Flooring Selection In An Accessible Dwelling

Flooring in a supported dwelling is asked to do four things at once, and the four do not naturally agree.

Be slip resistant when wet. Be easy to push a wheelchair across. Survive equipment, hoists and heavy traffic. Be cleanable to a standard a care environment needs.

A finish chosen on appearance satisfies none of them reliably.

Slip resistance, where it actually matters

The wet areas, and the path to them.

A bathroom floor in an accessible dwelling is wet far more often and over a far larger area than a conventional one, because a roll-in shower has no barrier containing the water. Which means the whole floor is a wet area floor, not just the shower zone.

The specification is a rated wet slip resistance appropriate to a barrier-free wet area, confirmed by test on the actual product rather than assumed from its appearance. A textured look does not imply a rating.

The trade-off is cleanability. A heavily textured surface grips better and holds soil, and in a care setting that matters. The resolution is usually a slip-resistant sheet vinyl with a welded seam, which gives a rating and a cleanable continuous surface in one product, and that is why it dominates in this building type.

Rolling resistance, which nobody specifies

A wheelchair user propelling themselves, or a support worker pushing a chair, is fighting the floor.

Carpet with underlay is the worst case. It feels generous and it roughly doubles the effort required to cross a room, and over a day in a dwelling that is a real imposition rather than a detail.

Where carpet is wanted, it is a low-pile commercial product direct-stuck with no underlay. Where it is not required, hard flooring throughout is the better answer for mobility and for cleaning.

Level changes

A threshold is a trip hazard for an ambulant resident and a barrier for a wheeled one.

Which means the floor finishes are selected together so their finished heights match, and the junction between them is a flush trim rather than a ramped one. That is a coordination decision made at design stage, because it depends on the thickness of every finish and on the substrate set-down in the wet areas.

In a factory build the set-down is formed in the floor cassette during fabrication, which is one of the places the controlled environment helps: a graded, set-down wet area floor made indoors to a measured fall is more reliable than one formed on site, which is the same argument as [waterproofing in a factory-built building](/blog/waterproofing-in-a-factory-built-building).

Durability under equipment

A ceiling hoist moves a person, and the floor underneath takes the traffic of a support worker working around it. A manual hoist has small hard castors that concentrate load.

Soft vinyl plank and thin laminate both mark under point loads and under castor traffic. The finishes that hold up are commercial grade sheet products, correctly adhered, with the wear layer specified for a care environment rather than a domestic one.

Skirtings matter here too. A coved skirting integral with a sheet floor removes the junction that collects water and the edge that a wheelchair footplate catches.

Cleanability and infection control

In supported accommodation the floor is cleaned frequently and sometimes aggressively.

Welded seams rather than butt joints. A product that tolerates the cleaning agents in use. Coved junctions at walls so there is no open corner. No grout lines in the main circulation areas if it can be avoided, because grout is the part that fails first under repeated wet cleaning.

What this means for the specification

The useful sequence is to set the performance requirements first, then choose from what satisfies them.

Wet slip rating for the wet areas and their approach. Rolling resistance acceptable for self-propulsion. Wear rating for a care environment. Cleanable, with continuous surfaces and coved junctions. Flush at every doorway.

That list eliminates most of the residential flooring market before anybody looks at a colour, which is the correct order and the one most projects reverse. Where the resident's needs are known, the selection can be tuned further, and where they are not it is specified for the widest range of needs the dwelling may have to meet over its life, which is the whole point of [designing for changing resident needs](/blog/designing-for-changing-resident-needs).

Our standards.

MADEmodular / MADEbetter.