A home fall prevention checklist is a walkthrough, not a shopping list. You go room by room with a notepad, write down the physical conditions you find — how much light there is, what the floor is doing, what you have to reach for and what you have to step over — and then decide what to change and what to raise with a clinician. The walk takes about an hour. Doing it in order is what stops you from missing the obvious.
This article is general information about home setup and equipment fitting, not medical advice. No checklist and no product can promise an outcome. Whether someone is at risk of falling, why, and what should be done about it is an individual clinical assessment, and the people who make it are a doctor, physical therapist, occupational therapist or other qualified clinician who knows the person. What this walkthrough gives you is an inventory of the physical conditions in the house so that conversation has something concrete in it.
What a home fall prevention checklist can and cannot do
"Fall prevention" is how people search for this, so it is the phrase this article uses. It is worth being precise about what the work actually is.
A walkthrough identifies physical conditions: light levels, floor surfaces, loose objects in walking paths, missing handholds, storage heights. Those are things you can see, measure and change.
What it cannot do is assess a person. Balance, gait, vision, medication effects, strength and footwear are all clinical territory, and equipment fitted without an assessment is equipment fitted to a guess. The sequence that works is: walk the house, write the list, take the list to the assessment, then buy what the assessment calls for.
Take a tape measure, a notepad and a flashlight. Do the walk at night as well as during the day, because the house is a different place after dark.
The lighting pass on a home fall prevention checklist
Do lighting first, as one circuit of the whole house, before you look at anything else. Lighting changes what every other hazard looks like.
Walk the route from the bed to the bathroom with the lights off, the way it is actually walked at 3am. Then walk the entry, the hallway, the stairs and the kitchen.
Write down:
- Every switch you have to cross a dark room to reach. Those are the places for a bedside lamp within arm's reach, a switch at both ends of a hallway, or motion-activated plug-in lights.
- Every stairway where you cannot see the edge of each tread clearly from the top and the bottom. Stairs need light controlled from both ends.
- Burnt-out bulbs, and fittings where the light level is lower than the rest of the house.
- Glare and deep shadow. A bare high-wattage bulb over a glossy floor produces glare that masks the floor surface. Shaded fittings spread light more evenly.
- Whether the path from bed to bathroom has any low-level light at all. Baseboard-level nightlights mark the floor edge without lighting the whole room.
Flooring, rugs and cords
Now walk the same routes looking only at the floor.
Loose rugs and mats. Note every one that slides, curls at a corner, or has a raised edge. The options are to take the rug out of the walking path entirely, or to fix it down with purpose-made non-slip rug pad or double-sided rug tape at the edges.
Thresholds and transitions. Write down every place the floor level changes: carpet to tile, a raised door threshold, a step down into a sunroom or garage. Transitions in low light are the ones to mark first, with a threshold ramp where the change in level is small or with contrasting edge tape where it is not.
Surfaces. Note polished floors, worn carpet with ripples in it, cracked tiles and anything that stays wet. Non-slip floor coatings and non-slip mats exist for specific surfaces, so match the product to the surface rather than buying a general one.
Cords and cables. Lamp cords, phone chargers, extension cords and vacuum cords crossing walking paths all go on the list. The fix is routing them along the wall behind furniture with cord covers or clips, not taping them across the middle of the floor.
Objects at floor level. Pet bowls, toy boxes, magazine racks, bags left at the bottom of the stairs, shoes by the door. These belong somewhere out of the walking path.
The bathroom
The bathroom is the smallest room with the most hard surfaces and wet floors, so it usually carries the longest part of the list.
Walk through what actually happens in there and write down each point where someone reaches, turns, steps over or lowers themselves:
- Getting into the bathtub or shower. Note the height of the step over, and whether there is anything fixed to hold. Grab bars, a tub transfer board, a transfer bench or a shower chair all address different versions of this. Which one fits a person's situation is for a therapist to specify.
- Grab bars. Note where a hand reaches instinctively — usually by the bathtub edge, inside the shower and beside the toilet. Then note what is behind the wall at that point. A grab bar carries load only when it is anchored into a stud or solid blocking, with fixings rated for the bar. Suction-cup rails are balance-steadying aids for a flat, non-porous surface and are not a substitute for a fixed bar.
- The toilet. Note the seat height and whether there is anything beside it to hold. Raised toilet seats and toilet safety frames address height and handhold respectively.
- Floor surface. Note whether the floor gets wet and stays wet, and whether there is a non-slip mat inside the bathtub or shower and an absorbent one outside it.
- Towels and toiletries. Note anything stored where it has to be reached for from inside the shower.
- The door. Note whether it opens inwards into a small space.
Stairs and hallways
Handrails. Note whether there is a rail, whether it runs the full length of the flight including the top and bottom steps, and whether it is on one side or both. Note any rail that moves when you pull on it.
Treads. Note worn stair carpet, loose nosings, and any tread of a different depth from the others. Stair edge tape in a contrasting color marks the edge of each tread visually.
Clutter. Nothing is stored on the stairs. Write down whatever currently is.
Hallways. Note the clear width of each walking route and anything that narrows it: a console table, a laundry basket, a door that swings into the path.
Bedroom, kitchen and reach height
Bed height. Measure the bed's height with the mattress on it, and note whether the feet reach the floor flat when sitting on the edge. A bed cane or a bed rail provides something fixed to hold when sitting up or standing. The right height is an assessment question, not a preference.
Bedside. Note whether a lamp, a phone and a glass of water are reachable without getting up.
Kitchen reach height. Open every cabinet and write down what is stored above shoulder height or below knee height. Heavy and everyday items belong between those two heights. Reaching tools and a stable step stool with a handhold exist for the rest; folding chairs and countertops are not step stools.
Chairs. Note dining and living room chairs with no arms, and seats low enough that standing up needs a push. Chair raisers and firmer cushions change seat height.
Footwear and what to ask a clinician
Walk to the shoe rack and look at what is actually worn indoors. Note backless slippers, loose or stretched slip-ons, worn-smooth soles, and anything worn without socks on a polished floor. Note whether there is somewhere to sit while putting shoes on, and whether a long-handled shoehorn or elastic laces would remove the need to bend.
Then take your notepad to the assessment. Bring the list of hazards, the measurements you took — bed height, seat heights, step heights, the wall construction behind proposed grab bar locations — and ask which items are needed, what height each should be fitted at, and whether a home assessment visit is available. A physical therapist or occupational therapist fits mobility and bathroom equipment to the person; the walkthrough just tells them what the house looks like.
Work through your list one room at a time.
When you know what the house needs, see the Home Safety Bundle page for the equipment that covers the common items on that list.