Most Older Adults Want Universal Design. Almost None Will Ask for It. What That Means for Architects, Designers, and Builders.

AARP just published new research on how older adults feel about universal design, and the headline number isn't the one you'd expect. It isn't that people don't want it. Sixty-eight percent of adults 50 and older say universal design features matter to them. Fifty-nine percent think these features, wider doorways, curbless showers, better lighting, should just be standard in new construction. Only 15 percent disagree. By any measure, that's a strong, clear preference.

Here's the number that actually matters for how you run your business: only 35 percent say they'd go looking for a home that has these features. Not that they wouldn't want one if they found it. That they wouldn't go looking for it themselves.

That's a 33 to 24 point gap, depending on which figure you compare it to, and I don't think it's a contradiction. I think it's the most useful piece of data a design or building professional could ask for right now.

What the Research Actually Found

AARP surveyed 1,347 Americans age 50 and older in August 2025, through NORC's Foresight 50+ Consumer Omnibus, and published the results in March 2026. It's self-reported attitude and intent data, not a count of what's actually in people's homes, and it's worth naming that plainly. It tells us what people say they want and say they'd do, not what they've measured or acted on. That distinction matters, because the gap between the two is exactly the story here.

68% say universal design features are important to them. 59% say these features should be the default in new homes, not an upgrade. And still, only 35% say they'd actually seek one out. People are telling AARP one thing about their values and a different thing about their next move.

Why the Gap Exists

I don't think most people who fall into that gap are being inconsistent. I think they don't have the vocabulary, or the permission, to ask for what they want.

"Universal design" isn't a phrase most homeowners use in a design meeting. Most people don't walk in asking for wider doorways or blocking behind the shower wall for a future grab bar. What they say, if they say anything at all, is something closer to "we'd like this to still work for us in twenty years" or "my mother's having a hard time in her house, and I don't want that to be us." They're describing the outcome, not the feature set. And more than a few, in my experience, are quietly reluctant to ask directly, because asking can feel like admitting something about aging that they're not ready to say out loud in a room with a designer or a contractor they just met.

That reluctance isn't a flaw in the client. It's a gap in the conversation. And it's one the professional in the room is better positioned to close than the client is.

What This Means If You Design, Build, or Remodel Homes

Waiting for a client to ask for universal design features by name means waiting for something that, per AARP's own data, happens for roughly a third of the people who actually want it. The other two-thirds are sitting across the table from you right now, in a kitchen consultation or a bathroom remodel walkthrough, wanting something they aren't going to say.

That's not a sales problem. It's a fluency problem. Knowing that a feature exists is different from knowing how to bring it up in a way that lands as good design, not as a hint that the client is getting older. A curbless shower, a wider hallway, lever handles instead of knobs, blocking in the walls for a future grab bar, these read as smart, forward-thinking choices when they're framed that way, because that's exactly what they are. CAPS certification training is built specifically around that fluency: how to introduce these options early in a project, in language that never makes a client feel singled out or diagnosed, and how to spot where they belong in a floor plan before the walls are already closed up.

The Business Case, Stated Plainly

AARP's data makes the case for this training about as directly as a single number can. Fifty-nine percent of people 50 and older already think these features should be standard. That's not a market you need to convince. That's a market you need to reach before the framing conversation happens somewhere else, or doesn't happen at all and the client retrofits at three times the cost five years later. CAPS certification training exists to give architects, designers, and builders the practical fluency to raise these options proactively, at the right point in a project, without it ever feeling like a specialty add-on or a conversation about decline.

I've sat in enough client meetings to know the difference between a designer who waits to be asked and one who quietly builds the option into the plan and mentions it in passing. The second version almost always gets a better reaction, because it doesn't put the client in the position of having to ask for something they weren't sure they were allowed to want. That's the whole opportunity in this data. Not a new feature list. A better way of starting the conversation.

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Fritzi Gros-Daillon, MS, CAPS, SHSS, is an NAHB Master Instructor and 2019 NAHB Educator of the Year. She teaches CAPS courses nationwide and consults with builders, remodelers, designers, OTs, and real estate professionals on aging-in-place home assessment and modification.