There are plenty of good reasons to have a lift at home. That said, when it comes to buying one, the first thing that often springs to mind is a stair lift — and a stair lift is not always the answer that truly fits your needs.
If you are about to buy a lift for your home, or you are gathering information to compare your options, we will explain the differences between a stair lift and a home lift. In this article we use Cibes home lifts as the point of comparison.
Home Lifts at a Glance
Stair Lift
A stair lift , or stairway chair lift, is a seat driven by an electric motor along a rail fixed to the staircase. It is intended mainly for people who cannot go up and down the stairs on their own. As a rule, installing a stair lift requires no structural work.
Platform Home Lift
A platform lift is a system that travels vertically from one level to another safely and efficiently. It can come with a ready-made shaft, or as the car and drive system alone if your home already has a shaft. The lift moves up and down along a screw rail powered by an electric motor.
The key difference is that a platform lift takes you up and down through the stairwell opening and can be installed almost anywhere, inside or outside the home, while a stair lift travels along the staircase and can only be fitted to the stairs themselves.
Capability and Use
When you start looking for a lift for your home, the first thing you need is a clear idea of what you want to use it for. Do you only need to move people, or do you also need to carry a person together with a wheelchair or a walker?
Stair Lift
- A stair lift is designed mainly to move people from one floor to another.
- A stair lift cannot carry a wheelchair or a walker along with the user.
- While the stair lift is in use, no one else in the household can use the stairs.
Platform Home Lift
- A platform lift serves many purposes. It does more than move you between floors — it can also carry shopping bags and other goods.
- The main benefit of adding a lift to a home is better accessibility. For anyone who struggles with stairs or with moving between floors because of limited mobility (which affects half of the population aged 65 and over), a home lift can be the perfect answer.
- Everyone else in the household can still use the stairs without any trouble while the platform home lift is running.
Preparing the Installation Space at Home
Choosing the right type of lift for your home means taking into account the free space you have, as well as the character of the house itself.
Installing a Stair Lift
- Installing a stair lift usually calls for no structural changes at all. Your staircase is measured, and the stair lift is made to fit it.
- The stair lift is fixed directly to your staircase, so it only uses the space on and around the stairs. The rail is attached permanently to the staircase, and at the end of the rail sits the seat, which in most cases can be folded up, depending on how wide your stairs are.
- On top of that, in a home with several floors, a separate stair lift has to be installed between each pair of levels.
Installing a Home Lift
- A platform home lift can go anywhere in your home where there is room for an opening in the ceiling — the stairwell, the kitchen or the living room, it makes no difference.
- The lift can also be installed outside the house, so you lose none of your indoor space.
- Depending on where you want the platform home lift to go, the structural work involved may differ.
- Cibes home lifts need no pit. A 50 mm recess in the floor is enough — you can place the ready-made home lift on the existing floor and add a ramp.
- If it is not placed in the stairwell, you will need to open the ceiling between floors to fit the lift and provide an electrical connection. These are only minor architectural changes, and in most cases they can be done within a single day.
- Many people assume a home lift takes up a lot of room, but in fact a platform home lift needs very little space. The smallest Cibes platform home lift, for example, uses just 1 sq m and fits into almost any stairwell.
The Cost of Installing a Home Lift
For most people, the price of a stair lift or a home lift is a major part of the final decision.
Stair Lift Price
- Looking at the purchase price alone, a stair lift is the cheaper option. Depending on the type of staircase, the number of curves and the number of floors, prices can vary by several hundred thousand baht.
Home Lift Price
- With platform home lifts too, there is a wide price gap between a basic model and a fully customisable lift loaded with options. You can read more in our article on home lift prices
- Because the price is higher, long-term value matters just as much. Adding a platform lift raises the value of your property, and buying one is a sustainable long-term investment.
A stair lift has an average service life of 10 years, while a platform home lift lasts up to 30 years. And where a stair lift is usually removed by the next owner when the house is sold, a platform lift tends to stay for good.
Lift Safety
Installing either a stair lift or a platform home lift makes your home safer, because letting older family members walk up and down the stairs can be dangerous.
Stair Lift Safety
- With a stair lift, especially for an older user, you have to leave your walker or wheelchair behind on the first floor to ride up to the second — which means keeping a second wheelchair or walker waiting for you on the other floor.
Home Lift Safety
- When an older person travels up and down in a platform home lift, nothing has to be transferred at all, which cuts the risk of a fall and injury.
- Cibes platform home lifts are screw-drive lifts with an exceptionally high level of safety, certified to the EU Safety Standard . In a power cut, the lift has a backup power system that takes you to the nearest floor.
Your Interior Design
Stair Lift Design
- Most stair lifts carry the look of a device made for the elderly.
- Some models let you choose the seat material, the upholstery colour or the style of the rail.
Home Lift Design
- A home lift can be finished in many ways to match the theme of your home. Taking the Cibes Voyager home lift as an example:
- The shaft can be solid or glass.
- More than 250 exterior colour shades are available to suit the look of your house.
- The floor comes in a range of materials such as vinyl, carpet and leather.
- Cabin interior patterns come in several styles too, from refined plain finishes to colour-changing LED designs.
- A home lift is often seen as a piece of luxury in interior design — a private lift that takes you straight into a beautiful lounge or your master bedroom.
- With such a wide choice of finishes and materials, you can create a lift that genuinely enhances your interior.
Stair Lift or Platform Home Lift: Which Should You Choose?
It is fair to say that a platform home lift is one of the best choices if you want everything at once — capability, safety, design inside and out, and added property value. At the same time, here is what you should keep in mind:
- Weigh up all the pros and cons for yourself, then pick the lift that best fits your situation, your needs and the people who will use it most.
- Set your budget against comfort and safety to work out which type of lift is truly worth the investment.
