To ask what bathroom mistakes you have made

[Egoanono]

Doing up the bathroom at the mo, ripping it out and starting from scratch. Mid range budget but want a high end finish. I'd love to learn from your mistakes (and successes! please.

[MrsMuddlePluck]

Apologies if I havent read the entire thread:
Get a water softener & use it!
Install as many cupboards as you can - including somewhere to hide the bin
Heated towel rail
Decent lighting where you do your makeup
Mirrored doors so you can see the back of your hairdo

[ClaraLane]

Definitely agreeing with all the posts re. grey grout, ours is 2.5 years old and still looks absolutely perfect. I hate our glass shelf over the sink because it's always messy plus I wish we'd put in an extractor fan however our walls are just too thick unfortunately.

[minipie]

Clara could you put one in the ceiling (not if there is a room above obv...) it can be vented through the roof

[Showgirl109]

Dark grout - looks lovely still and no mould
Huge shower the biggest you can fit in, we also completely rejigged the bathroom to have a separate bath and shower which has made a massive difference.
Heated mirror is the best thing we have ever had.
Ditto underfloor heating

[BowieFan]

If you do get an electric towel rail, don't put it near the loo. Otherwise you'll find yourself burning your thigh every time you go to the loo I know this from personal experience.

We've got mosaic tiles in the kids' bathroom and they are AWFUL. Literally the devil's work. I'd get rid of them but the kids love them and I can't be bothered to go picking tiles and new taps and stuff. Oh and avoid white floor tiles. Our family bathroom had them when we moved in and we immediately got rid, mainly because every time the cats walked around in there they looked messy.

[EnriqueTheRingBearingLizard]

Re walk in shower, we're very pleased with ours. So much easier to clean than a cubicle with doors, especially sliding doors where you always get an inaccessible part. Just make sure your towels are handy for when you get out.

The main advice I'd give is consider well the location of all the pieces. A toilet situated opposite a glazed shower unit might as well be directly opposite a mirror

[Whistlejacket16]

Ooh. Boiler size should be for a house at least 2 bedrooms more than yours is if you have room/can splash out a bit. That way you have awesome pressure and these large volume baths can be filled within minutes.

[WankersHacksandThieves]

"takes about 20 minutes to run a bath "

Sounds like a combi boiler to me.

Nope, it's just the design of the bath and shit pressure. We have a pump fitted for the showers. Sometimes I feel it's quicker to fill the bath from the shower head but as I say, we rarely take a bath. Didn't have the same issue with the old bath and taps.

[SignoraStronza]

We've inherited a bathroom with a shower and bath surrounded entirely by nasty mosaic tiles. The amount of scrubbing required to make the grout look even basically clean is ridiculous. When we can afford to replace, I will be going for the most massive tiles possible and dark clued grout.

We also have small plain white floor tiles, which show up every stray pube hair or bit of dust and dirt that lands on them.

[Janey50]

badtasteflump - I thought exactly the same!

[Natsku]

Consider a wet room with floor heating. I moved to Finland and every bathroom is a wet room here and a couple of places I lived had the underfloor heating as well and it is just so so lovely! Pure bliss to put wet feet on a warm floor.

Make sure you have enough storage room - nice to have laundry basket inside a cupboard so your dirty clothes aren't visible to guests. High up cupboard to keep cleaning stuff out of reach of children. Mixer tap on the sink.

[FleshEmoji]

Splash out on one key thing if you want it (we got an expensive copper bath) and source the rest of the stuff as reasonably as you can. We got brand name sinks, taps, people's left over tiles etc on eBay.

Got stainless steel corner shelves for the showers - they are perforated so the soap doesn't sit in water, and look good most of the time, unlike glass.

It's worth having decent radiators - the room should be toasty. We got stainless steel ones as a design feature.

Be mad and have fun. We have an Alice in a Wonderland bathroom! Just a wall hanging, some hooks, pictures & loo reading, so easily changed, but lovely.

Sink units can be dreadfully boring and a bit LQ - we got a shabby chic console table from eBay and plumbed a bowl sink on top of it. Towels go on its bottom shelf.

[Sgtmajormummy]

Having just a shower "rose" without a flexible hand-held attachment is a BAD IDEA.
You can't clean the cubicle properly. Can't wash little ones easily. Can't direct the jet away from yourself if it suddenly goes hot or cold. Disaster.

[FleshEmoji]

Second the low level lights that come on as you go in - have those in the ensuite.

[millymae]

Haven't read all the posts so someone might have mentioned this before - but choose your toilet carefully. I thought all toilets were the same, but this isn't the case at all. In lots of them the poo just drops straight into the bowl but in ours it somehow gravitates and sticks to the sides. Also, ask some questions as to how the water gets into the toilet bowl from the cistern. Ours seems to trickle round the edges rather than forcefully shoot through a hole so 2 flushes are often needed.

Secondly don't choose a white/silver grey vinyl floor. Mine has received lots of compliments, but it attracts dust and shows every water mark and hair.

[Lunar1]

I got most of my bathroom bits from eBay really cheaply, ibathstore uk I think. They were really helpful and take returns . I then swapped the cheap toilet seat for a good one and bought a unique stone sink which looks amazing, also from eBay. My whole bathroom fully tiled and fitted was £3800, but looks far more expensive due to the sink and some nice finishing touches.

[nocake]

We have a toilet that sits back against the wall so you can't see any pipes, which makes it neater.
Get samples of tiles before making a final decision. We got three samples before we found the right ones.
Write detailed instructions for the fitters and be prepared to discuss alternative ways of doing things as they sometimes know better.
Get the quietest fan you can find.

[nocake]

The toilet we have is an Ideal Standard Aquablade which flushed with about a teacup of water. It's really impressive and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

[Mcchickenbb41]

Don't assume you have to have white grout. We nearly made a huge mistake. We did our bathroom last year. Was a massive knock down walls job and cost a fortune but the end result is stunning. Anyway we have sage green metro tiles. Bathroom guy practically begged us to have white grout. I wanted grey. I didn't want it to look like a grid I wanted it to blend. He thought we were making a huge mistake in the end he said look ill grout a tiny bit grey then do a patch white. Didn't even mix up any white. He said straight away grey looked lovely and he was wrong. Also dimmer switches. Now, like a lot of people we have spotlights. They are lovely it it's like bathing in a car show room. We tried to fit a dimmer light afterwards but couldn't because of the bulbs used and now it's a job that's been put on the back burner. Plan storage if poss you won't regret it. Get a mirror with a de mister in and sensored light built in as is very handy. If I think of anything else I'll post it !

[TattiePants]

Adagio yes we have the same tiles but in three different sizes in the en-suite. Matt grey tiles - large rectangles on the walls, small rectangles inside the shower and square tiles on the floor. It's quite a small room so I wanted a uniform look and after 9 years I still like it.

[dietcokeandwine]

Lots of great tips here! We had our bathrooms redone as part of a major extension project earlier this year, I would add the following to what's already been said:

-Go for large tiles (they make a room look bigger) and, if possible, use the same tiles on the floor as you have on the wall. Looks really stylish and spacious.

-use flip top plugs in sinks rather than pop up waste type ones

-wall hung toilets and sink units look lovely and increase floor space and make floor cleaning much easier (just make sure you have access to the pipe work).

-Get a wall hung sink unit rather than just a wall hung sink as you can store spare shower gels etc in it. And yy to curved edges not trendy flat trough type sinks.

-if you love mosaic tiles but don't want the grout hassle, look for large tiles with mosaic effect as these can be quite effective without the practical hassle (see pic)

• biggest shower tray you get fit in and if possible use static glass panels rather than doors-minimises the faff of cleaning plastic or rubber hinges etc, especially if, like us, you're in a hard water area. I wouldn't necessarily avoid waterfall taps completely as they are stunning but just be aware you'll need to buff them daily to keep them looking nice. Same goes for any tap in a hard water area tbh. We have a waterfall spout for the bath and I just give it a wipe with the hand towel once the DC are out.
  

-get a bath with a centre tap and plug. Saves arguments between DC as to who has to sit at the plug end!

[dietcokeandwine]

Forgot to add tile pic - looks like mosaic, but they are just smooth large wall tiles.

[Mcchickenbb41]

Also as tempting as it is to go for the look of the bathroom first DO NOT DO THIS. Plan what you want from a bathroom first, what's important etc then go for style. Don't get me wrong I love my bathroom but it had to suit the needs of the family

[BuggersMuddle]

We have a bathroom and a wetroom. Love the wetroom but wouldn't have it as only bathroom iyswim. Ironically our 'cheap' Bathstore one is doing better than our luxury one with Roman shower cubicle etc. Ah well...

Good stuff:

• Underfloor heating. We fitted it ourselves, it was dead easy and it's been great. Tiled floor isn't chilly and dries really quickly.
  

• If natural stone, make sure it's sealed properly. We have a tumbled marble floor in our wetroom and it's ideal.
  

• Heated & lit mirror is great.
  

• Fitting a decent extractor made a big difference as previously we'd had problems with mould.
  

• Love my fixed rain shower but like others, I'd have flexible head as well.
  

• Bit of an indulgence, but we have a jacuzzi bath and it's great. Depends on budget though - ours is by no means top of the market, but the cheap ones are generally a bit shit IME.
  

• Definitely consider storage!
  

Learnings:

• Full glass shower cabinet. PITA to fit and clean. I'd probably get a walk in if re-doing mine.
  

• Get a decent tiler and question any imperfections before grouting. We had a tiler who skimped on tile cement and thus have a few cracks on our white wall tiles. (Fortunately not in the wetroom and we have waterproof board behind but it's very annoying )
  

-Try to avoid shower curtains if you can. We kind of had no choice in our wetroom (very small room) but they are a PITA.

[Pettywoman]

Don't buy a non standard toilet because you'll want to change the seat eventually and it will be a nightmare to source one the right shape.