Bathroom refurb - Should we move a wall?

[fosterdog]

DP and I need to refurb a bathroom and are struggling to decide whether to change its size at the same time.

At the moment, the bathroom has a fair bit of unused space around the walls and in the middle of the floor.

I would like to move the (non load-bearing) back wall of the bathroom in by 40cm to give more space in our back bedroom, which is currently a bit of a squeeze when we have to get the sofa bed out for guests. (This would put the wall back to something like its original position before the previous owners moved it.)

However, DP is concerned that it will make the bathroom feel cramped.

The bathroom would go from about 2.45 x 2.00m to about 2.05 x 2.00m, but there's a corner cut off by the hallway so it's a bit smaller than that in practice.

Would love to hear from people with similar size bathrooms. Do they feel cramped? Are we missing a clever trick re the layout of the units? (The c. 1m wide window on the side wall is a constraint.)

I've attached pictures of the current and proposed bathroom layouts. They are pretty much to scale but I did them in MS Paint so they're not very pretty!

How small is the bedroom? I'd probably prefer to make the bedroom bigger and the bathroom smaller. You're not going to lose a walkin shower over it. To make the bathroom look bigger, you could have a wall mounted basin and toilet and same tiles on walls and floor + big mirrors.

I would maximise the bedroom. If you come to sell down the line, a larger bedroom would be more appealing than an oversized bathroom.

Yes as long as you aren't going to have a toilet/knee/wall issue or anything.

JoiJo says, go for wall hung stuff and nice big tiles, same on floor and walls.

Worth checking that your proposed bathroom arrangement would meet building regs as i guess you'd need a building warrant to move the wall. Having been having similar discussions lately it sends you need a surprising amount of space to get on and off a toilet these days...

Thanks everyone.

Canyousewcushions - that is a really interesting (and potentially really annoying!) point. You've just sent me down a huge rabbit hole of building regs documents. Strictly speaking, it looks like my cut-off corner doesn't give the toilet the space it supposedly needs in front of it (110cm!!!). But as I'm just restoring the room to its original size it would seem odd if it wasn't allowed. I'll investigate further...

My understanding is when you make renovations they have to meet the actual code. would swapping the toilet with the basin make it work?

Could you put a wall mounted towel radiator above the spare bath end? We have one and it's great as it serves two purposes (I didn't buy one that was about a foot taller than I wanted by mistake and hung it anyway).Would free up where you have the radiator to potentially move the sink there and give you more space for the toilet.

Having measured it again, I think the planned layout actually does just about meet the regs as long as I get a slightly less long toilet. Looks like we can't just hide the cistern in the wall because of an odd rule about how much further than the cistern a sink on the same wall can project (no more than 30cm, it seems... who knew?!)

Thanks again everyone. Still haven't quite convinced DP though!