New bathroom question

[ipadmad]

We have been to see a local bathroom place who have an in-house designer. Needless to say they have gone overboard with the 'initial design' - coming out at over £20k - and that is supply only.

The layout design itself is great but top of range furniture/fittings etc which is where the expense is - and which we don't want or need.

Obviously we have reset their expectations re our budget which is way way less but are peeved that they even suggested this.

Am thinking as to whether it is feasible to just organise the bath etc ourselves as we have a builder for the fitting. The only thing I'm concerned about really is the tiles and making sure everything works nicely.

Any advice?

I've done both: designed a simple bathroom myself, sourced the best (but often discounted) stuff myself, got builder to put it in. Crucially I had an experienced and very internet-savvy builder who could check all my purchase links and advise me on what I needed (and who could source random stuff like hidden toilet cisterns etc himself, you know, the stuff we don't know about).

It was hugely cheaper than a bathroom designer.

This time round for various reasons we have no time to order stuff separately and wait in for delivery. We have used a bathroom designer. She is ££££££ and we are definitely right at the bottom of her budget. But even with Villeroy & Boch fittings and Hansgrohe taps, the product cost for a small bathroom (ignoring design and labour) came to £8k. The key thing is: some things she suggested we felt were too expensive and she was really happy to suggest alternatives or use our suggestions. A good designer should have no qualms about fitting into your budget.

We've just fitted a bathroom, fittings came to 1600 in total (not including tiles)
V&B bath and back to wall toilet, Groehe shower head, mixer and filler, sink and drawer unit and groehe basin tap so by no means cheap fittings.

Small room though, but even so 20k sounds ridiculous to me

We're refitting a bathroom at the moment, with new shower, waterfall tap, tiled throughout inc floor, new lights, ceiling skimmed etc it will be less than £5k, fitted by a local builder. Toilet and sink are remaining and nothing is top of the range, but carefully chosen from different sources to get the look we want at a reasonable price. If you have time to shop around you can save a lot (tap for example, £140 is many places, £60+ in B&Q, we bought for £25 on Amazon - looks exactly the same and got 5* reviews)

I know there's a lot to be said for convenience, so letting someone else source, choose and order everything, but I can't see how a weeks work planning, choosing and ordering would be worth paying £10k+ even if the tiles/fittings etc were twice as much as ours!