24 high-quality, affordable fall prevention products

Martin Jungfer

4.10.2024

Translation: Katherine Martin

Every year, 125,000 people in Switzerland are injured by falls in their house or flat. With these products, you can reduce your risk of becoming one of them.

At home, there’s danger lurking around almost every corner. Even if you don’t see or suspect it. From stray cuddly toys to rucksacks lying on the hallway floor to slippery rugs, there are plenty of reasons why our homes aren’t as safe as we think they are. And that’s before you even think about climbing onto a wobbly stool to change the lightbulb in a ceiling lamp.

Here are 24 products that’ll make your home safer. The inspiration behind the list was my recent interview with Ursula Meier Köhler, a fall prevention expert from the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU).

So, without further ado, here are the products:

For staircases

For baths and showers

For floors

Rugs can make your house more homely and keep your feet nice and toasty (if you don’t have underfloor heating). However, they also increase the risk of an accident. Rugs that slide around on smooth parquet or tiled floors have caused many a nasty fall. Some rugs are already made to stay firmly in place. But not all of them. You should fit these with anti-slip protection ASAP.

If you also want to prevent the corners of a rug from sticking up, there are special pads you can stick to the bottom of it.

Let there be light

Navigating an unlit staircase while you’re sleepy? The thought alone is enough to make a fall prevention expert’s pulse race. If you have a power outlet near your staircase, you can place a night light there. If not, there are now battery-powered lights with motion sensors that only light up the staircase when you’re about to use it.

We also sell a wide range of recessed lights, but they require a power supply. If you’re about to do major renovation work or home improvements, you can think more broadly about staircase lighting.

For high places

Not everyone’s two metres tall and able to reach the top shelves in the kitchen cupboard. That’s why every household has climbing aids, i.e. stools, footstools and stepladders They’re usually a better choice than a dining chair or, heaven forbid, an office swivel chair.

Any product you’ll be standing on to reach high places should be able to do at least the following: hold your weight, be non-slip on the ground and have a non-slip surface.

To prevent trip hazards

It feels like a tenth of all the how-to articles online are dedicated to cable management. Some people really optimise their working-from-home setups to the extreme. For a safe home, however, all you need to do is keep cables from floor lamps, fans, TVs or speakers out of people’s way. You can hide them behind the baseboards (time-consuming), run them through cable ducts (fiddly) or bunch them up with cable ties (easy). You can also use cable boxes to store them.

You can find more fall prevention tips on the BFU website. It’s also published detailed advice on how to make your home fall-proof (in German).

How safe is your home? Do you have any safety tips? Let me and the Community know in the comments.

Martin Jungfer

Head of Content

Martin.Jungfer@digitecgalaxus.ch

Journalist since 1997. Stopovers in Franconia (or the Franken region), Lake Constance, Obwalden, Nidwalden and Zurich. Father since 2014. Expert in editorial organisation and motivation. Focus on sustainability, home office tools, beautiful things for the home, creative toys and sports equipment. more

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