I was recently tasked with re-designing various aspects of a lovely home in Cambridge so that its owners could stay there as long as possible as they grew older. They were only middle aged but were thinking ahead. They loved their neighborhood with all of its boutiques and gourmet food shops, its proximity to Boston, and its familiar sights and sounds. They loved the memories they were making there. And they knew that if they planned for the future now, it would be easier to stay put than if they had to work through remaining in their home in the midst of a life-changing emergency.

One of the things I designed for them was an outdoor lift. It was three and a half feet from the driveway up to the first floor, and the electric lift would someday allow them to access their front door with ease if they needed a walker or wheelchair.

How do you accommodate stairs without changing your home’s architecture? An electric chair lift is the solution to traversing the entry stairs into this Cambridge, MA, home. Architects will think creatively about accommodating your Aging in Place needs which means you will have a great looking solution.

It was an unusual accommodation for an unusual situation. Most preparation for aging in place translates from house to house.

In New England, that often means making sure that a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom can all be created on one level. Here are ways to work through the design challenges, which, if played right, become design opportunities. That is, aging in place does not mean turning your house into a small-scale nursing home with utilitarian fixtures and ugly finishes. If you properly deploy the right design elements, your home when you’re 90 can look and feel just as terrific as when you’re 40 or 50. Here’s what to consider.

Bathroom

Often, a home’s first floor has a half bath but no shower. So, space for a 3-foot by 5-foot shower has to be carved out. People are often reluctant to add a shower on the first floor. They think it’s not going to be used often enough. But it’s not just an overflow shower as a family grows up. It allows guests to come and stay comfortably without using the family bathroom upstairs.

A good time to add a shower downstairs is during the addition of some other downstairs space, such as a mudroom off the kitchen. Alternately, the space for a shower can be carved out of a closet or utility room. Ways to keep it from looking like a bathroom in a nursing home but still accommodating someone with physical limitations:

• Install a zero threshold shower so bathing becomes barrier-free. It has the added bonus of making a room look bigger because the floor tile can extend into the shower without a break; the space doesn’t look cut up.

• Design the shower for a curtain rather than a glass door. Someone with mobility issues might need a second person to help with showering, and a glass door abruptly cuts off space; you really need the full 3 feet by 5 feet for two people to maneuver.

• Install a hand-held shower along with a shower head. If someone is seated, they can’t easily move themselves into or out of the water stream coming from a shower head. A hand-held shower will also keep the helper from getting soaked. (In the meantime, it’s a luxurious feeling to spray the water from a hand-held piece directly onto your hair or other areas or your body. It’s what the Europeans do.)

• Vanity height is generally 33 to 34 inches. Keep it at the lower end for easy access from a wheelchair. Your eye won’t notice the difference.

• Make sure the sink is pulled to the leading edge of the vanity so you won’t have to reach over as far, and choose a vanity layout that leaves open the space where your knees would be in a wheelchair. It needn’t read “wheelchair-bound.”

• Instead of a medicine cabinet above the sink, just put a mirror there, and install a custom-designed in-wall medicine chest that you can roll over to, if need be.

• The standard rim height for a toilet seat is 15 to 16 inches, which can become hard to lower yourself into or out of over time. But all the major plumbing companies make toilets at “comfort heights” of 17 to 18 and even 19 inches. Easier to get into the seat that way (and no thick, squishy, ugly toilet seat necessary to raise the height).

• Consider installing a wall-hung toilet. The system will be adjustable from about 14 inches all the way up to 20 inches, and that flexibility zone will allow you to customize the height for your level of mobility. The higher the toilet on the wall, the less lowering yourself into the seat that will be required. You will also gain 9 inches in front of the toilet because the tank remains in the wall — great if you have a tight bathroom space, because it opens up more room for maneuvering a wheelchair or walker.

• Consider levers instead of knobs, both on the door to the bathroom and at the sink. They’re easier to maneuver for someone with arthritis — you’re just pushing rather than twisting. Better still, at the sink, go with voice command to make the water start flowing. Why use your hands at all when Alexa can do the work for you?

• Widen the doorway to allow wheelchair clearance, but just a little. In a healthcare institution, the door width is 36 inches. You don’t need all that. Just go to 32 inches — 2 inches wider than a standard door opening. It’s wide enough, and it will keep your home feeling like a residence instead of a facility.

Often, you can “prep” a bathroom or other room for aging in place while the walls are opened up. For instance, if you don’t need a grab bar in the shower right away (and there are beautiful grab bars ones that come in any finish you choose), put some plywood into the framing as you’re creating the shower so that one can easily be screwed into that strong substrate down the line.

A zero clearance entry to the shower is a key concept for a bathroom with aging in place features. This shower has ample space for a caregiver to help bathe someone in a wheelchair. The ample lighting is bright, cheerful and inviting!

Kitchen

With the kitchen, much of what you want to think about are reachability and clearance. With that in mind:

• Choose a sink with an apron, like a farmhouse sink. That pulls the sink 3 inches closer to you, which means less bending toward it.

• If you have the room, design your kitchen with at least 42 inches from counter edge to counter edge. Any less, and it might be difficult to maneuver with a wheelchair or walker.

• Get levers for the sink instead of cross handles. Better still, go with motion sensors or voice activation. Some faucets can be turned on simply by waving your hand in front of them. And voice activation has reached the point that you can instruct the sink to pour, say, only one cup of water, or whatever amount you need. The flow will stop on its own when it’s supposed to.

• Deploy seamless floor finishes, not tiles with space between them or rounded edges that can make them difficult to traverse. The best bet might be linoleum, which comes in a sheet. This is not your grandmother’s linoleum. There are fantastic choices on the market today.

• Choose exquisite but very low-maintenance finishes for countertops. Quartzite or Ceasarstone is going to keep much more easily than marble, which will make you worry every time you leave out a lemon or other item that can leave an acid stain —like a glass of red wine that will produce a ring if you go to bed without putting it in the dishwasher.

• Go under-counter for storage as much as possible. That’s true for appliances as well as storage space. That way, if you can’t stand easily in the future, you can reach everything from down low. You can now choose refrigerators and freezers that come in drawers, along with drawer-designed dishwashers and microwaves. It’s also a good idea to go under-counter for things you might normally keep on top of the counter: the coffee maker, loaves of bread, your breakfast mugs. Reaching down is usually much easier than reaching up. Dishes can go down under, too, kept in place by wooden dowels so they don’t jiggle precariously as you open and close the drawers. Bonus: The more you hide down below, the more open and clean your kitchen will look — always.

• Make sure to put in beautiful task lighting and, where applicable, under-cabinet lighting. They will help if visiual acuity lessens over time.

Note the ample knee clearance under the countertop work area. The dishwasher is elevated off the floor by 8”, and the wall oven is lower than a typical installation height. The corner sink is shallower than a typical sink, but it is much easier to access and reach into when sitting in a wheelchair.

Bedroom

No, you do not have to put a hospital bed in the middle of the living room. But in the first-floor space that you designate for a bedroom when climbing the stairs might no longer be an option, choose a mattress that would make it easy to transfer from a wheelchair without having to jump up or lower yourself too far down. Other ideas for a bedroom that will allow you to remain in your home down the line:

• Design closets so that your clothes hang at about half the height they normally do. That way, you can pull them off a hangar from a chair rather than a standing position. There are many closet systems on the market now that are extremely customizable for your specific needs.

• Go with hardwood floors or a floor with low-pile carpeting. Plush, high-pile carpet is difficult to run wheels across.

• Have enough electric outlets installed right where your nightstand is going to go. You want everything accessible to you from the bed so you don’t have to go fumbling in other locations. You also want to install items in your home that work remotely. This includes a remote thermostat in case you get too cold or warm during the night, a remote alarm system, and a keypad you can keep by your bedside for other systems as well — perhaps the electronic raising or lowering of window shades. You don’t want to have to keep getting out of bed to activate or deactivate something.

• If you keep a television in your bedroom, have it installed at a height that is going to work for you no matter what.

• Try to make sure the bedroom has enough room for someone to sit and monitor you if need be — or just keep you company.

If you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.