There are a range of mobility aids available that can help you move more easily around your home, from walking sticks and frames all the way through to bath handles and lifts. However, if you’re looking to move between floors in your home, then you have two options: a home lift or a stairlift. So how are each different, and which one is best for moving around your home as a wheelchair user?
The Difference Between Homelifts and Stairlifts
First, it’s good to establish what the difference between a stairlift and a homelift is. You may already have heard of a stairlift before, they’ve been a popular domestic lift for years that you can attach to your staircase in order to travel between floors in your home easily and safely.
In comparison, home lifts are a more recent innovation that have become increasingly popular in homes up and down the UK. Home lifts are domestic platform lifts that allow you to travel between two floors in your home, like from the ground floor living room to your first floor bedroom.
Both stairlifts and homelifts are handy domestic lifts in order to ensure you can still travel around your home with freedom, and ensure you can continue to enjoy multiple floors of your home without having to move out and downsize.
Choosing a Wheelchair Lift for Your House
So when it comes to choosing between a stairlift or a home lift in your home, which is better? Both are very useful mobility aids, and both make travelling between floors in your house much easier and safer. However, because of the make-up of the two devices, they have different properties and different qualities when it comes to aiding a wheelchair user.
With assistance, a wheelchair user can use both a stairlift and a home lift effectively. However, there is a big benefit to choosing a home lift large enough to fit a wheelchair inside the carriage, just like the Stiltz Trio Classic and Stiltz Trio Plus can do. It means you can wheel yourself in, operate the control panel, and exit when you reach the different floor.
When compared to a regular stairlift, this is a much easier process. If you’re a wheelchair user who requires a stairlift, then you first have to move from the wheelchair to the stairlift, and once you’re on the next floor, you’ll also have to find a solution so that a wheelchair is available to exit onto. This would either require having two wheelchairs, or requiring the assistance of a friend, family member or other carer to transport your wheelchair up or down the stairs.
However, the solution to this can be a wheelchair stairlift, but on narrow or curved staircases, there might not be the space to install one. Another benefit to choosing a home lift as your home wheelchair lift is that it can be installed in almost any space in the home, so isn’t restricted to any staircase space.
Quality Homelifts with Multicare Mobility
Homelifts have a very clear benefit when it comes to wheelchair users, but stairlifts are still a very useful domestic lift option to help you travel between floors in your home. At Multicare, we are a Stiltz partner, meaning we provide a range of Stiltz home lifts which we can install in your home.
If you’re after a wheelchair lift for your house, then you can choose between the Stiltz Trio Classic and Stiltz Trio+ options, both of which are big enough to transport a wheelchair user, someone with a walking frame, or three people standing.
In addition to the Trio range, we also have the compact Stiltz Duo Classic and Stiltz Duo+ models, which are able to transport two people at a time between floors. As well as moving people, home lifts are also a useful way of transporting heavy goods between floors without having to carry them up the stairs.
If you want to know more about installing a domestic lift in your home, then get in touch with a Multicare Mobility expert today.