How can one home comfortably accommodate grandparents, parents, and children without anyone feeling like they've lost their privacy — or their patience? It's a question more Chicagoland families are asking every year. Rising housing costs, aging parents who'd rather not move into assisted living, and adult children returning home have all contributed to a steady rise in multigenerational living across Cook, DuPage, Lake, and Will counties.
The good news: with thoughtful planning, a single-family home can absolutely work for three generations. The key is understanding where shared space helps and where separation is non-negotiable. At Century City Baths, we've helped hundreds of Chicagoland families reconfigure the most-used — and most-argued-over — rooms in the house. Here's what we've learned.
Why Multigenerational Living Is Growing in the Chicago Suburbs
Multigenerational households now represent roughly one in five American homes, and the Chicago metro area reflects that trend closely. Several factors are driving it:
Cost savings. Pooling resources across generations makes homeownership achievable in neighborhoods that might otherwise be out of reach. Property taxes in Illinois are no joke, and splitting them two or three ways changes the math considerably.
Caregiving. Whether it's grandparents helping with childcare or adult children supporting aging parents, proximity makes care practical. Families avoid the significant cost of professional childcare or assisted living — which in Illinois can run $5,000 or more per month.
Cultural tradition. Chicagoland's rich immigrant communities have long embraced extended-family households. For many families, this isn't a new trend — it's simply how home has always worked.
Housing stock. Many classic Chicago-area homes — Georgians, bungalows, split-levels, and older colonials — have footprints and basements that adapt well to multigenerational conversion, especially compared to more rigid new construction.
The Biggest Renovation Challenge: Bathrooms
Here's something families almost always underestimate. You can share a kitchen. You can share a living room. You can even share a laundry area with a schedule. But bathrooms? Bathrooms are where multigenerational living succeeds or fails.
Think about a typical weekday morning: a teenager getting ready for school, two parents getting ready for work, and a grandparent who needs more time and space to bathe safely. One shared full bath creates genuine daily friction. Two bathrooms with mismatched capabilities isn't much better.
Most of the multigenerational projects we take on in Chicagoland start with one of these three scenarios:
1. Adding a Bathroom Where There Wasn't One
Many older Chicago-area homes were built with a single full bath, sometimes with a half bath squeezed in later. Adding a second or third bathroom is often the single highest-impact renovation a multigenerational family can make.
Common locations we work with:
- Basement conversions. Finished basements make excellent in-law suites, and adding a full bath down there is very achievable — though it often requires an ejector pump since you're below the sewer line. This is standard work, but it's work that needs to be done right.
- Under-stair or closet conversions. A three-quarter bath can fit in a surprisingly small footprint — as little as 25 to 30 square feet with smart fixture selection.
- Attic and dormer spaces. Common in bungalows and Cape Cods throughout the North and Northwest suburbs.
- Garage or addition space. When the footprint allows, a dedicated suite with a private bath is the gold standard.
2. Converting a Standard Bath into an Accessible Bath
If a parent or grandparent is moving in, the existing bathroom likely wasn't designed with them in mind. Standard tub-shower combinations require stepping over a 15- to 18-inch wall — a leading cause of in-home falls among adults over 65.
This is the core of what we do. A tub-to-shower conversion with a low-threshold or zero-threshold base dramatically reduces fall risk while actually looking better than what it replaced. Add the right features and you've created a bathroom that works for everyone in the house:
- Low or zero-threshold shower entry — easy for grandparents, easy for small children, easy for everyone
- Built-in seating — a fold-down or integrated bench
- Grab bars that don't look institutional — modern designs double as towel bars and shelving
- Handheld shower wands on adjustable slide bars — adjusts for a 5-foot grandmother and a 6-foot-3 teenager
- Comfort-height toilets — easier to sit and stand from
- Slip-resistant flooring — non-negotiable
- Lever-style handles — significantly easier for arthritic hands than knobs
- Improved lighting — vision changes with age, and most older bathrooms are badly underlit
- Wider doorways — 32 to 36 inches to accommodate a walker or wheelchair now or later
The phrase for this approach is "universal design," and the best part is that it's invisible. A well-executed accessible bathroom doesn't look like a hospital. It looks like a nicely renovated bathroom that happens to be safe.
3. Creating a Complete Private Suite
The most ambitious — and most satisfying — multigenerational renovation is a true private suite: bedroom, bathroom, sitting area, and sometimes a kitchenette. This gives everyone genuine independence under one roof.
The bathroom is the anchor of that suite. When a parent has their own full, accessible bath, they're not waiting in line, not navigating stairs at 2 a.m., and not feeling like a guest in their own home. That sense of autonomy is, in our experience, the difference between multigenerational living that works and multigenerational living that quietly erodes everyone's goodwill.
Practical Planning Decisions for Chicagoland Families
Start with a family conversation, not a contractor. Before anyone draws a plan, talk through expectations. Who pays for what? How are shared spaces used? Does the arrangement have a time horizon, or is it permanent? These conversations are uncomfortable, but they're far less uncomfortable than discovering the mismatch after construction.
Check your local codes early. Chicagoland municipalities vary significantly on what's permitted. Some suburbs restrict second kitchens or separate entrances, treating them as illegal two-flat conversions. Others have specific requirements for basement bedroom egress windows — which is a safety requirement you should want to meet regardless. Villages like Naperville, Arlington Heights, Oak Park, and Evanston each have their own rules. Permits matter, and unpermitted work creates real problems at resale.
Plan for the main floor. Stairs are the biggest long-term obstacle in a multigenerational home. If there's any way to locate an aging parent's bedroom and bathroom on the main level, do it. If that's not possible, consider whether the stairwell can accommodate a lift later.
Think about sound. Three generations have three different schedules. Insulating interior walls, installing solid-core doors, and placing bedrooms away from shared living spaces costs relatively little during a renovation and pays off daily.
Don't forget ventilation. More people in a house means more moisture. In our climate — humid summers, sealed-up winters — undersized bathroom exhaust fans are a direct path to mold. Spec the fan properly and vent it outside, not into the attic.
Build in flexibility. Family configurations change. A suite designed for a grandparent today might house an adult child in five years, or become a rental-ready space, or revert to a guest suite. Neutral finishes and sensible layouts age better than hyper-specific solutions.
Consider the resale picture. Multigenerational-friendly homes are increasingly in demand in the Chicago market. A second full bathroom reliably returns a significant portion of its cost and widens your buyer pool considerably. Accessible features that look good are an asset, not a liability.
A Realistic Look at Timeline and Budget
Every home is different, but here's a rough framework for Chicagoland projects:
- Tub-to-shower conversion with accessibility features: Often completed in a matter of days, not weeks, depending on scope
- Full bathroom remodel: Typically two to four weeks
- New bathroom installation in an existing finished space: Three to five weeks, longer if plumbing runs are complex
- Basement bathroom with ejector pump: Four to six weeks, plus permit lead time
- Complete in-law suite addition: Several months, with architectural and permitting phases front-loaded
Winter work in Chicago is entirely feasible for interior projects — in fact, scheduling is often easier in January and February than in May.
Where Century City Baths Fits In
We focus on bathrooms, and we focus on doing them well. For multigenerational families, that means we spend a lot of time thinking about how a single room can serve a 7-year-old, a 40-year-old, and an 80-year-old equally well.
Our consultations are free, and they're genuinely consultative — we'll walk your space, talk through how your family actually lives, and give you an honest assessment of what's possible. Sometimes that means a full suite build-out. Sometimes it means a one-week conversion that solves 80% of the problem. We'll tell you which is which.
We work throughout the Chicagoland area, and we've handled everything from Oak Park bungalows to Schaumburg splits to Hyde Park two-flats. Older homes come with surprises, and we've seen most of them.
The Bottom Line
Multigenerational living works when everyone has somewhere to go, something that's theirs, and the dignity of independence. More often than not, the bathroom is where that starts.
If your family is considering bringing another generation under one roof — or you're already there and feeling the squeeze — we'd be glad to talk through options. There's usually more room in your existing home than you think.
Ready to get started? Contact Century City Baths for a free in-home consultation and let's talk about what's possible in your space.
