If you only prepare one room before a hip or knee replacement, make it the bathroom. It combines every risk factor at once: a hard floor, water, tight space, and two activities, sitting on the toilet and washing, that both demand exactly the movements your new joint is least able to do.
It is also the room where independence is felt most sharply. Being unable to manage the bathroom alone is, for many people, the part of recovery they mind most. An afternoon of preparation removes most of that.
This guide covers what to change, in what order, and where the real hazards are. It applies to hip and knee replacements, and much of it holds for ankle, spinal, and abdominal surgery too.
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The two questions that decide everything
Before buying anything, answer these.
How high is your toilet? Measure from the floor to the top of the seat. A standard toilet is roughly 15 to 17 inches, sometimes lower in older UK homes. Sitting down on it bends the hip and knee well past 90 degrees, which after a hip replacement you may be forbidden to do, and after a knee replacement is simply painful and hard to reverse.
Do you have a walk-in shower, or a bath with a shower over it? This is the single biggest factor. A level-access or low-step shower is manageable with a stool. A bath with a shower over it means you must get your leg over the rim of a bath, which is one of the hardest and most dangerous movements in the house after a joint replacement, and it needs a proper solution rather than care and hope.
Everything below follows from those two answers.
Raising the toilet
The most necessary change and the easiest.
A raised toilet seat clamps or sits on the existing bowl and adds four to six inches. Get one with arms if you can. The arms are not a luxury: they are what you push up through, and without them people grab towel rails, basins, and radiators, none of which are designed to take body weight and all of which come off walls.
Measure the bowl shape first. Toilet bowls come in round and elongated, and a seat for the wrong shape will not sit securely. Check the weight rating too.
A toilet frame is the alternative if you prefer to keep the seat height but want support. It is a free-standing rail surround that goes around the toilet. Some people use both.
If you have two bathrooms, most people find they settle on using one for the first few weeks rather than buying two of everything.
Shop these: Raised toilet seat with arms · Toilet frame
If you have a walk-in shower
Simpler. You need two things.
Somewhere to sit. A shower stool or chair means you can wash without standing on a wet floor on a leg that is painful, weak, and not yet trustworthy. Standing for a full shower is also genuinely tiring in the first weeks in a way that surprises people. Choose one with rubber feet and, if there is space, a back rest.
Grip underfoot. A non-slip mat inside, and a second absorbent non-slip mat outside where you step out. The outside one is the one people forget, and stepping onto a smooth wet tile is where a lot of falls happen.
If there is a lip or step into the shower tray, that is a hazard worth thinking about. Even two inches is enough to catch a foot that is not lifting properly.
If you have a bath with a shower over it
This needs a real solution. Do not plan to climb in carefully.
A bath board sits across the rim of the bath. You sit on it at the edge, then swing your legs over one at a time and shower sitting down. It is cheap, effective, and the standard answer in the UK.
A bath transfer bench is the sturdier version, common in the US. Two legs stand outside the bath and two inside, so you sit down entirely outside, then slide across. It is the better choice if your balance is poor, if you are heavier, or if your hip precautions are strict, because you never lift a leg high.
A bath step placed outside reduces how far you have to lift your leg to get over the rim, and helps if you are already using a board.
No baths. Not sitting in water, not soaking. Until your surgical team confirms the wound is fully healed, showers only, and keep the dressing dry as instructed. Submerging a healing surgical wound is an infection risk.
Shop these: Bath board · Shower stool · Bath step · Non-slip mat
Grab rails: where they go, and the honest truth about suction
Rails need to be in the two places you actually change position: beside the toilet, at roughly the height of your hand when seated, and at the entrance to the shower or bath, where you step over or turn round.
Screwed-in rails are the only kind that reliably take full body weight. They need fixing into a stud or into masonry with the right plugs, not into plasterboard alone. If you are having this done, book it for two or three weeks before your operation rather than the week of, so a problem has time to be solved.
Suction rails are useful, with limits, and it is worth being straight about them. They only work on a smooth, non-porous, continuous surface: a large flat tile or an acrylic panel, never across a grout line or on textured tile. They are a balance aid, not a weight-bearing rail. Most have indicators that show red when the seal fails. Check them every single time before you put weight on them. They do let go, usually when the surface is warm and wet, which is exactly when you are using them.
Do not use a towel rail, a basin, a radiator, or a shower screen as a handhold. None are fixed for that load, and a shower screen giving way is a serious injury.
Shop these: Fixed grab rail · Suction grab rail
Reaching, without bending or twisting
You cannot bend to your feet after a hip replacement, and you would rather not after a knee.
A long-handled sponge washes your lower legs and feet while you sit.
A long-handled back brush does the same for your back, which matters more after shoulder or spinal surgery but is welcome for anyone.
Move everything to waist height. Shampoo, soap, towels, toothpaste, razor. Anything on the floor of the shower, in a low cupboard, or on a high shelf is effectively unreachable. A shower caddy that hangs at chest height, or a small shelf, solves this for a few pounds.
A handheld shower head on a flexible hose is a significant upgrade if you are showering seated, because a fixed overhead spray aimed at where you used to stand is not much use when you are sitting down. It is a ten-minute job on most existing fittings.
Shop these: Long-handled sponge · Handheld shower head · Shower caddy
The floor, the door, and the details people miss
The bath mat is a trip hazard. A loose fabric mat on a hard floor, caught by a walking frame or a foot that is not lifting cleanly, is a classic fall. Use a rubber-backed mat that does not move, or take it up entirely and dry the floor instead.
The door. Can you get a walking frame through it? Many bathroom doors are narrow, and many open inwards into the exact space you need to stand in. If yours opens inward and the room is tight, consider taking the door off its hinges for a few weeks. It is not elegant and it is much safer than being stuck.
The lock. If you lock the door and fall, nobody can reach you. Use an engaged sign, or agree with whoever you live with that the door stays unlocked for the first few weeks.
Lighting. You will be making night trips. A plug-in motion sensor night light on the route, and one in the bathroom itself, means you are never crossing a dark hallway half asleep.
Somewhere to put the walking aid down. A frame or crutches have to go somewhere while you are on the toilet or in the shower, and a crutch clattering to the floor is both startling and a hazard. A hook or a designated corner is enough.
A week-by-week plan
Three weeks before: measure the toilet, decide on shower or bath solution, order the large items, and book anyone who is fitting rails.
Two weeks before: everything arrives. Fit it. Then use it, for a whole week, before the operation. This is the step people skip and it is the one that finds the problem, the seat that does not clip on, the stool that is too tall, the board that does not fit your bath.
One week before: move all toiletries to waist height, put the night lights in, deal with the mats and the door, and do a dry run of the whole routine.
The day before: clean towels within reach, spare toilet roll accessible without bending, and a clear floor.
When you get home
Take it slowly the first time. Have someone within earshot even if they are not in the room. Sit down to wash for the first few weeks whether or not you feel you need to, because fatigue arrives suddenly in early recovery and standing in a shower is a bad place to discover it.
Our guides on showering after surgery and using the bathroom after surgery cover the movements themselves in detail.
This guide is part of our preparation series. See also what to buy before hip replacement and what you need at home after knee replacement.
*Always follow the specific guidance of your surgical team and, where you have one, your occupational therapist, who can assess your actual home rather than a general case. In the UK an occupational therapy assessment before joint replacement surgery is common and often results in equipment being provided.*