Get Smart About Design

By Elizabeth Pope

One day those sweeping staircases, highly polished tile floors and sunken tubs in your dream castle may not be so easy to navigate. Interior-design experts urge homeowners who intend to stay put for the long run to consider adding what's known as universal-design features--home modifications that improve access and use for people of all ages and physical abilities.

It's best to start thinking about those features when you first sit down to draw up plans for your new dream home. You'll save yourself plenty of cash if you widen the hallway in the blueprint phase rather than after the house has been built. "It costs $6 a door extra to put in a wider, 36-in. door in new construction, but if you remodel, it costs $650 per door," says Susan Mack, a universal-design consultant in Murietta, Calif.

Twenty years ago, universal-design products had that telltale institutional look. Safety features on today's sleek kitchen-and-bath accessories are undetectable, even chic, like $300 brushed-aluminum and satin-gold grab bars--just in case you need to steady your balance in the shower. And there's a growing cadre of home-building professionals with expertise in strategies and techniques for producing attractive homes that won't seem as if they've been tailor-made for someone with physical disabilities. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) sponsors Certified Aging in Place Specialists (CAPS) training for contractors, architects, designers and remodelers.

When Frances Sisk, an artist in Naples, Fla., decided to upgrade her three-bedroom condo, she asked Abbie Sladick, a CAPS-trained remodeler, to design interior spaces that would meet future needs. The result was so subtle that her guests rarely realize that the condo is wheelchair accessible. "They have no idea," says Sisk. "They come in the door and say, 'Oh, I feel like I'm in Paris or New York.'"

In the bathroom, Sladick installed a roll-in steam shower and increased space under countertops and around the toilet so that all areas are accessible from a seated position. Brighter non-glare lighting and high-contrast, black-and-white tile improve visual acuity in older eyes.

Maple cabinets in the kitchen have oversize, easy-to-grab handles, plus pull-down and pullout shelves that bring cabinet contents to countertop height. "That's wonderful," says Sisk. "I'm petite, and I used to wait for a tall neighbor to come over for a drink just to get a vase off the top shelf."

Not every client embraces the universal-design concept, says Michael Thomas of Jupiter, Fla., a CAPS-trained interior designer. "There is a certain amount of denial," says Thomas dryly. Instead of convincing his 50-plus clients of the benefits of universal design, Thomas' firm automatically includes accessibility in the specifications. "I'll just order a higher toilet or add extra-strong plywood behind the bathroom walls so someday a grab bar can be installed," he says. "But we don't tell them anymore. We just go ahead and do it. It's part of an effective design package.

The NAHB's Remodelers Council estimates that nearly one-quarter of the $100 billion a year that baby boomers spend on remodeling is devoted to aging-in-place modifications. And with the graying of the nation's population, the demand for universal design "isn't even a trend, it's a necessity," says Melanie Hinton, formerly of NAHB. "It's not going away like avocado and harvest-gold appliances." --By Elizabeth Pope