We planned our home for our retirement and we wanted low maintenance as an important element. So rather than hardwood which needs refinishing, we went with Amtico vinyl flooring....looks great, is cushioned so it is soft under foot yet far more resistant to water than wood and very easy to clean. It was very expensive though. There are other makers of plank vinyl now that you might investigate. This should not be confused with the old fashioned thin sheet vinyl which was victim of every woman's high heel....

We built our home 15 years ago this month, in fact! We plan to stay in it for quite some time. We are 50 and 51, but we have hardwood. We also have an open floorplan and cathedral ceilings. We have a basement and we did have the floors insulated when we had the hardwoods installed. I personally think hardwood would be safer and you can always use fewer rugs to help with safety issues. Just my opinion, but I would always choose hardwood over carpet.

tina

My parents preferred carpet because they found (or my father finds) hard floors slippery, and area rugs too easy to trip over. They were both able at different times to manage a walker on low pile carpet. My mother fell several times, including down the steps and my father has fallen at night and ended up less banged up on carpet. The most serious fall injury my mother had was on vinyl on a slab.

With hardwoods, you have to wear shoes ALL the time or risk slipping. With carpet, there is the inevitable matting and dirt but some cushioning if someone does fall. I have come very close to slipping/falling on our carpeted stairs, however, wearing socks. I will always want hardwoods for the look and ease of cleaning.
in our downstairs were my Dad lives, we have all laminate and he is able to get around very easily with his walker. His bathroom is all tile. The stairwell to the upstairs is carpet, usually looks dirty, and the upstairs main floor is all hardwood with big area rugs. I have no throw rugs anywhere.

Hardwoods are not slippery with bare feet either - which is what I tend to run around in. I should have mentioned also that we have no stairs in our home. Stairs are of course an important consideration!!

I would go for almost anything over carpet--hardwood, vinyl, cork, linoleum.

Here's my thinking.

By the time the flooring will be a concern, you will probably be wearing shoes pretty much all the time, because of foot/back problems, or diabetes or other issues, like cold feet.

The real tripping hazards are those small throw rugs. Not just tripping on the edges, but they tend to slip and move around. Large area rugs tend to stay in place much better. The edges can be taped or nailed down if necessary, or they can be completely removed.

Carpeting can interfere with the movement of walkers.

Carpeting can interfere with the movement of wheelchairs. If you have weak upper body strength, it can be very difficult to push your wheelchair over carpet. Or, if you need someone else to push your chair, again, weak upper body strength is a factor.

Not the most pleasant thing to consider, but some elderly people become incontinent, or take medications that can make getting to the bathroom on time difficult. You need a surface that can be easily cleaned.

Right now, you can cushion the hardwoods with area rugs. Then you can remove them if it becomes necessary. If noise becomes an issue, add more fabric to the room in other ways--curtains, wall hangings, upholstered furniture.

Cork might be a nice alternative to hardwoods. It can be sealed with polyurethane, has some cushioning properties, and some sound-deadening properties. It can be cut to look like hardwood planks, or tiles.

It can be difficult to determine what caused a fall. They are beginning to realize that many falls in the elderly are the result of a broken hip. The hip breaks and then the person falls. Not, as you'd expect, the person falls and the fall causes the break to happen.

I lived with my very arthritic father for the last year of his life and saw him trying to walk with a walker. I also have a young nephew who is physically disabled and uses a manual wheelchair indoors (he isn't allowed to use his power chair indoors because he was destroying the furniture by taking corners a little too tight).

Here is a link that might be useful: sample cork floors

"With hardwoods, you have to wear shoes ALL the time or risk slipping."

I don't agree, unless someone has socks on only. Our hardwood isn't slippery at all to bare feet, even when wet. Maybe it depends on the finish of the hardwood?

I can't comment on the OP's question based on my own experience, but I know the carpets in all of my grandparents' homes get really dirty (a combo of less mobility and reduced eye sight?) I vacuum and mop when I visit, so the hard surface areas get clean, but the carpet really doesn't get clean.

That cleanliness might not be as important of a factor, though...

Being practical, wood or a hard surface is easier I think.

Yes, the room will echo so you do need a large area rug, but they make them so smooth it would be hard to trip over one.

Since every little piece of dust and liquid spots show up, be prepared to vacuum/mop a lot. I use a large dry dust mop most times. But wet mopping is a pain! If you have a housekeeper, then no worry.

I do wear cushioned houseshoes all year. But if I wear socks in the winter, I always wear the no-skid socks, or I WILL fall down. lol There's a lot of cute no-skid socks out there for adults since wood floors are the "in" thing.

We have carpeting in our ranch house, laminate in our kitchen and dining room and ceramic in the bathroom. I had a rug in front of the sink...it had rubber backing but my husband tripped over it and fell. He was not hurt, thank goodness! My answer to your question would be probably hardwood but remember no "throw" rugs anywhere. Personally in the midwest I prefer carpeting in our bedrooms and living areas.

I think the more important aspects to aging in place are structural. Make sure you have a first floor bath, that the baths all have blocking at the right height for grab bars, and ideally that the first floor bath is accessible by wheelchair. This means a 36" door, really although 32" is code.

I would make sure there are outlets in appropriate places at the top and bottom of the staircases for chair lifts.

Consider changing all the door hardware to levers. My mother couldn't even open the front door.

There is very flat carpeting and there is also carpeting that has antimicrobial properties that they are starting to put Back in medical facilities because of the noise of all hard surfaces.

If you have forced air heat and are doing anything with that, you may want to consider an electrostatic filter dust collector on the furnace. My parents house has this and their house doesn't get very dusty at all. He also has someone who comes in and vacuums and cleans once a week so this makes carpeting more practical for him.

You can always change a floor covering pretty easily if really necessary but a basic structural deficiency will make living at home a real problem. My parents were lucky enough to have great insurance and to live in an area where home health aides were responsible, reliable and not that expensive. Without a platform lift, two chair lifts, a bunch of grab bars and a daily person who bathed and dressed my mother, and a neighbor who stopped in every day, my mom would not have been able to be at home the last couple years of her life. (That's a long list of things)

If there had been a first floor bathroom, she probably would have been fine without the chair lifts, and possibly the home health aid for a longer period of time.

I appreciate all of the feedback to my question. You've given me many things to consider.
We are adding a shower to the first floor bathroom. It will be a roll-in shower with all of the necessary blocking for grab bars, etc. We experimented with a borrowed wheelchair to be sure that we will be able to roll under the new vanity and negotiate doorways, etc. Our current office could become a first floor bedroom if needed, and we have specified lever handles everywhere.

We have been working on the plan for months and thought all was settled until I read this weekend about potential problems with hardwood or other hard surfaces. Previously, I had heard mostly about problems with carpet. Your comments have helped me put conflicting advice into perspective.

We probably will go ahead as planned with hardwood. A large area rug in the middle of the living room will probably work since it is not in the main flow of traffic. I will be sure, however, not to use any smaller throw rugs or walk around in slippery socks.

As I said, we have been planning this project for over a year. We are almost ready to sign the construction contract, so I am trying to make final decisions and pin down all of the details.

I appreciate all of the feedback to my question. You've given me many things to consider.
We are adding a shower to the first floor bathroom. It will be a roll-in shower with all of the necessary blocking for grab bars, etc. We experimented with a borrowed wheelchair to be sure that we will be able to roll under the new vanity and negotiate doorways, etc. Our current office could become a first floor bedroom if needed, and we have specified lever handles everywhere.

We have been working on the plan for months and thought all was settled until I read this weekend about potential problems with hardwood or other hard surfaces. Previously, I had heard mostly about problems with carpet. Your comments have helped me put conflicting advice into perspective.

We probably will go ahead as planned with hardwood. A large area rug in the middle of the living room will probably work since it is not in the main flow of traffic. I will be sure, however, not to use any smaller throw rugs or walk around in slippery socks.

As I said, we have been planning this project for over a year. We are almost ready to sign the construction contract, so I am trying to make final decisions and pin down all of the details.

hardwood all the way! I walk bare feet all the time on our hardwood floors, and I have bad feet & hip, and it's not slippery. It's so much easier to clean and keep clean, it ages perfectly. Our floors are almost 80 years old. I'd never go back to carpeting.

tinker, the fact that your floors are 80 years old makes a huge difference. Even the hardwoods my parents used in the addition they put on in the 60s is very very different from the "hard" wood floors today. Some of them are so little dried that after laying them down, they shrink, necessitating people to actually fill the gaps between planks which looks awful and isn't very sanitary if unfilled. Others I've seen cupping which also isn't good. I'm sure there are quality hard woods out there, but one needs to be careful.

Another vote for hardwood flooring!

I NEVER wear shoes and have NEVER slipped on ours.

My mother is in her 80s and has carpet and tile in her house. The only place she tripped and fell was the wood steps in the garage. For looks and clean-ability, hardwood stairs are great, but if you think you might fall, carpet on stairs is softer and you're less likely to bruise.

Yes, I think there must be something in the different finishes because our wood floors are not slippery. Wearing just socks (regular socks) is of course asking for trouble.

Cleaning wise, upkeep is so easy. Unless you use a very dark color, you won't have a problem with dust showing, etc. Of course, every house is different dust wise. We also run an air purifier at times (due to allergies), and it does make a difference in the amount of dust in a house.

Pal - good point about the door levers. We recently changed out my dad's knobs to levers. He has some arthritis in his hands and it can make knobs harder to handle. A bathroom where you can get a wheelchair or walker is something to think about also - we dealt with that with my grandfather.

tina

We put levers on all our doors and love them...esp when coming in from the garage with one's arms full...just lean on the lever with your elbow, and you're in! Only thing is we used to use the door knobs to hang the clean laundry on the way back to the closet, but they fall off of levers....

Grab bars and a built in bench in the shower along with a hand held shower have already proved helpful for us, long before we are in our dotage.

One floor house design was essential and we built a ramp outside to get up to the deck so the only barrier to entering the house is the threshold. The ramp too has already proved useful for visiting friends and relatives who are infirmed.

We built our house 15 years ago this month too and put in hardwood (site finished) and every other thing we could think of to make this house accessible for our later years. We're now in our mid-60's, still love the hardwood, nowhere near needing a walker or wheelchair (we hope), and never had a problem with slipping on the floors. We have a couple of large rugs in 2 rooms and a couple of hall runners, and rugs by outside doors to catch the debris but that's it. No one has tripped. Two spare BRs have carpet and I'll probably eventually have hardwood put in there too. Wide doors & hallways, lever door knobs, real stairway to the attic, and everything on one level.

There is a lot of advice if you google "aging in place" and flooring, e.g.

Here is a link that might be useful: flooring decisions