Pottery Barn debuts 150 pieces of furniture for people with disabilities

Small design choices can make a big difference to a person with a disability. Low sofas are hard to get out of when you have a knee condition, and high bathroom consoles make it hard to wash your hands from a wheelchair.

Pottery Barn is one of the first large home brands to create furniture that is accessible to the elderly, injured, and people with disabilities. The company's designers adapted 150 best-selling styles to accommodate a range of disabilities.

Pottery Barn has a range of furniture that is both functional and stylish. The initiative may signal to the rest of the industry that it makes sense to design more inclusively.

Marta Benson, Pottery Barn’s president, felt strongly that the brand should launch an accessible home collection after she visited one of its stores, only to find that the bathroom didn’t contain Pottery Barn furniture. When she asked a store designer why, he pointed out that none of Pottery Barn’s bathroom consoles complied with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires public bathrooms to have wheelchair-accessible sinks. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'” she recalls. “From that moment, I just started tuning into what it means to be inclusive and accessible to all abilities.”

Pottery Barn was asked to modify some of their most popular products to make them easier to use for people with disabilities. She brought in experts from the Disability Education and Advocacy Network, which is led by people with disabilities, and designers who specialize in designing for disabled people.

One of those experts is Lisa Cini, founder and CEO of Mosaic Design Studio, and a leading designer in the field of long-term care and Alzheimer’s. She’s known for a project called the Werner House, a 10,000-square-foot mansion she purchased in 2019 in Columbus, Ohio. Her goal was to explore what it takes to create an inclusive, multigenerational house, and she invited designers and manufacturers to help renovate it. It’s equipped with technology like height-adjustable sinks and toilets, and transitions in flooring to make it easier for people to age in place. Cini herself lives in the house with her elderly parents and makes adjustments based on the family’s everyday experiences.

The Accessible Home line was created using the Werner House. Cini said that they looked at all the current Pottery Barn products and decided what was most appropriate for the Werner House.

In some cases, the designers made small tweaks to existing products. For instance, they redesigned mirrors so they can tilt, making it easier for those in wheelchairs to easily see themselves. They also created modified versions of popular office desks, like the Pacific, Dillon, and Malcolm, with dimensions that accommodate wheelchairs. These desks also feature open storage and shelving, to eliminate the need to grip and pull drawers.

Some products required more elaborate changes. The brand has taken its most popular armchairs—Wells, Irving, Tyler, and Ayden—and adapted them to include power lift, which makes it easier to get in and out of the chair. The chairs are also able to move in every direction, which relieves pressure and stress on the body. The 150 products will be available online and in select stores, and they’ll be the same price point as the original versions.

For Benson, it was important for all the pieces to be pleasing to the eye and fit neatly into the the Pottery Barn aesthetic. When she surveyed the market, she noticed that many products designed for people with disabilities focused on functionality, but tended to look clinical. “We don’t want customers to feel like they live in a hospital,” she says. “We wanted to adapt our vernacular, our beautiful reclaimed-wood finishes, to these products. You shouldn’t have to compromise design to have this functionality.”

This collection will be good for businesses. Pottery Barn reaches a wide swath of consumers, including people who want to age in place, and they may want to use products from this collection.

Aimi Hamraie, an associate professor of medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University who specializes in disability studies, says it’s a good thing that Pottery Barn is focusing on inclusivity. “There’s a long history of people with disabilities fighting to gain access to consumer products designed for their needs,” they say. “The ADA only addresses areas of public accommodation and employment, so brands that make home goods haven’t felt compelled legally to make products for this community.”

Pottery Barn creates high-end products that are out of reach for many people with disabilities. Many disabled people have income restrictions so using the market as a solution can be difficult. It's important to focus on the needs of the elderly, but it's also a luxury to grow old. They said that not everyone gets to live into old age. Access to health insurance and demographic factors determine who dies young.

Pottery Barn may be able to send a signal to the market that there is money to be made in serving the needs of disabled consumers and creating products that will allow homes to be more inclusive of people with disabilities. Mass-market retailers like Target, Amazon, or Walmart could be pushed to create stylish, accessible home goods.

It took a lot of research for the Pottery Barn team to develop this collection. Designers will try to adapt products to the needs of people with disabilities. She wants to build partnerships with people in the community. We are eager to keep learning and we are approaching this with a lot of humility.