Searching For Stylish, Disabled Living At The Ideal Home Show 2013

The Ideal Home Show, Earls Court

As part of our ongoing quest to find helpful and stylish products for the less able, this week I took a trip to the Ideal Home Show, to see what they have to offer in terms of assisted living.

Held in the exhibition centre at Earls Court, the Ideal Home Show makes for quite an experience. The first thing to note is that it’s massive – there are 600 exhibitors, thousands of products available and live demonstrations taking place on a number of stages. The second thing is that there almost no exhibits display products for assisted living at all. There’s so much on offer but there seems to be little thought to the less able home owner.

On the promotional video, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen (nauseatingly) says “be here or be dodecahedron, which is the new square” but, to be honest, if you’re looking for products for the less able you’ll have a tough time finding them here. Although there is an impressive array of things to see, there is barely a hand rail in sight.

A view of the Ideal Home Show – It’s pretty big

In a way the Ideal Home Show is like its own little world. There’s so much to see as you endlessly wander around the exhibition area taking in all the different exhibits. Then if you get too tired, you can relax with a glass of bubbly at the Hydropool Champagne Bar while someone swims about in a nearby hot tub.

Upstairs, amongst delicious smelling food stands and a host of stalls selling a variety of products – which vary from the genuinely interesting to basic market/shopping channel, tat – I overheard more than a couple of people showing off about how important they are in the world of branding. I hoped that whoever came up with the names for White Rocks cleaning powder and Spazazz bubble bath, both of which were on display, weren’t celebrating themselves too much!

For some reason the show’s star attraction was a replica of Del Boy’s flat from Only Fools And Horses. It seemed quite a strange thing for the Ideal Home Show to be showing this monument of trashy taste, but it was a very popular. The queue to get in stretched around the corner of the fake facade of Nelson Mandela House.

Del Boy’s Flat

At about two thirty, I went to have a look at the Ideal Super Theatre where there was a talk on ‘Technology Innovations for the Home’. When I arrived the presenter was helpfully explaining to the audience what a TV is. Apparently he felt the need to tell us all what a TV used to look like and that they have since become less bulky but with bigger screens and more channels. Captivating.

In fairness, the best talks, with TV stars like Alan Titchmarsh, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen, George Clarke and Melinda Messenger tend to be on at eleven o’clock. Two thirty may be the graveyard shift.

I’m not trying to be negative about the show but there really was very little on offer. Having said that, it’s not all bad. I should mention that the access in the exhibition centre seemed to be very good. There were ramps, lifts and disabled toilets in the venue; just not in the exhibits. It was interesting to look at the Ideal Home Magazine Room Sets which were all very stylishly decorated. But it would have been nice if they’d thought to do something similar with accessible room sets.

Display Dining room

Although I felt that the Ideal Home Show lacked a bit in terms of ideas for an accessible home, there were still a few useful products on offer for the less able. With quite a lot of effort, it was possible to find the odd assistive product. Here’s what I managed to track down:

New World Bathrooms

New World Bathrooms supply, install and service all types of Steam Rooms and Shower enclosures. They were the only bathroom exhibit which had any sense of trying to provide accessible products. Theirs were the only grab rails I saw in the entire exhibition (and some of them were just towel racks).

Some of their showers are quite stylish and they’re all pretty good in terms of technology. They have advanced-looking control panels and steam valves in them. Some are quite standard; others more stylish. One in particular looked quite nice, with wooden paneling on the floor.

In terms of access, although they are the best thing I could see at the Home Show, they’re far from perfect. On the plus side, they were alone in the fact that they all have seats inside. On the other hand, none of them are possible to wheel directly into and some have quite high steps to get into them. There are some hand rails in most of them and there is a potential for more but when I spoke to them they said that it’s not always possible to make every design accessible.

They’re not perfect but they were still one of the most accessible things at the Ideal Home Show.

New World Bathrooms – complete with a seat

Adjustamatic

Adjustamatic make adjustable beds with in built massage systems that are said to help arthritic pain, lack of mobility, spinal disorders and other ailments. Their Cyclo-massage system has been independently certified by the MHRA and they say it is “regarded by health professionals as ‘the finest in the world'”. They also have a technological design that means when they are adjusted, they never move away from the wall, as some other adjustable beds do.

They pride themselves on being “not just therapeutic – but aesthetic too” and they are reasonably stylish for adjustable beds. They come with a good amount of choice in their design and some, such as in the picture below, really do look quite attractive, if not breathtakingly so.

They also sell chairs and sofas which are quite comfy but not particularly stylish. They’re the sort of chairs that you can normally tell are designed to move about more than to look good. A little clunky but their heart’s in the right place.

Adjustamatic beds

Massage Chairs

There were tonnes of different massage chairs at the Ideal Home Show. I think that they were there, mostly, to sell one-off massages to visitors, rather than to sell the chairs themselves (although you could do both). They ranged from super high tech, sci-fi looking chairs, to those pads that hang over the back of a normal chair.

Most of these products, no matter how simple they looked, claimed to provide relief to people with arthritis, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and many other conditions. They seemed to be doing a good trade as a lot of the chairs were occupied. Some of them were quite stylish and might be worth looking into (admittedly, others were just those chairs that you see in service stations).

With an honorable mention to INADA Massage Chairs, which were quite good, OSIM’s chairs looked the most stylish at Earls Court. Their newest chair, the uDivine App Chair, links a mobile app with a top of the range massage chair. The app enhances the massage experience by advising you on what treatment to select and providing audio visual accompaniment to the massage. They look a little more stylish than the INADA chairs but the older OSIM model, the uSoffa Runway Chair is possibly the trendiest option of all.

uSoffa Runway – pick of the bunch in terms of massage chairs?

Poggenpohl Kitchen

This Poggenpohl kitchen set isn’t really gauged towards assisting the less able but the cabinets are handleless which can be easier to use for some people. They simply need to be pushed and they slide out, which can be easier for people in wheelchairs or who can’t grip easily.

Also it is just very minimalist, sleek and easy on the eye kitchen set and the Home Show’s truly practical, assistive products have pretty much dried up at this point.

Poggen Pohl Kitchen

Sofas

I started clutching at straws after a while for accessible ideas and I suppose a sofa’s a sofa  whether you’re able bodied or not. These sofas aren’t assistive but it struck me that they are very similar. If you need a new sofa, orange may be the colour right now.

OK, this is getting desperate!

Stressless Sofa

Divani Italiani Sofa

Suffice to say, there were a few ideas and products in terms of stylish, assisted living at the Ideal Home Show, but I didn’t feel that they were nearly enough. So I’ve decided to include some other useful ideas that I’ve gathered from people at Blue Badge Style. These are products that could be shown at an alternative Ideal Home Show for the less able:

Disabled Kitchens design bespoke kitchens and kitchen units for wheelchair users and for assisted living. They have a range of height adjusted worktops that can be altered to suit the particular user.

Disabled Kitchens “don’t think you should have to compromise on style when you create your accessible kitchen”. Cabinets are available in 100 different colours and styles and matching disability aids complete the look and accessibility of the kitchen. There are also 300 hundred different worktop styles to choose from, including Formica worktops, Axiom worktops, Duropal worktops and Prima worktops.

Disabled Kitchens

Similarly, Howdens Joinery offers inclusive kitchen products to make life easier for less able people. They sell a range of rise and fall worktop systems, adjustable cabinet brackets and pull-down shelves, along with an extensive number of pull-out accessories. Their cupboard doors come with 170 degree hinges so they are really easy for anyone to get right into.

There are two options at Howdens, built in to the design of the kitchen units to make them more accessible – basically, you can either raise or lower the bottom of the cabinets and surfaces. Lowering the overall height of the unit gives greater accessibility to work surfaces and cabinets. The alternative option is to raise a standard cabinet from the floor. This sounds like it would make things harder, not easier, to reach but it enables wheelchair footplates to pass underneath the cabinet, giving greater access to work surfaces.

Many of their kitchens look really stylish but it’s not entirely clear if the most stylish are also the most accessible. It looks like there may be a bit of a trade off involved to get the most accessible accessories (like rise and fall work surfaces) into the kitchen units. They’re also a trade only business so to find out more and about prices you have to contact them directly.

Howdens Kitchens

Good seats for in the shower can be found at KEUCO. They supply assistive bathroom products that look contemporary and sleek rather than following the usual clinical aesthetic of bathroom aids. These seats, rails and supports look good as part of a modern bathroom. KEUCO’s no-barriers bathroom aids show that safety and comfort don’t have to be a barrier to remaining stylish.

KUECO Bathrooms – amazing tiling not included

Some of the best washbasins with assitive features are made by HEWI. They have sufficient clearance for wheelchair user and a generously sized shelf area for bathroom accessories. The built-in handles can be used to hold onto, or just as a useful towel rail. BBS boss, Fiona has one in her bathroom and says it’s brilliant.

Hewi Sink

Mobeli make a variety of innovative hand rails. One design worth mentioning is their Handi-Grip portable grab bar. It’s made with suction pads on its ends so that you can temporarily stick it to whatever surface you need. It gives you a bit more flexibility in where you want to place a hand rail. Their lengths are adjustable so they fit all sorts of needs.

Mobeli grab bar

Another good product from Mobeli is the M-Rail™ – a rail designed to fit snugly against your mattress and help you get comfortable, reposition, sit-up, balance, stand or transfer to a chair or wheelchair. Not massively stylish, but really practical aids. They have lots of other mobility aids, on their website, as well as those mentioned here.

M-Rail

That concludes my alternative and accessible Ideal Home Show. I think there are some good products in there that can help less able people in their daily lives. It was definitely more helpful that the Earls Court Home Show – more assisted living product ideas in a few minutes on Blue Badge Style than in a few hours at the Ideal Home Show. And you didn’t even have to leave the house!