Before buying any wheeled equipment, measure the house. It takes twenty minutes and it prevents the most expensive mistake in this trade: equipment that cannot reach the room it is for.
The four numbers
1. Clear door opening. Not the frame. Open the door fully and measure from the face of the open door to the opposite stop. That is what a chair passes through, and it is usually two inches less than people expect.
2. Hallway width. Wall to wall at the narrowest point, including the skirting.
3. Approach to each doorway. The distance in front of the door, because turning in is harder than going straight through.
4. Turning space in each room. The largest clear circle you could draw on the floor with furniture where it lives.
What the numbers mean
- 32 inches of clear opening is the working minimum for most wheelchairs.
- 36 inches of hallway is comfortable for a straight run.
- Turning from a hall into a door needs more hallway than passing along it, and this is where most houses fail.
- Roughly a five foot circle to turn a wheelchair fully.
The Access Board sets out accessible route requirements in detail. A private home is not bound by them and they are the right benchmark for what works in practice.
The cheap fixes
Swing-clear hinges. The door swings entirely out of the opening, gaining roughly two inches of clear width. Inexpensive, quick, and they solve a startling number of doorways.
Remove the door. Free, and for a bathroom or a bedroom a curtain sometimes does.
Rehang it to open outward. Particularly on a bathroom, where a door opening inward means somebody who falls can block it.
Move the furniture. The most underrated intervention. A hallway table and a laundry basket account for more blocked routes than any structural problem.
The real fixes
Widening a doorway means the frame, sometimes the lintel, and making good the wall, the floor and the decoration. It is a proper job rather than a quick one, and it is worth doing on the two or three doors that matter rather than all of them.
Which two or three? The route from the entrance to the bathroom, and the route to wherever they sleep.
Measure the equipment too
Turning radius is in every specification and almost nobody reads it. A three-wheel scooter turns tighter than a four-wheel; both need more room than an average hallway. A mid-wheel-drive power chair turns close to its own length, which is why it is the indoor answer.
Take your narrowest measurement to the specification before ordering. Our equipment guide covers the difference.
While you are measuring
Note the thresholds as well. Anything over half an inch is a trip hazard and a caster catcher, and our floors guide covers what to do about them.
Threshold ramps, narrow rollators and transport chairs ship free from our online shop.
Write it down as you go
A simple list: room, door opening, approach width, turning circle. Twenty minutes with a tape measure produces a document that makes every subsequent conversation shorter, whether with us, a contractor or an occupational therapist.
Take it to any survey. It also gives you a check on anybody who quotes without measuring.
The bathroom is usually the problem
It is the smallest room, it has the narrowest door, and it is the one that must work. When a house cannot be made accessible, the bathroom is nearly always the reason.
Sometimes the answer is converting a different downstairs room instead, which is cheaper than enlarging the bathroom and gets ruled out too early. Our accessibility guide covers that.
Furniture is the free fix
Before measuring anything structural, take a photograph of each route and then move everything that is not fixed. Hall tables, laundry baskets, plant stands, the chair nobody sits in. A surprising number of blocked routes are furniture rather than architecture.
Threshold ramps and narrow aids ship free from our online shop.
Outside counts too
Gates, the path width, the gap between a parked car and the house wall. People measure indoors thoroughly and then discover the side gate is 28 inches.
Measure the whole route from where the car stops to the front door, and our home access page covers the entrance work if it does not add up.
Three-point turns and reversing
A wheelchair does not always need a full turning circle. Somebody competent in a chair reverses and maneuvers, and a room that fails the five foot test may still work in practice.
What matters more is whether they can turn where they must: at the bathroom door, beside the bed, and at the entrance. Test those three with the actual chair and the actual furniture before doing anything structural.
Power chairs and manual chairs differ
A mid-wheel-drive power chair turns close to its own length. A rear-wheel-drive chair needs more. A manual chair pushed by somebody else needs room for the person pushing as well, which is the measurement nobody takes.
If a caregiver will be pushing, add their space to every number on this page.