Active Adult Living Tips: Decorating Your Home with Common Sense

10 Decorating Tips to Ensure a Safe Home

A lovely home is what everyone wants; a home where everything has its place, where everything looks beautiful, and is the envy of your friends. Making your home lovely is all well and good. However, practicality and common sense are necessary, and in most cases, essential when you are decorating a new home or redecorating. Let’s face it, what you need above all, now that you are 55+ is comfort, affordability, and safety. Unfortunately, appearance in your home has to come forth when decorating. So, if you are an active adult senior, looking to decorate your home space, how will you decorate your home?

1. If you are considering area rugs or scatter rugs at various places in your home, think again. These are extremely dangerous as it increases your risk of a fall. The best and safest way to carpet your home is to consider wall-to-wall carpeting. Remember to keep the carpeting a contrasting color from the wall color. This will help to differentiate the two.
2. Make sure the chairs and sofas you are choosing are sturdy and secure, even though you find flimsy modern designs that seem to be standing on two legs, not four! You do not want to sit on a chair and have it break under you.
3. Keep the traffic area free of clutter and wider. For example, coffee tables may not be necessary for seniors. They take up floor space and can become an obstacle that may not be easy for many to maneuver around. In fact, if you are considering a coffee table, consider keeping it on the side of the sofa and not in the middle.
4. Make sure your home is free of stuff with sharp points. You may forget they are there, and accidents can occur.
5. Plenty of light is necessary for your home. If you have to put drapes on, consider translucent ones or blinds. These are safe as at any given time there is light coming through the windows. However, you should watch out for glare.
6. 6. Replace all doorknobs with levers or pulls. Most of you may be suffering from arthritis. Levers or pulls on doors make it easier to open and close them, although you may find them less aesthetic than some of the dainty doorknobs.
7. Bathrooms should have slip-resistant flooring and a grab bar near the entrance to the tub or shower. This prevents any falls that occur in the bathrooms. If possible, you should consider a walk-in bathtub.
8. Consider installing a single-control faucet with an anti-scald device. This prevents confusion and accidental burns.
9. Consider having kitchen countertops at two levels; one level where you can stand and the other for sitting. This enables you to go about your work even if you are in any kind of pain.
10. Never have things hanging on the wall behind the stove. Reaching for items on this wall is extremely dangerous.

When you are a 55+ senior, decorating your home is not about making it look good, but safe and secure for you. So, apply a little common sense and practicality, and decorate your home to be a safe and comfortable home.

Most active adult communities are well equipped with most of these features as they are specially built for 55+ seniors. If you are considering moving to a new home, you should consider a home in an active adult community. This way, you are ensured of a safe home that also looks good. Visit our website ActiveAdultLiving.com and take a look at more than 8,500 communities where homes are built safe and beautifully amidst wonderful amenities and surroundings.