Most of the bathroom renovations we do for older people start the same way: a fright. A slip, or the day when getting in and out of the bath stops being comfortable and becomes a manoeuvre.
The good news is that almost all of it is solved with four specific decisions. The bad news is that there is a fifth that is sold hard and does little.
1. The step out, all of it
Taking the bath out and putting in a shower tray is half the job. The other half is getting the tray flush to the floor, with no lip or upstand. A surface-mounted tray four centimetres high is still a step, and a four-centimetre step on a wet floor is exactly where people trip.
If the floor structure does not give enough depth to go flush, there are solutions —raising the floor level of the whole bathroom or using an extra-slim tray with a transition ramp— but that has to be decided before anything is stripped out, not afterwards.
2. The floor, and not the tray's
The shower tray already comes with a non-slip surface. What usually lets things down is the flooring in the rest of the bathroom, which is where you step out with wet feet.
The Spanish building code classifies slip resistance by class and asks for at least class 2 in a bathroom. That is a reasonable thing to ask for when the quote is being drawn up: ask about the class of the flooring, not just the colour. A beautiful polished porcelain can be an ice rink.
3. Grab rails where people really hold on
This is where you see the most mistakes. A badly placed grab rail is worse than none, because it gives confidence without giving support.
- In the shower, a vertical one at the entrance, for stepping in, and a horizontal one on the long wall, for support while standing.
- Beside the WC, at forearm height for getting up. The most used one in the whole house.
- Anchored to a solid wall or to reinforcement. A grab rail screwed into unreinforced plasterboard pulls out under a person's weight. That is solved on the day of the work, by putting a reinforcing plate behind the tiling, or it is not solved at all.
And a rule that never fails: grab rails are positioned with the person there, not at the height in the manual. Everyone holds on where they can reach.
4. The bench, if it is going to be used
A built-in bench clad in the same material as the shower looks integrated and takes any weight. A fold-down wall seat takes up less room and folds away when someone else is showering. The built-in one is more comfortable and more stable; the fold-down one wins when the shower is narrow.
What we do not recommend is a loose plastic stool: it moves, and it moves exactly when someone leans on it to sit down.
And what is sold hard but solves little
The walk-in bath with a door. On paper it looks like the perfect answer and in practice it has a fundamental problem: to empty it you have to wait inside, wet, for it to drain completely before the door can be opened. In winter, in an unheated bathroom, that is several unpleasant minutes. It also costs considerably more than a flush shower and it makes any help from outside harder.
It has its place when someone needs immersion bathing on medical advice. For everything else, a flush shower with a bench and grab rails is better and cheaper.
Two small details you appreciate every day
- A thermostatic mixer in the shower: the temperature is set and there are no surges of hot water when someone turns on a tap in the kitchen.
- A WC at a comfortable height. A few centimetres higher than standard completely changes the effort of getting up, and it does not show.
- Enough light and no shadows over the mirror and inside the shower. Many falls start with not seeing the edge properly.
This work usually qualifies for grants
Adapting a bathroom to improve accessibility is exactly the kind of work the Valencian regional government's public schemes for interior renovation cover. We go into it in detail, with the warning to check the round currently open, in the article about the grants.
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