An enormous indoor swimming pool that reflects the millions of blue and gold mosaics on the walls and ceiling above the pool. Also reflected are tall pedestal lamps surrounding the pool, and white roman statues.

Want to Live Like Royalty? Maybe You Already Do!

Modern technologies, techniques, and materials make homes more functional and comfier than palaces of the past. Today’s commoners live better than most royals throughout history.

A Sikh man wearing turban and a curled mustache sits on the floor in front of a chair in a living room. On the coffee table in front of him are a laptop and a calculator. He looks down at the calculator, a pen in his hand. A woman, probably his wife, leans on his shoulder and looks down with him.

Home Remodeling for Accessibility: Financing Your Remodel

This is the last of three articles on how to remodel your home for greater accessibility. The first article focuses on the first stage—how to plan an accessible renovation. The second article features a renovation success story about a real-life remodel undertaken by Jody and Drew Yarborough, a Californian couple who renovated their Silicon Valley […]

A man and a woman wearing work clothes review something on a tablet while standing in a room undergoing renovation. A bare bulb hangs from the ceiling over their heads.

Home Remodeling for Accessibility: A Success Story

This is the second of three articles on how to remodel your home for greater accessibility. The first article in this series focuses on the first stage—how to plan accessible renovations. This second article features a renovation success story about a real-life remodel undertaken by Jody and Drew Yarborough, a Californian couple who renovated their […]

A woman sits in a wheelchair in front of a computer sitting on a counter. Her smiling young daughter stands next to her pointing at something on the screen. A son sits in a chair behind her facing away from her toward a window.

Home Remodeling for Accessibility: The Planning Stage

This is the first of three articles on how to remodel your home for greater accessibility. This one focuses on the first stage: planning an accessible renovation. Article two features a success story about a real-life renovation undertaken by Jody and Drew Yarborough, a Californian couple who renovated their Silicon Valley home to make it […]

A shadowy dining room with very high ceilings features dramatic dark colors and lighting. Gold caged metal light fixtures give an industrial touch as they hang from the high white ceiling over a gunmetal grey round table with a thick, ridged matching round base. Around the table are low lounge chairs in soft grey velvet on dark wood legs. At the back is a wall of tall grey flat-front kitchen cabinets against a black wall. Below those is another bank of cabinets in white. A grey island stands in front of the countertops. Flanking the tall entrance to the kitchen behind the dining area are a pair of wooden wall treatments, each featuring about a dozen very high, thin, matching vertical planks of darkly stained wood affixed to the wall, like a small area of dramatic paneling.

Kitchen and Dining Room Furniture

Q: I need new dining furniture, and I’m getting overwhelmed by all the seating options. I thought I knew what I wanted, but then I noticed some great benches and banquettes, and now my fiancé wants to have a concrete-topped eat-in kitchen. What should we know before we choose our kitchen and dining room furniture? […]

A woman in a wheelchair is in a kitchen with a platter of bruschetta on her lap. Her stylish itchen has white cabinet, grey counters that look like rustic wood, and floors that look like rustic white planks with stripes of bright colors but are probably tiles. The cabinets have accessible horizontal drawers instead of cabinet doors.

Universal Design

Making life more equitable and safe for people with disabilities is an essential goal of any ethical culture. Most of us believe improving accessibility benefits society as a whole. Naturally, we want all people to feel safe and comfortable navigating their surroundings. What we may not realize is that nearly all of us experience disability […]