When aging-appropriate smart home products optimize functions and experiences based on the logic of “the elderly adapt to technology, rather than technology adapting to the elderly”, users’ acceptance and purchase intention will also increase.
The Spring Festival of the Year of the Horse is approaching, and the survey found that at the New Year Festival events, smart mattresses for the elderly equipped with heart rate, sleep monitoring and abnormal warning functions have become popular. On major e-commerce platforms, the sales and search volume of products such as smart bathroom sets for the elderly, anti-dry stoves, home appliances for the elderly with AI voice interaction, and wireless high-definition cameras continue to rise.
The popularity of aging-friendly smart homes in the New Year market is due to the increase in consumption spurred by “AI + silver hair” and the implementation of policies to boost consumption.
Driven by both policies and market demand, aging-friendly smart homes are transforming from “niche needs” to “mass rigid needs”, promoting the transformation of the elderly’s living model from “passively accepting care” to “actively enjoying life”.
From “Technology Adapted to the Elderly” to “Technology Adapted to the Elderly”
“Many elderly people cannot recognize their door locks due to wear and tear of their fingerprints, and it is inconvenient to enter the password while carrying children or carrying things. This model has a vein recognition function, which can be identified without removing it when wearing thin gloves in winter. It can bind 10 veins, which is enough for a family.
, you can also use the mobile app to control the door lock.
There is currently a special price, and installation is included. If you place an order now, you can make an appointment to come to your door after the Spring Festival.
“When introducing the product to an elderly consumer at the smart door lock counter in a shopping mall in Beijing, he hit the target of his consumer needs in just a few words and also revealed the characteristics and trends of current smart door locks that are suitable for aging.
The reporter learned during the interview that the problems faced by the elderly when using smart door locks are mainly concentrated in the following aspects: the elderly’s fingerprints are worn and cannot be recognized, the product buttons are small and “unfriendly” to the elderly’s eyesight, the interface is complex and difficult for the elderly to operate, and the battery is dead and the elderly are caught off guard.
Ms. Wang, a consumer, mentioned that the smart door lock at her parents’ home experienced two battery drains. After that, the old woman found it too troublesome to replace the battery, and eventually gave up the smart function and returned to the old method of using a key to open the door.
With the upgrade of smart door lock technology, these problems are improving at an accelerated pace.
Palm vein recognition and 3D face recognition solve the problem of fingerprints that cannot be removed due to wear and tear. Elderly-friendly features such as long battery life, large fonts, voice reminders, and one-click calling of children are also constantly being iterated.
Public reports show that just last month, at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in the United States, a Chinese smart door lock product attracted attention. It has unique unlimited battery life power supply technology. At the same time, the three-camera configuration achieves full indoor and outdoor coverage. Local AI combined with a large cloud model realizes intelligent viewing including AI.
Covering 9 core AI scenarios such as nursing, it meets the needs of the elderly (especially the elderly living alone). For example, in terms of AI intelligent care, if someone falls in the designated area, an alarm will be pushed immediately, and the children can respond quickly. Abnormal fireworks in the kitchen and bathroom can also be alerted in real time, reducing the risk of families with elderly people at home.
Professionals pointed out that the current aging-appropriate upgrade of smart door locks follows the logic of “technology adapts to the elderly, rather than the elderly adapting to technology”, using full-dimensional recognition to solve the “difficulty of opening the door”, using AI care to eliminate “unexpected accidents”, and using ultra-long battery life to interact with large screens to solve the problem of “not being able to use it and fear of running out of power”.
This logic also runs through the research and development and iteration of various aging-friendly smart home products such as smart mattresses, smart toilets, and voice-enabled home appliances.
Smart mattresses can capture key health indicators such as blood oxygen, pulse wave atrial fibrillation, heart rate, and fatigue index for the elderly, and provide real-time warnings of potential health risks; smart speakers deeply integrate AI large model capabilities, and AI smart screens are transformed into warm home health partners, opening up practical scenarios such as AI online consultation and doctor video connections, allowing home health management to form a complete closed loop from monitoring, early warning to consultation.
“AI+Silver Hair” creates consumption increase
As the Spring Festival approaches, major e-commerce platforms are focusing on New Year’s goods consumption.
On February 4, when reporters searched for keywords such as “smart mattresses for the elderly” and “smart homes for the elderly” on different e-commerce platforms, they found that many aging-friendly smart home products not only have platform subsidies, but also have multiple discounts such as national subsidies and interest-free installments. The sales volume, number of views, and number of “planters” are all considerable.
Offline, aging-friendly smart home products are also popular New Year products.
At the recently held 2026 Beijing Xicheng District Silver New Year Goods Festival, the smart life experience area was the most popular booth, and intelligent exoskeleton walking robots and smart mattresses became the focus of the audience.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that the population aged 60 and above will reach 310 million in 2024, accounting for 22% of the national population.
As the elderly care needs of the elderly in the new era change from survival to development and enjoyment, aging-friendly products are ushering in development opportunities.
On the eve of the Double Ninth Festival last year, Alibaba and Zhejiang Open University released the “2025 “Silver Hair + AI” Application Trend Report, stating that “AI + Silver Hair” is creating significant consumption increases. In the past year, aging-friendly smart products on Taobao Tmall platform generally achieved triple-digit sales growth. From January to August 2025, sales of Taobao Tmall palm vein door locks increased by nearly 150% year-on-year.
The reporter noticed that in a series of new year consumption reports released on the eve of the Spring Festival of the Year of the Horse, silver-haired economy, quality home furnishings, suitable for aging, etc. were all high-frequency words.
iiMedia Consulting’s “White Paper on China’s New Consumption Trends in 2026” mentioned that the market size of the elderly care industry will reach 16.1 trillion yuan in 2025, and the silver economy will transition from “elderly care” to “enjoyment of the elderly.”
JD Consumer Research Institute’s “2025 Consumption Observation” shows that during JD’s Double 11 in 2025, the supply of home appliances and home products for the elderly will increase by more than 100% year-on-year.
JD.com’s Building Materials New Year’s Fair data shows that during this year’s New Year’s Festival, the transaction volume of smart bathroom and elderly-friendly bathroom products increased by 50% year-on-year, 55% of which were off-site orders.
Behind the market heating up is the continued implementation and effectiveness of policies to boost consumption.
The “Notice on the Implementation of Large-scale Equipment Update and Consumer Goods Trade-in Policy in 2026” clearly expands the digital products in the consumer goods subsidy category to digital and smart products, and allows local governments to independently implement subsidies for smart home products (including aging-friendly home products) according to local conditions.
Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, said in an interview with the media that the policy will be further optimized and adjusted to include more digital smart products and aging-friendly home products into the scope of subsidies, which will cover more consumers’ needs for a better life and reflect the fundamental compliance with benefiting people’s livelihood.
“With intelligence” does not mean “appropriate for aging”, avoid “regarding purchases over services”
The current smart products for aging are no longer simply enlarging the font size or simplifying the interface, but are systematic solutions integrating AIoT, big data, and sensor technology, covering multiple dimensions such as safety monitoring, health management, and emotional companionship.
From “senior machine” to “invisible guardian”, functional upgrades have increased user acceptance and purchase intention.
However, consumers may also fall into misunderstandings due to cognitive biases about product suitability, functional value, and usage scenarios when purchasing and using them.
Some consumers believe that “smart” means “suitable for aging.” For example, some smart speakers do not have large fonts, large volumes, and simplified voice wake-up words, and some smart mattresses do not have simple data broadcast functions. Such products have basic intelligence, but are not adapted to the physiological and psychological characteristics of the elderly.
There are also consumers who “emphasis on purchase but not on service”, focusing only on product prices and ignoring installation and debugging services. For example, smart door locks are not installed in a standardized manner, causing the switch to not be smooth, smart health monitoring equipment is not debugged and calibrated, resulting in inaccurate data, and the elderly give up using the product due to poor experience, leaving the product idle for a long time.
Zhang Yaling, executive leader of the drafting group for the “Guidelines for Design of Furniture for the Aged” and director of the Standards Research Center of the Shenzhen Furniture Research and Development Institute, once mentioned in an interview with the media that the core of intelligent technology is “useful”, and intelligence is only a means rather than an end. Aging-friendly smart products should avoid functional redundancy and raise the threshold for use.
Pan Baochun, deputy to the National People’s Congress and chairman of Hefei Royalstar Electronics and Electrical Appliances Group Co., Ltd., also said that the smart home elderly care model is not a stack of high-end equipment, and the technology needs to fit the habits of the elderly.
He suggested implementing a “Silver Digital Talent Training Program” to solve usage problems.
As the consumption trend of “paying for family affection” becomes more and more obvious, the value of aging-friendly smart home products as a New Year gift exceeds the value of the product itself.
Industry insiders suggest that when purchasing this type of “emotional” New Year’s goods for the elderly, you should first look at “basic age-appropriateness” and then “intelligent functions”, with “rigid needs and simplicity” as the core, such as emergency calls, fall alarms, and remote viewing, and reject redundant functions.
At the same time, we should realize that aging-friendly smart products are not meant to be purchased once and for all. We should make full use of family collaboration scenarios and pay attention to later maintenance needs to avoid smart products eventually becoming “displays.”
