Making a Home Wheelchair Accessible: The Complete Guide

Three problems, in this order: getting in, moving through, and using the rooms. Solve them out of order and you spend money twice.

Stage one: getting in

Measure the rise from the ground to the threshold. At the ADA maximum slope of 1:12 you need twelve inches of ramp per inch of rise, plus level landings, and a landing before the rise exceeds 30 inches. The Access Board sets this out.

So a 24 inch rise wants 24 feet of ramp before landings. Past about two feet of rise, most properties cannot take a compliant ramp and a vertical platform lift is the answer, riding straight up from a level pad.

A single step or a raised sill needs neither: a threshold ramp solves it for very little, and they ship free from our online shop.

Stage two: moving through

Doorways. A wheelchair needs a clear opening of about 32 inches. Many interior doors give less than 30 once the door stop and the open door are accounted for. Swing-clear hinges buy a couple of inches for very little money and solve a surprising number of houses.

Hallways. Straight runs are manageable at 36 inches. Turning from a hallway through a doorway is what needs room, and that turn is where most houses fail rather than the corridor itself.

Turning space. A wheelchair needs roughly a five foot circle to turn fully. Bathrooms are usually the room that cannot give it.

Floors. Level changes over half an inch need treating, deep carpet is hard work, and loose rugs are hazards. Our floors guide covers it.

Stage three: using the rooms

Bathroom. The hardest room and the most expensive. Equipment first, construction only if the person cannot get over an edge at all. Our accessible shower guide sets out where that line falls.

Kitchen. Reach is the issue. Everyday items between waist and shoulder height, and somewhere to work seated.

Bedroom. Bed height so feet reach the floor flat. Space beside the bed for a transfer or a lift.

Between floors. If the bedroom is upstairs, that is a platform lift or a home elevator, not a stairlift, because a stairlift does not carry a chair.

What to do first

1. Entry, because a house you cannot enter is not a house.
2. The bathroom route and the bathroom itself.
3. The bedroom, or a ground-floor alternative.
4. Doorways along those two routes.
5. Everything else.

The unglamorous option

Reorganising to one floor. A downstairs room becomes the bedroom, a downstairs cloakroom becomes a shower room. It beats every equipment purchase on cost and frequently on outcome, and almost nobody selling equipment will suggest it.

We will. Sometimes it is the right answer and sometimes the house genuinely will not work, which is better heard at a free survey than after a deposit.

Do the cheap future-proofing while you are in there

Blocking behind bathroom walls for future grab bars. A wider door when one is being replaced anyway. Those cost almost nothing during work already happening and a great deal afterward.

All consultations, estimates and scopes of work are free of charge with no pressure or obligation.

Renting rather than owning

If the property is rented, the order changes. Threshold ramps, swing-clear hinges, a modular ramp and equipment all come back out cleanly and need no permission for structural change.

Widening doorways and building a wet room do not. Ask in writing, offer to make good, and start with everything on the first list.

The cost order, roughly

1. Furniture moved and rugs removed: free.
2. Threshold ramps and swing-clear hinges: very little.
3. Bathroom equipment: a few hundred.
4. Modular ramp: meaningful, and rentable.
5. Widened doorways: a real job each.
6. Platform lift: substantial.
7. Wet room conversion: a bathroom refit.
8. Home elevator: the largest of them.

Most households get most of the benefit from the first four, and that is worth knowing before anybody quotes the last two.

Get an occupational therapist involved

Where one is available, an OT assessment is the single most useful thing in this whole process, and it frequently produces a shorter list than a family expects. They are assessing the person as well as the building, which nobody selling equipment is positioned to do.

Smaller equipment ships free from our online shop.

Do it in stages, and live with each one

Nobody should try to do all of this at once. Fix the entrance, live with it a month, and the next priority will announce itself rather than being guessed at.

Households that plan the whole thing on paper routinely spend money on the wrong stage first. Our measurements guide and our floors guide are the two guides to read before spending anything.

What to tell a builder

If contractors are involved, the useful thing to hand them is measurements and outcomes rather than products. “A clear 32 inch opening here” and “a level entry with no lip at this door” are instructions. “Make it accessible” is not, and it produces work that misses by an inch.

Give them the four numbers from a proper measure-up: clear door openings, hallway widths, approach space at each door, and turning circles. Then let them tell you what it takes.

Where an occupational therapist has assessed the person, their report is the best document a builder can be given, because it describes what the person actually needs to do rather than what somebody assumed.