all ages and abilities without having to extensively modify the space. In fact, most bathrooms can be made to be fully accessible for people of all abilities and needs without having to tear down any part of the bathroom.
I get frustrated with people assuming that accessibility renovations have to be extremely expensive to create a bathroom that looks like a hospital bathroom. While there are bathrooms that have been renovated to be fully accessible, most people only need to make a number of moderate changes to create a bathroom that is accessible for them.
Grab bars: stop overthinking them
People do not put up grab bars until they need them for a number of reasons. For one, there is a large stigma attached to grab bars, which people imagine to be a number of ugly bolts in the wall. However, modern grab bars have come a long way, and are available in a number of different colors and styles, including a number of different bathroom fixtures. Grab bars are often installed without visitors to the home even realizing that they have been. The best part is that grab bars can be installed in a matter of hours.
When placing grab bars, the appearance of the grab bar becomes less of an issue. The three locations within a bathroom where a grab bar will be used most to assist a person within a bathroom are: beside the toilet; inside the shower; and beside the bathtub. Each of these three locations corresponds to a particular situation in which a person may lose their balance whilst within a bathroom. As a result, there are particular transitions that a person makes within a bathroom and particular ways in which a person sits, stands or steps over an edge within a bathroom where that person is at a greater risk of losing their balance than at other times within the bathroom.
Some grab bars are designed to mount to the wall using suction cup style mounts. These are perfect for temporary use and for light use (non load bearing). For items that will be used frequently or for heavy loads (load bearing) the item should have wall anchors that mount into the studs or a full mounting plate for the wall.
The Floor First
It is an extremely wet surface. Most falls in the bathroom start with wet tiles occur as the person slips whilst walking around the bathroom. The vast majority of falls in the bathroom with wet tiles will occur as a result of a slip on the floor and a subsequent reach for something to hold whilst falling over.
Non-slip adhesive strips and textured bath mats with rubber backing are available to buy within minutes for almost no cost. They can be taken home and within the hour fitted to the bottom of your floor to help prevent falls.
Wet area anti-slip treatment sprays also can be applied to existing tiles to create a non-slip surface. The liquid solution works by covering the surface of the tile with a large number of very fine projections which increase friction between the tile surface and any surface that comes into contact with it.
Seating changes everything
When people are fit and full of energy it doesn’t matter how long they are in the shower, no problem at all. But for people who have been affected by surgery, illness or just getting older the standing for long periods of time in a wet environment can be absolutely exhausting, leaving people with deep tiredness in their bones and that makes taking a shower a real chore.
Seating in the shower is not a weak thing to incorporate into a shower without building a wall. There are many designs on the market.
- Freestanding options that sit inside the shower and can be moved or stored when not in use
- Fold-down seats that attach to the wall with minimal installation (two screws, typically)
- Corner seats designed to fit into existing shower spaces without any customization
Good quality shower stools / chairs of frame construction are great options for making use of seats in the shower. They are generally stable and can be easily cleaned. Aesthetics are also an important consideration as people don’t want something that makes their bathroom look like a hospital. These sorts of objects can be designed to be very attractive. shower stools
Common Upgrades and Price Points.
| Upgrade | Approximate cost | Installation required? | Impact level |
| Non-slip bath mat | $15–$40 | No | Medium |
| Grab bar (wall-mounted) | $30–$120 | Yes (basic) | High |
| Shower stool or chair | $50–$200 | No | High |
| Anti-slip floor treatment | $20–$60 | No | Medium |
| Lever-style tap handles | $40–$150 | Minor plumbing | Medium |
(lever taps as opposed to round knobs – for those with arthritic hands or those with wet fingers, turning a round knob to open and close a tap is a very wearing experience. It is likely that the friction involved in turning the knob is spread across the whole surface of the knob, so that even though the action of turning the knob is wearing, before it actually wears to the point where the knob becomes loose and starts to fall off, it will have been worn many times. This is just another simple friction point that can make a space or environment very hostile to its users over time).
The thing almost everyone forgets
Lighting – perhaps the most common oversight in all bathrooms. There is so much scope for poor design of bathroom lighting. The ambient lighting is not often sufficient to see safely around a wet and slippery floor. A $12 plug in night light could possibly save your life by alerting you to your unsafe environment as you stumble around in the dark of night. I do not know what your bathroom is like but my bathroom is wet, hard and dark – a real challenge.
My neighbor recently spent almost $15,000 updating her bathrooms but she almost didn’t make the investment because she wasn’t 100% sure that she needed to make an investment in her bathrooms at all. She knew that her bathrooms weren’t functioning as well as they could but she wasn’t sure of the specific problems with her bathrooms and therefore she wasn’t sure of the best solutions for her bathrooms. In the end she figured that her bathrooms were really important and that she used them everyday so she decided to get some help figuring out the problems with her bathrooms and coming up with solutions for those problems. With the help of a design professional she was able to come up with a number of different solutions to the problems with her bathrooms and in the end she decided to go with the least expensive solution of the ones that she had come up with which was to install grab bars in her bathrooms for approximately $80.00 each. Her point and my point is that you do not need to spend a lot of money to make sure that your bathrooms are functioning properly and that they are safe for everyone in your home to use. You just need to pay attention to the details in your bathrooms and be willing to make some small fixes along the way in order to create bathrooms that will function well for you for
You don’t have to do a full bathroom renovation to make it safe and accessible. Paying attention to the right details will help.
