What Makes a Home Easier to Live in as We Get Older?
By: Jack McClintock Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: November 2006
Leslie Segrete cooks, sews, builds model set designs, arranges flowers and operates power saws. Just as important, she offers expert advice—as the host of the home-improvement radio show The Money Pit, a carpenter for The Learning Channel's home makeover TV show While You Were Out and a designer for TLC's Trading Spaces. Now, Segrete, 31, is working with AARP to make your home safer, more comfortable and more convenient. Writer Jack McClintock asked for her thoughts on a design process—whether you're renovating or building from scratch—that can help you live at home as long as possible.
What makes a home easier to live in as we get older?
Thinking ahead is the key. Have a plan that will be helpful to all ages and more accommodating to those who may want to stay in the home when they're older. For instance, think about a master bedroom on the first floor. It can be a den or guest room now, but later it can switch to an accessible bedroom.
What's most important for getting around the home?
A level floor. Make the transitions from outside to inside and from room to room as smooth as possible. For example, eliminating threshold humps makes navigation easier whether you're pushing a stroller, carrying groceries or using a wheelchair. And consider widening your doorways. That's good for entertaining, for bringing in those big TVs and refrigerators we like today, as well as for the possibility that someone will use a wheelchair later on.
What are ways to prevent falls on stairs and steps?
Wherever you have more than two steps, you should have banisters on both sides. That's critical when we don't have our best balance, and it helps children, too. My house—a beautiful Dutch Colonial—has three steps leading up to the front entrance, and the banister only goes up one side. For family holidays I make sure not to put decorations on that side so they don't interfere with my grandpa—or my little niece—going up the steps.
And lighting?
Ample lighting not only makes it safer to move about indoors, but it's important outside, too: Well-lit pathways are safer and attractive, and they act as a crime deterrent.
How do you make all this affordable? What changes give the biggest bang for the buck?
It's inexpensive to change from flip-type light switches to rocker switches. They have a bigger target area, so it's easier to hit. It's also easy to change hard-to-grip round doorknobs to levers and to change cabinet hardware to magnetic catches or to the kind that open the door when you press on it.
What else in the kitchen?
In the kitchen and the bath, a sudden shift in water temperature can be dangerous. If you have to fumble with individual knobs or can't turn the hot one because your hands are soapy, you can get scalded. It's better to have a single-lever faucet you can grab quickly. They're quite beautiful, too.
Also, you probably use your microwave oven a couple times a day to thaw food or heat water. It's typically up high, so when you take scalding water out it's above you. Install the microwave lower, or if you can't, at least put a ledge or shelf in front of it to catch spills.
How can you improve a conventional bathroom?
At least one bath should have an open-plan shower with a small curb, so people can easily step over it. And tile with a high anti-slip rating—again for small kids as well as older people. And grab bars in the shower.
Boomers can be vain—they may not want the bathroom to look like a hospital.
I know. When my husband had knee surgery, I got him a bench for the shower, and that made his recovery easier. Then, when my father was ill, I passed it on to him. It was kind of hospital-looking, I realized later, but you can get beautiful stools made of teak, or benches built into the shower—a real luxury.
You can accept what's out there, but if you really want to make things stylish, you can. Keep your eyes open for whatever matches your decor. It doesn't have to stand out and say, "I'm here to help you."
Jack McClintock is a former writer for This Old House magazine who lives in Gainesville, Fla.
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