Why is Stairlift Seat Height so Important!

About ten years ago, I remember stair lift suppliers offering only a few seat heights.  The common height of the seat off the floor was about 23″.  To put this into perspective, if you measure your kitchen chair, you will find the seat height of about 17″.

Imagine your kitchen chair being 6″ higher and trying to get on and off the chair.  If you are a short person then transferring to the chair of the stair lift will be somewhat difficult if the height of the chair is 23″.

Most stair lift manufacturers started to recognize a number of years ago the importance of a stair lift seat height that was closer to a normal chair height and started to modify their designs to accommodate this need.

The seat height factor is most evident at the bottom of the stairs.   At the top of the stairs, the lift can be stopped short of the top step so as to allow for a lower seat height.  However, stopping the stair lift short of the top of the staircase is not the best solution since this could result in the stair lift user not being able to dismount further away from the top of the stairs.

One of the best ways to make sure the stair lift seat height is not an issue is to build up your kitchen chair to the same height of the stair lift model you are considering.  Then, test transferring to and from the chair to assure safety.

Most of the self installed stair lifts have a high seat height.  This is mainly due to the fact that it is generallly less expensive to make a standard height stair lift.  Acorn, Ameriglide and Summit stair lifts current model offerings are higher seat heights.

There is a tendency for  stair lift models offered by companies that install stair lifts to have more options in seat heights.

When you are selecting a stair lift company, I would highly recommend a company that can offer you more than one manufacturer, a number of stair lift models so as to give you more choice in options that includes a variety of seat heights.