The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024
LG Comfort Kit: bolt-on accessibility for household appliances — IDEA 2024 Gold
Instead of separate appliances for the elderly and disabled, LG sells clip-on accessories that make any appliance usable — Comfort Kit won IDEA 2024 Gold.
LG Electronics
What it had to solve
Most home appliances assume an able-bodied adult — doors that need grip strength, dials that need fine fingers, racks that need bending. The conventional answer is a separate 'special needs' line: pricier, smaller-run, stigmatizing. LG's design team instead kept the appliances universal and built a kit of small parts that clip onto them, sold like any other accessory.
How it works
Most home appliances assume an able-bodied adult: doors that need grip strength, dials that need finger dexterity, racks that need bending, hangers that need reach. The conventional industry answer is a separate 'silver' or special-needs product line — pricier, smaller-run, and visually marked as different. LG's design team reversed the logic: keep the appliances universal and make accessibility a kit of parts that clips onto them.
The LG Comfort Kit bundles small accessories for existing products: Easy Handle opens appliance doors for people with limited hand mobility; Easy Ball manages washer dials; Easy Hanger brings storage within reach of wheelchair users and matches the design identity of mass-produced hangers; an Extension Handle removes a dishwasher's bottom rack without bending. The parts snap on and off, use rounded edges for added safety, and the handle, ball and hanger are molded from recycled plastic.
At the 2024 International Design Excellence Awards, the Comfort Kit won one of LG's two Gold trophies — part of a 23-award haul including one Silver and three Bronze. The IDSA jury described its effect as letting anyone 'enjoy a pleasant home appliance experience without feeling excluded.' Back on the retail floor it behaves like any accessory: the Easy Ball is listed on LG's US store as standard part AAA30793454.
Why it lands
- Attaching to standard appliances means no second product line, no special tooling, no premium price hurdle — inclusion is delivered as an ordinary accessory purchase.
- Easy Hanger 'matches the design identity of existing mass-produced hangers,' so the aid disappears into the home instead of announcing a disability.
- One small cart of parts covers several barriers at once — doors, dials, racks, reach — so the kit scales across the entire appliance estate from a single design system.
- Recycled plastic and rounded edges keep the kit inside the same sustainability and safety signals as LG's main line, so it belongs to the brand story rather than a charity sideline.
What it did
The Kit won Gold at the 2024 International Design Excellence Awards — one of LG's two Golds in a 23-award haul that included one Silver and three Bronze. The IDSA jury text framed its goal as letting anyone 'enjoy a pleasant home appliance experience without feeling excluded.' It also behaves like an ordinary retail accessory: the Easy Ball is listed on LG's US store as standard part AAA30793454.
What you can take
Serve a hard-to-reach segment as a bolt-on, not a separate product: a clip-on accessory kit reaches disabled and elderly users without new platforms, premium pricing or stigma.
Since then
The Gold validated universal design as a mainstream strategy for LG, which framed the win around social value and sustainability as much as aesthetics. The accessories continue to sell as ordinary retail SKUs — in LG's US store the Easy Ball is a standard parts-list item — which is the quiet point of the whole idea: inclusion embedded in the accessories catalog. For the appliance industry, the Kit stood as the argument that accessibility belongs in the parts list, not in a separate product line.
Sources
- LG Comfort Kit — IDEA 2024 award gallery
- LG Shines at IDEA 2024: Two Gold Awards Celebrate Innovative and Inclusive Design
- LG Comfort Kit, the accessory set designed to improve accessibility
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