Thinking a home elevator is a luxury is not surprising given that technological advances in the elevators themselves and techniques that speed designing and elevator installation are all fairly recent. Residential elevators are more flexible and more affordable than ever before. Often homeowners do not consider a home elevator until they are faced with advanced stages of limited mobility. But we encourage homeowners to consider other reasons to install an elevator in their home.
1. Home Elevators Make Your Home More Convenient
A residential elevator offers many everyday benefits. Ever dread the multiple trips up the stairs to take shopping bags, small furniture, bulky items like folded laundry, heavy vacuum cleaners, boxes of holiday decor destined for the attic, or anything with a baby in arms or toddler at your side? Transporting people and things between floors is so much easier and faster when you can put it in the elevator cab with you for one safe trip up or down.
2. Home Elevators Make Your Home Safer
Stairs are not safe ever really. Though they are the primary means of getting from one floor to another in most homes and low-rise buildings, they are a big source of home accidents. Not only for those with early stages of mobility issues, but also for children and healthy adults, especially in homes with pets that can get underfoot.
A elevator in your home provides a very safe way for you, your family, and your guests to travel from floor to floor.
From time to time, we will chat with homeowners who show concern for just how safe elevators really are.
There are guidelines and helpful hints to make elevator use safer especially when children and pets are in your home. But many of the elevator myths just are not true and nothing to worry about. Below are some other articles we have written to help you better understand those areas of concern to become more confident that a residential elevator is right for your family.
Tips to Make Home Elevator Use Safer
3. Today's Home Elevators Offer Many Style Options
In the not so distant past, home elevators were not only rare and more expensive than today, but also were very utilitarian in their style. Very little decor, if any, and they seemed rather complicated. But today’s modern home elevators operate with the same familiar features of push buttons on the landings for calling the cab and buttons in the cab for selecting your floor. They have in-cab phones and lighting.
Home elevators are affordable and offer many style selections whether you choose a traditional hydraulic or traction elevator in a shaft constructed in your home or a revolutionary vacuum elevator that stands alone with very low construction costs because no pit, machine room, or shaft is needed.
Elevators today can be designed to match the decor of your home whether it is in selecting the styles and colors of the landing doors that will be visible at all times or inside the cab for when the elevator is called and the landing door is opened. Even our vacuum elevators come in a wide variety of frame colors and glass tings.
We can help you understand possible home elevator installation locations depending on the framing and architecture of your home. That helps determine the styles that you may want to consider to enhance your home’s visual appeal.
4. A Home Elevator Can Increase Your Home's Value
Homeowners are wise to consider their ability to recoup costs to improve their homes. According to many real estate researchers and home renovation experts such as bobvila.com, a well-designed elevator that fits the character of the home can add 10% to a home’s value.
So if you live in a $750,000 home, a 10% increase in value is $75,000, so an investment of $30000 to $50000 makes a lot of sense especially if you need an elevator to safely stay in your home that you love. But even in more modest homes, when you consider the costs of moving and the approximate 10% increase in value, installing a home elevator may make financial sense.
While elevators can be hidden or as with our vacuum elevators often placed in view with great style, other mobility solutions such as stair chairlifts and wheelchair lifts can detract from the value of a home. So even those these lower-cost mobility solutions may seem appealing, the fact that elevators are safer if you have many visitors, especially children in the home and that elevators may add to the value of your home, you should consider the option of installing a home elevator.
With an aging population and more families opting to have the grandparents move into their home to make caring for each other easier and more affordable, more and more people will be looking to buy homes with elevators or that are designed to accommodate elevator installation. This will make the value of the homes with elevators appreciate even more.
5. Home Elevators Make it Possible to Age in Place
Though there are many reasons to consider a home elevator, the most frequent reason homeowners come to us for a quote is because they or a family member is facing an illness or has lost mobility due to an accident. Installing an elevator to overcome the mobility issues often makes sense financially and emotionally. Many imagine make more memories in their family home with their grandbabies or great grands.
There are many factors to consider if aging-in-place makes sense for you and your family. We talk to hundreds of families every year who have to make this decision.
We wrote an article to help you consider the many factors, some often hidden, you should consider when deciding to move or age in place.
We look forward to seeing you in our showroom to experience our home elevator technology for yourself. Or invite our elevator experts to your home to provide you with a free, no-obligation quote. Our certified aging-in-place specialists will answer all your questions about costs of home elevators and which will fit your needs and your home best. Call (713) 360 7353.
