If a fingertip press hurts, or your fingers will not do it, the answer is usually to use a different part of your body — and to change what you are pressing so that part can reach it. None of this is improvising badly. Surgeons have scrubbed in by elbowing taps and dispensers for a century.
The one that works most often: the heel of your hand. It gives you nearly the force of a whole-arm push while keeping the load off the small finger joints, and unlike an elbow you can see what you are aiming at. What it needs is a surface at least a couple of centimetres across, on something that will not slide away when you lean on it.
On this page
What makes something pressable without a fingertip
Four properties decide whether a technique will work on a particular thing. When a technique fails it is almost always one of these, not the technique.
- Area. Whatever you press with has to fit. A fingertip is about a centimetre across; a palm heel is four or five; an elbow is a blunt lump. The surface must be at least as wide as the thing landing on it, or you are back to a point load.
- Stability. This is the one that actually defeats people. A bottle that slides, tips or spins takes your force sideways instead of down. A pump that is easy to press while somebody holds the bottle is a stability problem, not a strength problem, and it has cheap answers.
- Height and clearance. An elbow needs room to swing and a surface roughly between your waist and your chest. A foot needs the thing at floor level. A chin needs it at face height. Most kitchen taps are at the wrong height for an elbow and the right height for a forearm.
- Travel. How far the thing moves. A light switch travels two millimetres and a soap pump travels fifteen. Long travel favours techniques with follow-through — palm, fist, forearm — and punishes precise ones like a single knuckle.
The techniques
Roughly in order of how much force they give you.
| Press with | Good for | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Heel of the hand | Soap pumps, stiff buttons, drawer catches. The best all-round option: a lot of force, and you can see it. | Needs a flat surface at least 2–3 cm across. On a small pump head it slips off. |
| Flat of the fist | Almost as strong, and it keeps the wrist straight — useful in a splint or when bending the wrist is the painful bit. | Less precise than the palm heel. Not for sore knuckles. |
| Flat knuckles | More aim than a fist, more force than one finger. Good on mid-size buttons. | Concentrates load onto the knuckles themselves. |
| Single knuckle | Small buttons, keypads, touchscreens, lift buttons. Works on phone screens because a knuckle is skin. | Less force than it looks. Not through a glove or a plaster. |
| Back of the wrist | Light switches, lift buttons, push-plates on doors. Very quick, no hand involvement at all. | Little force, little precision. |
| Forearm | Wall dispensers, lever taps, door plates. A lot of force, and easier to aim than an elbow. | Needs the target at about waist to chest height and something wide to land on. |
| Elbow | The classic for wall-mounted levers and scrub-room dispensers. Plenty of force. | Almost no precision and you cannot see it. Needs the object fixed down — an elbow will send a loose bottle across the worktop. |
| Chin or cheek | Things at face height. More precise than people expect, because you can see the target right up until you reach it. | Hygiene, on anything shared. Fine on your own bathroom shelf. |
| Nose — the bridge, not the tip | Touchscreens and small buttons when both hands are full or neither will do it. It works, and it is genuinely used. | It looks odd for about a week and then it does not. Same skin-contact rule as a knuckle. |
| Foot or heel | Pedal bins, foot-operated taps, floor sockets. Your whole body weight is available. | Balance. If standing on one foot is not steady, hold something first. |
| Leaning — whole body | Stiff wall levers and push-bar doors. Effectively unlimited force. | Only for things bolted to a wall. |
Particular situations
One-handed
The press is rarely the hard part. Holding the thing still is. In order of how well they work:
- Mount it. A wall-fixed dispenser cannot move. Best answer by a distance.
- Corner it. Stand the bottle in the corner of the basin or against the tiles, so two sides hold it for you. Free, works immediately.
- Non-slip mat. A square of the rubbery mesh sold for jar-opening, under the bottle. A pound or two, and it also stops plates skating.
- Heavier and wider. A tall narrow bottle tips; a squat heavy one does not. Decanting into a better-shaped bottle costs nothing.
In a splint, a cast or a bandage
Whatever is immobilised, use the joint above it. A wrist splint rules out the palm heel and the wrist, and leaves the fist, the forearm and the elbow — all of which keep the wrist neutral, which is the point of the splint. Keep the press in line with the forearm rather than off to one side.
With long nails
Press with the pad below the nail rather than the tip, or turn the hand over and use a knuckle. On a phone or a card machine a knuckle works properly, because those screens respond to skin rather than to pressure. On a stiff pump, a flat palm avoids the question entirely.
With a tremor
Two things help more than technique. Brace — rest the forearm or the elbow on the worktop and pivot from there, so the shake has less lever to work with. And make the target bigger, because a large surface is far more forgiving of a hand that arrives somewhere slightly unintended than any amount of aiming is. Approaching slowly and landing before pressing is easier than trying to do both at once.
When hands are cold or painful
Cold hands produce less force and are less comfortable to press with, which is why a bottle can feel much harder in the morning or in an unheated bathroom. Warming your hands under the tap first genuinely changes what you can do. This is a common experience for people with Raynaud's; the NHS has a plain page on it.
When there is very little force available at all
If none of the above gets you there, the honest answer is to remove the press rather than to get better at it: a sensor tap, a pedal bin, a pot of soap you dip into, a foaming bottle. Adapting the technique has a floor, and past it the object has to change.
Changing the object instead of your body
Most of the effort in this subject goes into technique, and most of the gain is in the object. Four changes, in order of how much difference they make:
- Lower the force needed. A foaming dispenser instead of a lotion pump. Diluting thick soap. Warming the room. Nothing about your hands has to change.
- Fix it down. Wall mount, corner, non-slip mat. Turns a two-handed job into a one-handed one.
- Widen the surface. A bigger, flatter top lets a palm or a forearm do what a fingertip was doing. This is the gap our own part fills — PALM slides onto a pump head you already own and gives you that surface. It does not make the pump lighter, so if the force is the problem the first point on this list matters more.
- Remove the press. Sensor taps, pedal bins, lever handles, open pots.
For the soap pump specifically, all six routes are compared on their own page, including where an electric or a wall-mounted dispenser beats anything you can do with technique. For everything else that gets harder — jars, taps, kettles, dressing — the things we don't make names who does.
Where to get proper help, most of it free
Nothing on this website is a substitute for any of the following, and all of it is better than a website.
- A pharmacist. No appointment, no referral, and they will talk to you about hand pain and about what is worth trying. The most under-used free advice in the country.
- Your GP. Particularly if the difficulty is new, getting worse, worse in the morning, or in both hands at once.
- An occupational therapist. This is the profession whose actual job is the problem this page is about — they look at your hands and your kitchen, not at a category page. In England you can ask your council for a needs assessment for equipment and adaptations, and much of what they recommend is provided at no cost. Ask your GP, or your council's adult social care team directly.
- Arthritis UK — the charity that was Versus Arthritis until its 2026 rebrand — and NRAS both run free helplines staffed by people who know this subject properly.
- Living Made Easy, run by the Disabled Living Foundation, is an impartial database of daily-living equipment. It lists products from everyone, including our competitors and including things that would replace PALM entirely. If you want to compare options without being sold to, start there.
PALM is a daily-living aid, not a medical device. It makes a soap pump easier to press. It does not treat, prevent or improve any condition, and nothing here is medical advice or a diagnosis. If your hands hurt, the people in the list above are the ones to ask.