Two-Thirds of Homeowners Now Factor Accessibility Into Bathroom Remodels. Here's What They're Actually Choosing.

Most homeowners planning a bathroom remodel never say the word "accessible." They say "this needs to still work in ten years." New data from Houzz shows just how common that instinct actually is, and what it means for the professionals working with these clients every day.

I sit across from a lot of clients who never say the word "accessible." They say, "this needs to still work in ten years." They say, "my mother-in-law is over here more than she used to be." They say, "we're not getting any younger, and neither is this house." What they're describing, almost every time, is exactly what a new Houzz study just put a number on.

The 2025 U.S. Houzz Bathroom Trends Study surveyed more than 1,700 homeowners who were planning, mid-project, or recently finished with a bathroom renovation. More than two-thirds of them, 68%, said they factored special needs into that project. That's up four percentage points from the year before. This isn't a niche request anymore. It's the majority of the room.

What the Data Actually Shows

Of the homeowners building special needs into their bathroom project, 41% said they were addressing the current needs of an aging household member, up four points year-over-year. An even larger share, 49%, said they were planning ahead for a household member's future aging needs. Smaller shares cited household members with disabilities (11%) or young children (5%). Nearly half of all respondents, 47%, said they expect these needs to show up sometime in the next five years or beyond. This is forward planning, not crisis response.

The specific features track closely with what any CAPS-trained professional would recognize as core aging-in-place design: low-curb showers (52%), additional lighting (31%), and fully curbless showers (28%) topped the list. Among homeowners adding specialty bathtub upgrades, more than half, 55%, included features aimed at safety and relaxation together, up five points since 2023, with nonslip flooring (24%) and grab bars (23%) the most common additions. Wet rooms, open-concept spaces with little or no barrier between the shower and the rest of the room, now appear in one out of every six renovated bathrooms, up three points from the prior year. Among homeowners who built one, a quarter cited increased accessibility as part of the motivation, alongside better use of space and aesthetic appeal.

The Client Isn't Always Naming What They Want

Here's the part worth sitting with as a professional: most of these homeowners are not walking into a design consultation and saying "I need an ADA-compliant bathroom." They're saying "I want this to feel open and modern" or "I want good lighting" or "I'd rather not deal with a step into the shower." The Houzz data confirms what a lot of remodelers and designers already sense from experience: accessibility is being requested constantly, just rarely by that name.

That matters for how a professional listens. A curbless shower request can be a style preference, a maintenance preference, or a long-term mobility plan, often all three at once. Nothing about how the client phrases the request tells you which one is driving it, and most of the time, the client hasn't fully separated those motivations themselves. The work is meeting the request as asked while quietly building in the details, blocking for a future grab bar, adequate turning radius, slip-resistant flooring, that make the space work whether the household's needs stay the same or change.

What This Means for How You Have the Conversation

The professional move here isn't to reframe every bathroom remodel as a medical conversation. It's closer to the opposite. The Houzz data shows these features succeeding as design choices first, curbless showers and wet rooms are aesthetic trends as much as accessibility ones, and that's the language that gets a client to say yes without feeling like they're being told they're getting old.

That said, it's worth asking a direct question early in the process, not assuming. Something as simple as, "Are you thinking about this bathroom working for anyone in the household long-term, whether that's an aging parent, a future need, or just wanting this to last?" opens the door without forcing anyone to explain why they're asking. If the answer is yes, that's the moment to talk through blocking for grab bars, shower bench options, or lever hardware, decisions that are inexpensive to build in now and expensive to retrofit later.

The Business Case Is Already Written

Eighty-four percent of the homeowners in this study said they worked with a home professional to guide the renovation. That's the audience this data is really about. If two-thirds of bathroom remodel clients are already thinking about accessibility, whether or not they use that word, then a professional who can speak fluently to both the design and the long-term function side of that request isn't offering a specialty service. They're meeting the client where the client already is.

This is precisely the fluency CAPS certification training is built to give builders, remodelers, and designers: the ability to hear "I want this to still work in ten years" and translate it into a spec, without turning the conversation clinical or missing the request entirely. If you're seeing this pattern in your own client meetings and want to talk through how to build it into your process, reach out directly. It's a conversation I have often.

For a look at what the research says about the safety side of this work, specifically how home modifications reduce fall risk, our earlier piece on home modifications and fall prevention research is a useful next read.

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Upcoming CAPS sessions - October 2026: CAPS I on October 9th (Friday) and October 21st (Wednesday start). CAPS II on October 16th (Friday) and October 22nd (Thursday). CAPS III on October 23rd. All sessions via Zoom. Register at householdguardians.com/caps-training.

If you are a practitioner with a specific consulting question, Fritzi offers one-to-one professional consulting: https://www.householdguardians.com/consulting

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Fritzi Gros-Daillon, MS, CAPS, SHSS, is an NAHB Master Instructor and 2019 NAHB Educator of the Year. She teaches every CAPS course personally.