Is your home age-friendly? When you think about staying in your home as you age, it’s easy to focus on your health and physical abilities. Yet to really support your desire to stay in your own home, you’ll need to also take a look at the physical environment. 

Three Tips to Make Your Home Age-Friendly

Here are three things that will help improve the age-friendliness of your home.

1. Lighting

Increase the amount of light throughout your home. This can make a big difference in your daily activities. When you can see clearly to navigate hallways and rooms, you’ll be more confident about staying independent in your home. Here are things to consider regarding lighting:

• Check fixtures for burnt out bulbs.
• Increase light bulb wattage in existing lamps and ceiling lights.
• Invest in new fixtures that use more bulbs.
• Use sensor lighting or smart plugs to program your light usage.
• Add more lamps to your rooms to lighten dark spaces. 

Because poor lighting can contribute to falls in the home, it’s important to make proper lighting a priority in your home. 

2. Flooring

Good surfaces to walk on are key to creating an age-friendly home. Obviously steps and stairways can be a challenge but the floor itself will also need your attention.

• Remove throw rugs.
• Repair or replace torn or damaged carpeting.
• Consider using rubber transition mats attached with silicone to the floor.
• Replace slippery surfaces, especially if they are in the kitchen or bathroom and prone to becoming wet. 

A Note About Shoes

Providing your feet with shoes that offer you support can help keep you upright. Slippers can be worn around the house as long as they fit properly. If they don’t consider replacing them.  

3. Spatial Awareness

You know where things are in your home. Much of your furniture has probably been in the same place for many years. Your knowledge of where those things are in relation to your body, is spatial awareness.

As we age, various health related issues may impact our mobility. Although we know where things are in the house, we may experience more difficulty navigating around them. And even if you are relatively healthy, a wrong step or stumble can cause injury.

Here are some things to consider:

• Thin out your furniture so there’s less to walk around.
• Expand walkways to three feet or more for ease of navigation.
• Reduce clutter that can be knocked off and cause a tripping hazard.
• Avoid putting things in temporary locations that may block a pathway.

Make Your Home Age-Friendly Today

Even temporary variations, shoes in the wrong place or chairs moved for entertaining, can present a situation you don’t expect. 

If you plan to stay in your own home as you age, then you need to make your home age-friendly. And you can start making your plan today.

Confident Living is a continuing care at home membership program, focused on helping you remain active and independent as you age in your own home. We serve the greater Cincinnati area. For more information, contact us online or call (513) 719-3522. 

Guest Blogger Nina Creech is the Vice President of Whole Home. A home renovation and remodeling company focused on services that help customer’s homes grow and change with their lives.