Flash Furniture Adjustable Bath and Shower Transfer Bench Review 2024

Do you have a serious mobility issue?

One that sees you confined for at least part of each day in a wheelchair?

If you answered yes to either of those questions, you’ve probably begun looking at the possibility of a bath or shower chair to make bathing a less daunting proposition, but there’s a catch: If you have a serious mobility issue, a standard shower chair might not work for you because you may not be able to move around well enough to get from your wheelchair to the shower chair.

The good news is that you’re not the first person to have encountered this problem, and Flash Furniture is one of a number of companies offering a transfer-style bath and shower bench seat to make your life easier.

We’ll be quick to say that the Flash Furniture Adjustable Bath and Shower Transfer Bench is a niche product. They’re not for everyone. They are designed specifically for people with severe mobility issues, usually confined to a wheelchair, who aren’t steady enough on their feet to make the short trip from your wheelchair to the bath seat.

Still, if you need one, then nothing else will do. In the sections that follow, we’ll tell you everything this modestly priced seat has to offer and why it belongs on your shortlist of options to consider. If that sounds good to you, read on.

An Overview of the Flash Furniture Adjustable Bath and Shower Transfer Bench

One thing that can be fairly said about shower chairs is that they won’t win any beauty contests.

That’s true of most models available today, and this one is no exception. Flash Furniture offers other models in a small selection of bright colors in a bid to liven up some of their designs, but this one is only available in gray or white, so best case, it will blend politely into the background and worst case, it will look like the medical device that it is.

Before we say more than that, let’s take a quick look at the core stats that define this model. Here they are:

There are a number of things to take note of where these numbers are concerned. First and foremost, as a bench-style seat, this is a large shower chair. Unless you have a supersized shower or tub, it’s not going to fit inside it.

Don’t worry; it’s not supposed to (though if you have room to do that, you certainly can). Instead, it’s made so you can put two of the chair legs outside the tub, wheel right up to the edge of the seat, get a bit of help sliding from your wheelchair to the bath seat, then scoot yourself into position for a nice, relaxing shower.

When you’re finished, you simply reverse the process after you dry off, settle back into your trusty wheelchair, and carry on with the rest of your day.

Next, since this is a bench-style seat, it’s 27” width is more than sufficient to accommodate just about any body shape and style with room to spare. The 16.5” seat depth, while not as impressive as its width, is still deep enough to be comfortable, given the relatively short spans of time you’ll be using it.

Finally, note that the Flash Furniture HERCULES Adjustable Bath and Shower Transfer Bench is height adjustable and can be set as low as 17.25” and as high as 21.5”, or anywhere in between, at half-inch increments. The standard height adjustment range for a big and tall chair is usually in the neighborhood of 18” to 22,” so this chair more or less fits that profile, making it ideal for taller people, but there is one caveat here.

That caveat lies in the weight limit of the chair. While most of Flash Furniture’s Hercules product line is known for supporting impressive amounts of user weight, this one is decidedly average, so if you’re taller and heavier, this isn’t the chair for you.

Even so, since it’s capable of supporting up to 300-pounds, it’s useful for some 90% of the market.

Just be mindful not to exceed the weight limit of the chair. The last thing you want is to have it buckle beneath you while you’re using it!

Adjustability, Comfort, and Extras

This model only has one adjustable feature, and we just mentioned above. The only thing to add is the fact that adjusting the height of the seat is a simple, straightforward process. On the inside of each of the chair legs, you’ll find a button. Press that, then slide the leg to the desired length and click the locking mechanism back into place.

Repeat that procedure on the other three legs, making sure they’re all set to the same position so the chair is level, and you’re all set.

The process takes mere seconds to complete, and since odds are you’ll be the only person in your house using it, once you set the height to your preference, you’ll never have to bother with it again (though if someone else needs to use it, and they’re taller or shorter, it’s certainly easy enough to tweak it for them too).

Comfort-wise, this is a hard plastic chair with recessed drainage holes in the seat to keep you from sitting in a puddle of water while you’re showering. As such, the Flash Furniture Adjustable Bath & Shower Transfer Bench doesn’t win high marks for comfort.

Granted, it’s not uncomfortable, especially given that you’ll only be sitting in it for relatively short periods, but it’s not something that anyone would describe as a delight to sit in, which makes it about what you’d expect for a shower bench.

In addition to those things, two other features fall into the “extras” category that are well worth mentioning. First, there’s the fact that this chair comes with a convenient handle built into the seatback.

Actually, “convenient” might be overselling it a bit here. Given the shape of the chair (bench-style) and the fact that the seatback is on one end when you lift the chair via this handle, it’s a bit ungainly. Even so, since it only weighs ten pounds, it’s still relatively easy to move it out of the way when you’re not using it.

Second, this transfer bench has rubberized feet, and the legs are widely spaced, giving you a chair that firmly grips the floor and the bottom of your tub or shower, so you won’t have to worry about it sliding around on you as you move from your wheelchair to the shower seat.

One thing that’s absent here that you find on many non-bench-style seats is a no-slip grip on the one chair arm this seat provides. That’s actually not a bad thing in this case since this seat was designed to allow you to simply slide from your wheelchair to one end of the bench and then scoot over.

Sure, a rubberized grip on the chair arm would have been a nice addition, but it’s not essential in the way that it is on other styles of shower chairs, so we can’t really count it as a failing on the company’s part. This model is designed such that it’s not really necessary.

Assembly is Required

As is the case with most of the furniture you can buy on the internet these days, if you decide you want one of these, it will arrive in a large box and unassembled, so you’ll have some work to do before you can actually start using it.

Fortunately, there really aren’t all that many pieces to contend with, the production quality of the chair is fairly high, and all the pieces fit together as they should. It’s just a matter of following the reasonably well-written assembly instructions and going through it one piece at a time. 

From start to finish, you can expect the process to take about twenty minutes, which isn’t bad at all.

Even if you’re not fond of putting your own furniture together, it’s a quick and painless process.

Pros and Cons of the Flash Furniture HERCULES Adjustable Bath and Shower Transfer Bench

Here are the things we liked best about this model. It is:

That said, there are two significant downsides to bear in mind. They are:

Final Thoughts on the Flash Furniture Adjustable Bath & Shower Transfer Bench

As we said at the start, this is a niche product. Unless you have a severe mobility issue that requires a bench-style transfer shower seat, you’ll probably be happier with a more conventionally designed shower chair.

Given that and its 300-pound weight limit, we regard this as being a fairly narrowly targeted chair.

For those that need it, it’s superb. 

For everyone else, it’s almost certainly not the best choice. In light of that, we provisionally recommend the Flash Furniture Adjustable Bath and Shower Transfer Bench.

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Official Manufacturer Support

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES

• Flash Furniture, Official Brand Website.
• Keeping the Bathroom Safe for Elderly Seniors, Caregiver.
• Bathing & Hygiene Top Tips: Convincing a Senior to Bathe, Aging Care.
• 4 Promising Benefits of Shower Chairs for Elderly, Burt’s FX.
• Safe Bathing/Showering for Seniors who are Aging in Place, SeniorsMatter.com.