Should you buy a straight or curved stairway chair lift

By himindoors | 0 Comments | Rating: 0 | |

Stairway chair lifts can usually be classified into two distinct categories - straight stairway chair lifts and curved stairway chair lifts. Mostly, the distinction kind of makes sense since these are mobility aids that are designed specifically to help people ascend and descend their stairs in their homes. Stairways can be roughly categorised into straight and curved (though of course you can get spiral stairways as well), so it makes sense to categorise anything that attaches to your stairs as straight or curved.

When you are researching which stairway chair lift to buy, one of the first questions you need to ask yourself is which type you need - straight or curved. Now it can seem fairly obvious - if you have straight stairs then you need a straight stairway chair lift. If you have curved stairs, you need a curved stairway chair lift. But, this isn't always the case. If you have stairs that are straight, but have a 90 degree or 180 degree bend in them half way up, you would assume that you need straight stairlifts, but in fact, in this case, even though your stairs are straight (well actually you have two flights of straight stairs) you would still need a curved stairway chair lift to get maximum convenience and benefit from installing the device.

Now obviously, in the case above, you could simply go for 2 straight stairlifts and simply accept the fact that you will have to change over from one to the other half way up. There are advantages and disadvantages to this solution. The advantage is cost. It is always cheaper to buy straight stairway lifts, simply because they don't need to be custom made for the camber and radius of your particular set of stairs. The disadvantage is that you will probably have to have your landing changed so that it is safe and you have enough space to change over from one chair to the other. Your other disadvantage is that you now have 2 different motors and lifts to worry about in terms of maintenance and servicing and battery replacement.

If you decide to go for a stairway chair lift that can go around bends, then the most important thing is to make sure it is bespoke made. There is nothing worse than having the railing and chair hacked together by someone who is doing it on the cheap, only to find that the pieces that don't quite fit properly and your chair gets stuck or snags when you come to going round the corner. Consider that this is something you will use everyday for the rest of your life, and don't skimp on buying rubbish.

I hope that helped you get a handle on the basic differences between straight and curved stairway chair lifts.