The best seating option for an Alzheimer’s patient during relocation is, in most cases, their own familiar chair from home. A favorite recliner, a well-worn armchair, even the kitchen chair they’ve sat in for decades — bringing that piece of furniture along does more therapeutic work than most people realize. Familiar objects create visual cues that promote comfort and help orient a person with dementia in an unfamiliar space, according to the Elder Care Alliance.
Even small changes like rearranging furniture can trigger agitation or confusion, so preserving the chair they already know and trust is the simplest and most effective starting point. But the full answer is more nuanced than “just bring their chair.” Depending on the stage of dementia, the patient’s mobility level, and whether the move involves transport across town or across the country, the right seating solution might be a tilt-in-space positioning wheelchair, a lift recliner with safety-rated mechanisms, or a clinically designed therapeutic chair at a memory care facility. This article walks through each major seating category, the evidence behind them, the specific risks to watch for, and the expert recommendations that should guide every decision. With 7.2 million Americans age 65 and older now living with Alzheimer’s — the first time that number has surpassed 7 million — and health and long-term care costs projected to hit $384 billion in 2025, getting these details right matters for families, caregivers, and the nearly 12 million unpaid caregivers who provided an estimated 19.2 billion hours of care in 2024 alone.
Table of Contents
- Why Does Seating Matter So Much for Alzheimer’s Patients During a Move?
- Familiar Chairs from Home — The Most Underrated Seating Strategy
- Tilt-in-Space Positioning Wheelchairs for Patients with Limited Mobility
- Lift Chairs and Recliners — Benefits, Risks, and the Safety Warning Families Need to Know
- Clinical Seating Features That Prevent Complications Most Families Don’t Anticipate
- How to Set Up Seating at the New Location to Reduce Disorientation
- Planning Ahead — The Transfer Process Itself
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Does Seating Matter So Much for Alzheimer’s Patients During a Move?
Relocation Stress Syndrome, sometimes called transfer trauma, is a well-documented clinical phenomenon characterized by anxiety, confusion, hopelessness, dependency, and withdrawal following a move. For residents with dementia, the effects are often amplified — heightened confusion, anxiety, and depression are common responses. A scoping review published in The Gerontologist found that in most studies, the health effects of relocation on dementia patients were negative, including increased morbidity and mortality. That said, a separate study published in PMC found that cognitively impaired older adults are not necessarily more vulnerable to relocation stress than cognitively unimpaired adults, and that individual factors play a significant role. The takeaway is not that every move will be catastrophic, but that every move requires careful planning. Seating sits at the intersection of several critical needs during this transition: physical safety, postural health, emotional comfort, and cognitive orientation. Dementia patients may spend extended periods sitting and may not be aware they are positioned uncomfortably or have the presence of mind to adjust their posture, as Broda Seating has noted in its clinical guidance.
A person who slides forward in a poorly designed chair is at risk for pressure injuries, breathing difficulties, and falls. A person who doesn’t recognize anything in their new room may become agitated or withdrawn. The right chair addresses both problems simultaneously — it keeps the body safe while anchoring the mind to something recognizable. Consider a real-world scenario: a woman with moderate Alzheimer’s moves from her home of 30 years to a memory care facility across town. Her daughter brings her blue wingback recliner, the one she’s sat in every evening for a decade. In the new room, that chair becomes the one thing she gravitates toward without prompting. It doesn’t eliminate the confusion of the move, but it gives her a landing pad — a piece of the world that still makes sense.
Familiar Chairs from Home — The Most Underrated Seating Strategy
The adaptation of seating to mirror familiar domestic settings has a calming effect, reducing confusion and disorientation, according to research compiled by Repose Furniture. This isn’t sentimental advice. It’s a clinical observation backed by the broader understanding that non-pharmacologic interventions — familiar objects, individualized comfort measures based on the patient’s history and interests — are recommended as first-line treatment for agitation during transitions. The Alzheimer’s Association and A Place for Mom both recommend decorating a new living space with as many familiar items and furniture pieces as possible from the prior home to ease the transition. A chair is often the most impactful single item you can bring. However, a familiar chair from home is not always the right choice, and families need to be honest about that. If the patient’s mobility has declined significantly since they last used their favorite recliner, that chair may no longer provide adequate postural support.
If it’s a low, soft-cushioned seat that requires significant leg strength to stand from, it could become a fall hazard. The emotional benefit of familiarity has to be weighed against the physical reality of the patient’s current condition. In many cases, the compromise is to bring the familiar chair for comfort and recognition, but pair it with a clinically appropriate seating option for the hours when proper positioning and pressure relief are more critical. One does not have to replace the other. A limitation worth noting: not all care facilities allow personal furniture, or they may restrict it to certain types that meet fire safety codes. Check with the receiving facility before assuming you can bring a favorite armchair. Some families have been surprised to learn their loved one’s cherished recliner doesn’t meet institutional upholstery standards.
Tilt-in-Space Positioning Wheelchairs for Patients with Limited Mobility
For Alzheimer’s patients who have progressed to the point where independent sitting is difficult or unsafe, tilt-in-space positioning wheelchairs represent the clinical standard. Broda’s Comfort Tension Seating technology, for example, evenly distributes weight to reduce pressure injuries by forming to the body’s natural pressure points. Their positioning wheelchairs offer up to 40 degrees of tilt and up to 90 degrees of recline, plus Trendelenburg positioning, which decreases the need for restraints — a significant consideration for dementia patients who may become agitated when physically restricted. Select models also offer what Broda calls Dynamic Rocking, which emulates the soothing motion of a rocking chair. This feature is specifically designed to reduce anxiety and keep users engaged, which is particularly valuable during the disorientation of a relocation. Imagine a patient who has just arrived at a new facility, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and sounds.
Placing them in a chair that provides gentle rocking motion — something that many people find instinctively calming — can reduce the immediate stress response without medication. The tradeoff with positioning wheelchairs is cost and complexity. These are not chairs you pick up at a medical supply store for a few hundred dollars. They require professional fitting, and ideally, an occupational therapist should be involved in the selection and setup. For families managing a relocation on a tight timeline, there can be a gap between when the chair is needed and when it’s properly configured. Planning ahead — ordering and fitting the chair weeks before the move — makes a significant difference.
Lift Chairs and Recliners — Benefits, Risks, and the Safety Warning Families Need to Know
Lift chairs occupy a middle ground between familiar home furniture and clinical seating. They provide a controlled lifting and lowering mechanism that minimizes the risk of falls during sit-to-stand transitions, which is one of the most dangerous moments for any elderly person, and especially for someone with dementia who may misjudge their own balance. For individuals with advanced dementia who struggle with muscle control, lift chairs can help them regain some independence in a basic daily activity. But there is a critical safety warning that many families and even some care providers are not aware of. The Ontario College of Occupational Therapists flagged that Infinite position and Zero Gravity position recliners carry a higher fall risk for seniors with cognitive decline.
These recliners allow the user to recline almost fully flat, and a person with dementia may not understand how to return the chair to an upright position — or may attempt to stand while the chair is in a reclined state, leading to a fall. The College’s report was issued in response to actual deaths from power recliner lift chairs. Families shopping for a lift chair should stick to two-position or three-position models for someone with cognitive impairment and avoid the trendy zero-gravity options that are marketed heavily to the general senior population. The comparison between a standard lift chair and a tilt-in-space wheelchair comes down to the patient’s level of independence. If the person can still bear weight, follow simple verbal cues, and needs help primarily with the standing-up motion, a lift chair is appropriate. If the person requires full postural support, cannot reliably shift their own weight, or spends the majority of the day seated, a positioning wheelchair is the better clinical choice.
Clinical Seating Features That Prevent Complications Most Families Don’t Anticipate
Families focused on the emotional upheaval of relocation often overlook the clinical seating details that occupational therapists consider essential. Chairs for dementia patients should support correct seated posture to decrease the risk of pressure sores, breathing issues, and digestive problems from slumped positioning, as noted by Vivid Care. An angled seat rake — a seat surface that slopes slightly toward the back — keeps patients secure and prevents them from sliding forward, which is a particular concern for those with limited postural control, according to Seating Matters. One feature that surprises many families is the role of color contrast in seating design. Seating Matters recommends that upholstery should use contrasting colors and appropriate Light Reflectance Values so that patients with visual difficulties can distinguish the seat surface from the surrounding floor and frame. A beige chair on a beige carpet is not just an aesthetic problem — it’s a safety hazard for someone who already struggles with spatial awareness and depth perception.
Choosing a chair with a seat cushion that visually stands out from the armrests and the floor can reduce the distress and disorientation that come with trying to sit down in a surface you can’t clearly see. A warning: even the most thoughtfully designed clinical chair will cause problems if it’s not properly sized for the individual. Higher seat height, reduced posterior seat tilt, and firmer seat surfaces facilitate easier sit-to-stand transfers for older adults with dementia, according to Vivid Care. But “higher” and “firmer” are relative to the person’s body. A chair that’s perfect for a six-foot-tall man may be entirely wrong for a five-foot-two woman. This is why the universal expert recommendation is to consult an occupational therapist before selecting seating for someone with dementia, ideally one who can observe the patient over several weeks to understand their specific needs.
How to Set Up Seating at the New Location to Reduce Disorientation
Furniture arrangement at the new location matters almost as much as the chair itself. Research published in PMC found that arranging furniture in groups — rather than lining chairs around the perimeter of a room, as is common in many institutional settings — promotes more meaningful engagement and communication among dementia patients. If your loved one is moving into a shared living space, advocate for seating arrangements that encourage small-group interaction rather than the sterile, waiting-room-style layouts that are unfortunately still common.
At the individual room level, the Alzheimer’s Association recommends that relocation should be done when the patient is most stable, both mentally and physically, and that the new space should be populated with familiar items before the person arrives. If possible, set up their chair in a position that mirrors where it sat in the previous home — near a window if that’s what they’re used to, facing the door if that’s their habit. These spatial cues matter more than most people think. The goal is not to replicate the old home exactly, which is impossible, but to create enough continuity that the person’s brain can find footholds in the new environment.
Planning Ahead — The Transfer Process Itself
The physical act of moving a person with Alzheimer’s from one location to another requires its own seating strategy. During transport, Joerns Healthcare recommends assembling the right support team, having appropriate assistive equipment at both origin and destination, and implementing clear communication strategies. This means having the destination chair ready and accessible before the patient arrives — not still in a box, not in a storage room, not stuck in a hallway waiting for someone to figure out where it goes.
Looking ahead, the growing prevalence of Alzheimer’s — with costs projected to approach $1 trillion by 2050 — will likely drive more innovation in adaptive seating designed specifically for cognitive impairment. Already, manufacturers like Broda and Seating Matters are designing for the dementia population rather than retrofitting general geriatric equipment. For families navigating a relocation today, the best approach is to start the seating conversation early, involve an occupational therapist, and treat the chair not as an afterthought but as one of the most important decisions in the entire transition plan.
Conclusion
The best seating option for an Alzheimer’s patient during relocation depends on the individual, but the guiding principles are consistent: prioritize familiarity whenever possible, ensure the chair provides appropriate postural support and pressure relief, avoid seating that introduces fall risks, and consult an occupational therapist before making a final decision. For many patients, bringing a beloved chair from home provides irreplaceable emotional grounding, while a properly fitted clinical chair handles the medical realities of prolonged sitting with cognitive impairment. These two approaches are not in competition — they work best together. The move itself is stressful for everyone involved, but seating is one of the few variables that families can control completely.
Start planning weeks before the relocation date. Order and fit any specialized seating early. Set up the destination room before the patient arrives. And remember that for a person whose world is becoming increasingly unfamiliar, the right chair is not just a piece of furniture — it is an anchor point in a life that is shifting beneath them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I bring my loved one’s favorite chair to a memory care facility?
In many cases, yes, but check with the facility first. Some have restrictions based on fire safety codes, size limitations, or infection control policies. If the chair is approved, it can be one of the most effective tools for reducing relocation stress.
What type of lift chair is safest for someone with Alzheimer’s?
Stick with two-position or three-position lift chairs. Avoid Infinite position and Zero Gravity recliners, which the Ontario College of Occupational Therapists flagged as carrying a higher fall risk for seniors with cognitive decline due to the ability to recline nearly flat.
How do I know if my family member needs a positioning wheelchair instead of a regular chair?
If the person cannot reliably shift their own weight, slides forward frequently, has difficulty maintaining an upright posture, or spends the majority of the day seated, a tilt-in-space positioning wheelchair is likely more appropriate. An occupational therapist can make this determination after observing the patient.
Does the color of a chair really matter for dementia patients?
Yes. Contrasting colors and appropriate Light Reflectance Values help patients with visual difficulties distinguish the seat surface from the floor and surrounding furniture. Poor contrast can increase disorientation and make it harder for the person to safely sit down and stand up.
When during the day should a relocation happen?
The Alzheimer’s Association recommends relocating when the patient is most stable, both mentally and physically. For many people with dementia, this is typically mid-morning after routines are established, though individual patterns vary.
Should seating be arranged differently for someone with dementia?
Research published in PMC found that furniture arranged in small groups promotes more meaningful engagement and communication compared to chairs lined along room perimeters. At the individual level, try to position the person’s chair similarly to how it was placed in their previous home.
