Remodelling a bathroom for an older adult: measure the doorway first

This query carries the highest cost per click of anything we measured in this category, at $22.68, which is a good indication of what the work is worth to whoever wins the click. It is also the query with the most room to be answered honestly, because the honest answer starts somewhere nobody is selling anything.

The doorway comes first, and it is frequently the blocker

Clear opening width, not door width. A door leaf measures wider than the space it leaves when open, because the leaf itself and the stop take some of it. Measure the actual gap you can walk through with the door open at ninety degrees.

If that gap is too narrow for a walker or a wheelchair, no fixture inside the room fixes it. The routes are widening the opening, rehanging the door to swing outward, replacing it with a sliding or barn door, or removing it. Each is cheaper than discovering the problem after the tiling.

Then the floor

Two questions. Is there a threshold at the door, and is there one at the shower. Every threshold is something to catch a foot or a wheel on, and both can usually be removed. The shower one is a structural job, described under shower conversion, because the floor has to be recessed for the water to run the right way, and what that recess involves depends entirely on the joists underneath.

Surface matters as much as level. A large-format tile with a matte, textured finish and narrow grout joints gives grip without becoming a maintenance problem. Small mosaic tile gives grip and a great deal of grout to clean.

Then the space to turn around

A room can be fully step-free and still unusable, because there is nowhere to turn. Clear floor space in front of the toilet and inside the shower is what makes the difference between a bathroom someone can use alone and one where they need help.

The commonest way to find that space is to remove the bathtub. In a small bathroom the tub occupies the only area large enough to turn in, and it is frequently not being used. What replacing it with a shower involves is six jobs on site rather than one line on a quote.

Only then the fixtures

Comfort-height toilet, a shower seat, a handheld on a slide bar, lever handles rather than knobs, a mirror that can be seen from sitting, lighting without glare, and grab bars anchored properly, which means blocking behind the tile rather than anchors in it. None of these is expensive. All of them are wasted if the doorway and the floor were skipped.

The order matters because of money

Every item above is cheap while the walls are open and expensive afterwards. A project that starts with the product chosen, which is how most of them start, has already decided the answers to the first three questions by accident. Where the money comes from is a separate question, and what assistance genuinely exists is worth reading before anyone promises a grant.