Key finding
Minute for minute, the risk of a fall is 82% higher in the bathroom than in the other rooms of a resident’s apartment.
Over 30 days (16 September – 15 October 2026), Nobi monitored 1,736 residents in 37 senior living communities. The bathroom accounted for only 7.4% of the time the rooms were occupied, but for 11.7% of the 1,096 confirmed falls.
How we measured it
The Nobi Light in each room registers, minute by minute, whether someone is in the room. Adding up those minutes shows exactly how much time was spent in the bathroom and in the other rooms, day and night.
- Period
- 30 days, 16 September – 15 October 2026
- Communities
- 37 senior living communities
- Apartments
- 1,475
- Residents
- 1,736 (50,029 resident-days)
- Confirmed falls
- 1,096
Confirmed falls only. The same Nobi Light detects when a person is on the floor. Every detection is reviewed by Nobi’s review team, and only real falls are counted. False alarms and intentional floor activity are left out.
The same measurement everywhere. Only apartments with a Nobi Light in the bathroom as well as the other rooms are included, so falls and time are measured the same way in every room.
Results
The bathroom has a fall rate of 2.00 confirmed falls per 1,000 occupied hours, against 1.20 in the other rooms.
| Room | Confirmed falls | Share of falls | Occupied hours | Share of time | Falls per 1,000 occupied hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bathroom | 128 | 11.7% | 64,010 | 7.4% | 2.00 |
| Other rooms | 968 | 88.3% | 803,577 | 92.6% | 1.20 |
| Total | 1,096 | 100% | 867,587 | 100% | 1.26 |
Comparing the bathroom with the other rooms within each community, and combining the 37 results, gives 1.82 times the risk: the 82%.
We compare within each community because communities differ in their residents, care levels and how often falls happen. This way, each community’s bathrooms are compared with its own other rooms. Taking all communities together as one group gives 1.66 times; that figure is pulled down by one community with an unusually high number of repeat falls outside the bathroom.
What the 82% means
The 82% is about risk per minute, not about where most falls happen.
- It does not mean 82% of falls happen in the bathroom. Most falls (88%) happen in the other rooms, because residents spend most of their time there.
- It means each minute in the bathroom is riskier. For the same amount of time, you can expect about 82% more falls in the bathroom than in the other rooms.
- It covers the whole day. The comparison includes every occupied minute, day and night.
How consistent the result is
Every way of counting finds a higher fall risk in the bathroom than in the other rooms.
| Way of counting | Bathroom risk vs other rooms |
|---|---|
| Within each community, combined | 1.82× (+82%) |
| All communities taken together | 1.66× (+66%), 95% confidence range 1.25–2.23 |
| Leaving out any one community | 1.55× to 1.86× |
| Only falls recorded by care staff as unintentional | 1.96× (+96%) |
The result also holds community by community. Of the 34 communities with at least one bathroom fall, the bathroom was riskier than the other rooms in 28; in none was it clearly safer.
Over a longer period
The bathroom’s share of falls is stable over time at around 11%.
Over 14 months (June 2024 – August 2025), 30 communities recorded 4,617 confirmed falls. 524 of them (11.3%) happened in the bathroom, in line with the 11.7% in the 30-day period.
Methodology
The headline is a rate ratio: the fall rate per occupied hour in the bathroom, divided by the same rate in the other rooms.
- Period: 16 September 2026 00:00 to 16 October 2026 00:00 UTC. Nobi keeps minute-by-minute occupancy data for 30 days, so the per-minute comparison uses the most recent 30 days.
- Occupancy: a room counts as occupied from the moment the Nobi Light detects a person, movement or someone sitting, until it registers the room as empty. Gaps longer than 12 hours are capped.
- Falls: detections that Nobi’s review team classified as a real fall. Detections not yet reviewed were left out.
- Within-community figure: the rate ratio is calculated for each community and the results are combined.
- Excluded: 761 devices that reported on fewer than 27 of the 30 days; 6 devices in storage rooms; 12 apartments where the bathroom made up over 40% of occupied time, a sign of an incorrect room setup; 233 confirmed falls in rooms or apartments that did not meet these criteria.
- Overall fall rate: 21.9 confirmed falls per 1,000 resident-days.
See how Nobi covers the bathroom: Right up to the bathroom, and inside.