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The need for ease of access in bathrooms isn’t limited to those ageing or with disabilities and restricted wheelchair mobility. Homeowners remodelling their bathrooms need to reconsider their design concepts to ensure that these will suit their necessities as they age. Fitting a walk in shower or an accessible toilet rail can transform a regular bathroom into an accessible bathroom.

Opting for ageing-in-place designed items can improve the return on investment by getting them fitted ahead of the inevitable need for them later on. If you’re going forward with a bathroom renovation, you should consider these five ideas to make your bathroom more accessible.

At Odyssey Bathrooms, an expert team weighs each client’s exact needs and projects the bathroom with all of them in mind. Our team ensures your new bathroom is not only accessible and extremely practical but also aesthetically pleasing.

Renovating a bathroom focusing on universal accessibility poses both challenges and opportunities in terms of design. Therefore, it is essential to take careful inventory – early on in the planning – of all envisioned users’ capabilities, partialities and tastes. Even if universal design welcomes users in wheelchairs, it can likewise make for a more comfortable bath for all types of users without sacrificing style.

1.    Ample Dimensions and Clever Fixture Placements

The first contemplation when scheming a wheelchair accessible bathroom is the dimensions to the bathroom door. To be wheelchair accessible, the bathroom door should have a minimum of 82 cm in width. It’s also significant to consider the placement of fittings – such as the tub, toilet, sink, shower, others – inside the bathroom to allow manoeuvrability for a person in a wheelchair.

Considering getting your bathroom wheelchair accessible? Contact Odyssey Bathrooms today, and we’ll help you in clearing your plans as well as making them come to life.

2.    Curbless Shower Stall and Shower Bench

While drafting a shower, it’s crucial to certify that design flaws aren’t impediments that could limit its use by seniors or people with limited mobility. The best option is to create a wetroom or walk in shower, but if not possible,  the shower cabin should be a minimum of 1.5 meters wide and 0.9 meters deep. The shower shouldn’t have any curb or, if inevitable, a rubber curb that a wheelchair could rollover. In addition, a shower bench is a simple way to ease accessibility in your bathroom. A bench provides a safe surface for personal grooming and will allow individuals to rest if they sense disorientation or light-headedness while showering.

3.    Hand-held Shower Heads and Stability Grab Handles

A hand-held showerhead paired with grab slider bars increases accessibility for senior individuals, aiding in preserving their autonomy while showering. Plus, a thermostat-controlled and pressure-balanced valve will prevent individuals from inadvertently scalding themselves. A grab handles to support stability while moving in or out of the shower is an easy fitting that makes the bathroom much more accessible. If you wish to avoid a sterile, unwelcoming look, you can select a coloured grab bar that ties in with other accents present in the bathroom design.

4.    Add Clearance Below the Sink

A wheelchair-accessible sink needs no less than 69 cm of clearance underneath the sink to allow a person in a wheelchair to roll up. Without enough clearance beneath the sink, the individual’s legs will knock into the fixture and deny access to the faucet. The top of the sink is recommended to be no more than 86cm off the floor. It’s essential to think of hanging the bathroom mirror adequately low for any person in a wheelchair to see themselves. A bathroom renovation will be the perfect opportunity to apply the faucets laterally on the sink to facilitate reach for a seated individual.

5.    Anti-Slip Flooring Tiles

Pick textured tiles for the bathroom flooring to prevent dangerous slips and falls — especially when the floor is wet. Grip-friendly floor tiles are pleasing to the eye and provide various design possibilities to complement perfectly any style. Regardless of choosing smaller slates or larger tiles with heaps of grout between them, adding the slightest bit of texture can deliver just enough friction to avoid a hazardous slip.

Growing Old at Home Shouldn’t Be Challenging

Making conscious decisions about retirement years isn’t straightforward but entirely necessary, especially when concluding if you’re staying home or moving to a retirement home. People are more than ever choosing to enter their later years in the comfort of their own house rather than dealing with the annoyance of moving from home. It is more affordable for a homeowner to retrofit their home to be fit for ageing than to transfer to another living facility.

A bathroom must be safe and stress-free. Our qualified specialists have been developing in the area of the unique needs of the elderly population, ageing-in-place home renovations, common overhaul projects and solutions to everyday domestic living barriers.

Accessible Bathroom Remodelling

Odyssey’s designers aim to address every conceivable concern that could arise to an ageing person or someone with limited mobility. By analysing your space and budget, we will present a variety of solutions for your bathroom remodelling plan, such as:

-Wide clearance of shower openings, doorways and pathways to ease access to walkers and wheelchairs
-In-law suite bathrooms that assure safety for your senior guests when they stay with you
-Safe floor level changes
-Standards of reach and height for accessible bathrooms
-Grab bars, fold-down or built-in seating
-Wall-hung fixtures
-Barrier-free shower stalls with no sill, curb or obstruction
-Easy command Faucets
-Walk-in showers
-Slip-resistant floors
-Easy clean and care surfaces
-Low open shelving for easy reach and access

Odyssey Bathrooms commitment is to attend to our client’s needs and wishes to capitalise on their current space for the most accessible bathroom arrangement. A user-friendly bathroom must be able to house elders who require a higher standard of safety or a person with physical disabilities with a necessity for wheelchair accessibility. We can project and create a first-rate bathroom that will save your independence for as long as possible while circumventing mobility issues for forthcoming years.

Accessible bathrooms aren’t restricted to those with mobility concerns. Everybody can acknowledge the innovative and airy design in an open, user-friendly bathroom.

If you want to perform a complete bathroom renovation for accessibility or safety reasons or anticipate needing one for the future, contact us at Odyssey Bathrooms. Give us a call, and our bathroom renovation experts will ensure that your new bathroom will cover all the specific features that make it extra accessible.

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