Creating a Wheelchair Accessible Living Room with Creative Custom Design

A little creative custom design can help create a relaxing, wheelchair-accessible living room your entire family will enjoy.

A living room should be the most relaxing area in your home. But when wheelchair-accessibility becomes a necessity, often our living rooms require some serious reorganizing. Clutter and obstructive furniture can be very difficult to maneuver and rearrange, and your place of relaxation can quickly become a source of serious stress.

Maneuvering a wheelchair in a tight space, trying to find the remote, or reaching personal items can seem impossible. Relaxing may feel out of the question not just for you, but for the entire family. But there are ways to ease this stress. Through simple room reorganization and custom entertainment centers and shelving, concerns about convenience can be simply addressed. A little creative custom design can help create a relaxing, wheelchair-accessible living room your entire family will enjoy.

Prepare Your Home

Preparing your home for wheelchair accessibility can feel like a daunting task. Rearranging and reorganizing your living room to accommodate loved ones with limited mobility begins with the end in mind: envisioning your convenient living space within your home.

Consider how your loved one will move about your home and living room. With family close by, pets, and maybe even guests coming by, your home needs to offer a floor plan that maps out your space clearly. Your loved one will need to be able to move around without hindrance and easily reach items. Promoting safe, independent living is the key to a happy living room. That begins with determining your floor plan.

Make a simple floor plan (or redesign your current one). Your floor plan must incorporate a fluid, mobile environment where you can roll about in a wheelchair without feeling frustrated or limited.

• Ensure your loved one can easily enter and enjoy a safe space.

• Widen the closet if you need to store away items that are not readily needed.

• Make sure the closet is a reach-in or a wide enough walk-in area to accommodate your loved one or yourself in a wheelchair with the ability to access items on lower shelves.

• Don’t forget to incorporate a smooth, hardwood, or laminate flooring for ease of wheel movement.

• Minimize obstacles to ensure you are truly creating a wheelchair-accessible living room.

Arrange Your Space

Arranging your living room with your floor plan as your guide will offer peace of mind to your home. Remodeling door entries, arranging furniture with proper flow, removing unnecessary items, and keeping your area safe and accident-free will go a long way for your family unity.  

Ensure accessibility and clearance. Make your living room a clutter-free area with minimal furniture, remove items on the floor, and decrease unnecessary decorative pieces to make your loved one feel secure.

• Provide open access by remodeling doorways to offer a wide entrance and clear floor space for ease of maneuvering the wheelchair.

• Arrange furniture so that it is against the wall or out of the natural path, leaving room to move about freely, space for turning, and tucking away unnecessary items in drawers and on shelves to prevent collisions or accidents.

• Remove any items that are physical barriers to open access and that you don’t really need to keep in your living room.

• Incorporate sturdy, safe shelves with durable hardware that will not break or fall upon your loved one. Shelves and entertainment centers should be made of quality materials that are fully guaranteed for the lifetime of your home.

Reorganize and Offer Comfort and Reassurance

Creating a wheelchair-friendly home can often mean that you have to reorganize your room, reconstruct your shelving, and move items into storage to remove the barriers to peace and happy living.

Organize items by height and declutter disorganized storage. Whether your loved one is reaching for a book, television remote, or a cup of tea, they should be able to do so without struggle.

• Ensure your shelves, entertainment center, and cabinets are all in arm’s reach or at your loved one’s eye from the wheelchair.

• Move and adjust items to a lower height and at eye level to create a space for successful mobility.

• Declutter and reorganize areas such as your cabinets with quick access bins, sliding adjustable shelves, and drawers.

• Accommodate your loved one in a wheelchair with plenty of maneuverability so they feel comfortable and happy.

Entertain and Make Everyone’s Lives’ Happier

Wheelchair-friendly homes are designed to make everyone feel comfortable. That’s why entertainment is often the key to get your mind off of life’s troubles. Entertainment centers, too, need to offer wheelchair accessibility.

Design a custom entertainment and family fun center. Living life in a wheelchair is never easy. That’s why families need to pull together and provide a fun place to be together, let go of life’s struggles, and discover some great family entertainment.

• Create an entertainment center with adjustable shelves. Offer a special shelf or two with all your loved one’s favorite items and personal needs such as glasses, remote, a favorite magazine, and snack.

• Use close-off closet areas for games, movies, books, and photo albums Drawers that are fully-extendable and are bottom-mounted will help with your storage needs, maintaining accessibility.

• Incorporate LED lighting into your small entertainment close-off or closet spaces. So, when the room is dark, items will be easier to see and reach.  

• Get help as needed with special home adjustments or a custom-built entertainment center for your wheelchair accessible living room. Sometimes a perfect fit design requires expertise from a custom designer.

Put the Final Touches on a Wheelchair Accessible Living Room

Although many of these planning, reorganization, and design steps could potentially be done by a DIY kit, it will require a great deal of skill, patience, and experience to create a wheelchair-accessible living room that is truly accessible, well-organized, and incorporates entertainment for you and your family.

That’s where professional support comes in. An expert custom designer can offer you the best organizational solutions for your living room and the most enjoyable custom entertainment center design. With their help, you’ll be able to arrange your living room to be as safe, relaxing, and enjoyable as possible—for you and your loved ones.

When you need support with living room reorganization solutions and the custom design and installation of a family entertainment center, contact us. Feel free to schedule a free design consultation today.

 

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