For about two decades, bigger was the answer. Larger footprints, higher ceilings, and more square footage per person than any previous generation had considered normal. The McMansion was less a home than a statement, and for a while, the market rewarded it.
That era is quietly ending.
Across North America, the shift is visible in building permits, real estate listings, and the conversations happening between homeowners and architects. Homes are getting smaller, more intentional, and more vertical. And that shift, more than almost any other trend in residential design right now, is quietly reshaping where demand for home elevators is heading next.
Why Homes Are Getting Smaller
The reasons are layered and converging at the same time.
Construction costs have made large footprints increasingly difficult to justify. A sprawling single-storey home requires more foundation, more roofing, more HVAC coverage, and in today’s building environment, that adds up fast. Builders and buyers alike are recalculating what square footage is actually worth.
Urban and suburban lot sizes are shrinking, too. As land values rise in desirable areas, the lots available for new builds get narrower. The only practical direction left is up, two, three, sometimes four storeys on a footprint that would previously have held a bungalow.
Then there’s the demographic reality. Baby Boomers, the largest homeowning generation in North American history, are now in their 60s and 70s. Many are choosing to downsize, not to smaller lives, but to smarter spaces. Fewer rooms to heat, clean, and maintain. More thought should be given to how the home functions over the next 20 years, not just the next five.
The McMansion asked: “How much can this home hold? The homes being built and bought right now ask something different: how well can this home work?
What This Means for Multi-Storey Living
Here’s the practical consequence of building smaller and taller: more people are living across more floors than before, in homes where the stairs are no longer an afterthought but a central feature of daily life.
A 2,200 square foot home spread across three storeys means the kitchen, the primary bedroom, and the living room may each sit on a different level.
That’s functional for a 35-year-old. It’s a different calculation entirely for someone at 65, 70, or beyond, or for anyone managing a temporary or permanent mobility challenge.
This is where the home elevator retrofit conversation is shifting, not only in retrofit projects but increasingly in new builds as well, where smaller, smarter homes are being planned with long-term livability in mind from the start.
Previously, adding a home elevator to an existing home was largely a response to an immediate need: a fall, a diagnosis, a mobility change that made stairs suddenly unmanageable. Reactive, not planned.
What’s changing is that homeowners are now thinking about it proactively, as part of a broader decision to make a smaller, smarter home genuinely liveable for the long term. The question has shifted from do we need this now? to will we need this, and if so, when is the right time to act?
The Home Elevator Retrofit Advantage Nobody Talks About
There’s a common assumption that adding an elevator to an existing home is complicated, disruptive, and prohibitively expensive. It’s worth addressing that directly, because it’s only partially true.
Yes, a home elevator retrofit requires more planning than building an elevator into new construction from the start. Hoistway placement, structural considerations, and the home’s existing layout all factor in. But modern home elevator design has come a long way in accommodating existing structures. Shaftless and compact elevator options now exist specifically for homes that weren’t originally built with an elevator in mind, requiring a fraction of the space and structural modification that older models demanded.
The more relevant question for most homeowners isn’t can we add one, it’s when does it make the most sense to add one?
The honest answer, from a cost and disruption standpoint, is earlier rather than later. An elevator added during a planned renovation costs significantly less in relative terms than one added as an emergency response. The structural work is absorbed into a broader project. The disruption is consolidated. And the homeowner gets years of convenience and independence before they genuinely need it, rather than scrambling to install one under pressure.
Where Demand Is Heading Next
The McMansion’s decline is pointing demand for home elevators in a direction the industry hasn’t fully caught up with yet: the mid-size, multi-storey home that wasn’t built with aging in mind but needs to function as if it were.
This isn’t the luxury custom-build market, where elevators have long been a standard spec item. It’s the 1,800 to 2,800 square foot townhouse, the three-storey infill home, the narrow urban semi-detached built on a lot that couldn’t accommodate a single-storey footprint. These are the homes now being bought by people in their 50s who are thinking clearly about what the next two decades look like — and who are starting to do the math on what modifications make sense now versus later.
For this buyer, the calculation is less about luxury and more about practicality. A home elevator for an existing home isn’t a status symbol; it’s the upgrade that makes a smart, intentional home actually work the way it was designed to.
The McMansion era rewarded bigger homes. Today’s homes are being judged more by how well they function than by how much space they have. .Thinking about adding an elevator to your existing home?
Cambridge Elevating offers a free consultation to help you understand what’s involved, what it costs, and what options fit your specific home, without any pressure to commit. Request your free consultation here.
