The home should be easy to use for every member of the family. That’s the basic principle behind Universal Design. Indeed, products that promote accessibility have evolved through the years that make aging in place possible, make multi-generational homes efficient to use for every family member and enable the physically challenged to move about with as few barriers as possible. These products and ideas can be used throughout the home, but a great deal of them seem to fall into the kitchen and bath.

For the kitchen, they run the gamut from multiple-height countertops to cabinets and interior accessories that pull down or out to the user, from anti-scald faucets to French-door ovens, from raised-height dishwashers to dishdrawers, microwave drawers and refrigerator and freezer drawers.

In the bath, they range from decorative grab bars to walk-in, curbless showers replete with steam and massaging shower jets, from airbaths and whirlpools replete with hydrotherapy, chromatherapy and aromatherapy to ergonomic soaking tubs, and from taller vanities to sensor faucets.

Clearly, a product that promotes, facilitates and exemplifies Universal Design and its principles doesn’t have to be sterile, or be reminiscent of a hospital or nursing home setting. Rather, these products just have to be accessible to everyone who uses them, and benefit everyone who uses them in one way or another.

Manufacturers in the kitchen and bath industry have certainly run with this idea in recent years, creating products that are not only accessible, but as stylish and upscale as they are safe. They particularly appeal to the Baby Boomers who are fast approaching their golden years, and to other demographic groups who often now have both elderly parents and young children to care for in the same home.

Kitchen and bath designers have also noticed this need for Universally Designed products and accessible design. In fact, at the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show this year in Chicago, one focus of the educational program was Universal Design.

In one presentation, “Unlimited by Design: Kitchens and Bathrooms,” Drue Lawlor, FASID, NCIDQ, urged designers to understand the challenges and requirements that clients face as they age, and understand that their abilities may gradually diminish over time.

“With the aging of the Baby Boomers, there is a greater awareness of the need for residential spaces to adapt to changing needs. Universal Design is becoming a topic many designers are helping clients incorporate into their living environments. This challenge is particularly evident in the design of kitchens and baths,” says Lawlor, a Universal Design instructor, one of the principals of CLP Interiors in Pasadena, CA, and a co-principal of the Dallas, TX-based education-works, inc./education-works.com.

Mary H. Yearns, Ph.D., professor and extension housing specialist at Iowa State University, gave a HERA Academic Research presentation entitled, “Quick Change Cabinets: A Universal Alternative to ADA Requirements.” She talked about the development of cabinet prototypes for a Universal Design kitchen that can accommodate a wide variety of users. A modular approach is used, allowing cabinet components to be quickly changed with the use of a few simple tools.

Yearns says that “instead of installing accessible cabinets in the ‘handicapped’ units and ‘standard’ cabinets in the rest, the same modular cabinets could be installed in all units and easily changed, as needed, when new residents of various sizes and abilities come and go.” She worked with Pat Patterson at the university on the one-year study – The Universal Design Kitchen Project – that was the basis for her presentation. The resulting modular cabinets (“Kwik-Change Kabinets”) were designed by a research team at Iowa State University with funding from the U.S. Administration on Aging.