The bedside commode we couldn't find, so we built it.

Two hundred reviews and forum posts from people who use one every day. Four things nobody had fixed.

$219.99

Bedside commode with the lid closed, standing beside a bed on a wood floor. With the lid down nothing of the interior is visible. — Pre-production render. Lid closed, drawer shut.

30in

Between the rubber feet. The seat is 18 inches wide, so the base is a foot wider than the thing you sit on.

16-25in

Seat height range, in fine increments. Covers a 5'0" frame and a 6'4" frame on the same chair.

500lb

Rated capacity. Steel frame, welded joints, no plastic anywhere in the load path.

Why we exist

The room where someone is being cared for should still look like their room.

When a parent comes home from the hospital, the furniture that arrives with them is designed for a ward and sold for a bedroom. Grey plastic, exposed tubing, a bucket in plain view. The house stops looking like a house, and the person in it notices first.

Steadwell makes furniture for that room. Lid down, this is a chair with a cup holder and a place for the paper. Everything that says otherwise is out of sight until the moment it is needed. That is the whole brief, and every decision below answers to it.

The commode in a bedroom in morning light, lid closed, a glass of water in the holder and a newspaper in the side pocket.

We read the reviews instead of the product pages.

Fifty-four critical and seventy-seven positive reviews across the six largest sellers, about ninety posts in caregiver communities, plus the forums where occupational therapists and families talk without a marketing department in the room. Four things came back over and over, and not one of them was solved.

61%

It moves when you lean on it

Stability is 61% of the praise in this category and also one of the top complaints, which means it is what buyers care about most and what fails most often. The most expensive commode on the market has a backrest that bends, because it hangs off a bracket instead of the frame.

704

Never the right height

Monthly searches for a taller toilet for seniors. One buyer cannot find anything tall enough for a husband at 6'1". Another at 5'7" says the lowest setting is still too high. An occupational therapist put it best: they always seem to be one height adjustment short.

40%

The bucket never matches the seat

One buyer reported spills on roughly forty percent of uses and solved it by buying a larger bucket of his own. Another measured a two inch gap. The seat opening is elongated and the bucket is round. Nobody has copied the shape of an actual toilet.

The smell arrives in month six

Posts in caregiver communities describing an odour that will not come out. It does not appear in Amazon reviews because nobody writes one half a year later. Plastic absorbs it permanently, and every bucket in this category is plastic.

What we changed

Three fixes you can see in a photograph.

The commode photographed from floor level, showing the four legs splaying outward so the rubber feet sit wider than the seat above them. — Shot from the floor, because this is the angle the category never photographs.

Close-up of a telescoping leg: the inner tube with its row of adjustment holes, ending in a wide grey rubber foot flat against the wood floor.

Their feet reach the floor

Sixteen to twenty-five inches, on all four legs, in fine increments. Every other commode picks one end of that range and strands whoever falls on the other side. Set it level with the mattress and the move from bed to seat stops being a lift.

Lid open, showing the elongated seat opening with the seamless stainless steel bucket seated flush beneath it, with no gap between the two.

Nothing to clean up at three in the morning

The opening is shaped like a real elongated toilet seat and the seamless stainless bucket is cut to match it, seated flush. No gap and no offset. Stainless because it has no moulded seam to hold residue and nothing for an odour to soak into.

Both arms drop. Everything else is bolted to the tube.

A hand pressing down hard on the armrest, the way someone pushes off to stand. The frame does not shift and all four feet stay flat. — Full weight on one armrest. Nothing gives and no foot lifts.

Close-up of the latch holding the stainless bucket against its carrier. — The latch. Two reviewers describe a bucket dropping while full.

A hand sliding the stainless bucket out on its front carrier, with the seat lifted above. — Out the front, one hand. No reaching under the seat.

The commode beside a bed with the near armrest folded down, leaving that side fully open. — Near arm down. That side opens for a slide across from the mattress.

Flat lay of every component: welded back frame, seat pad, seat top with elongated opening, stainless bucket, bucket carrier, two padded armrests, four telescoping legs, side pocket, cup holder and hardware. — Ships flat. The bucket carrier arrives fitted and squared from the factory.

Three things we would rather tell you now.

The 500 pounds is not certified yet

It is our design target. Static load and stability testing to ISO 17966 is scheduled on units from the first production run, at an independent lab, and we will publish the report here. Until it exists, treat the number as an intention.

FSA and HSA is in progress

Bedside commodes are a qualifying expense. Our own eligibility registration is not finished, so we are not going to print the badge yet. We will confirm it here before the first units ship.

Every image is a render

The unit is in tooling. Dimensions, materials and finish are the specification we are quoting to manufacturers, and the finished product may differ in detail from what these images show.

150 units, built to order.

We are making exactly as many as we have people for. Free shipping, 30 days to send it back. If that includes you, this is the moment to say so.