Do I REALLY need to tile around bath if no shower? Wisdom needed!

[ElleMcElle]

Planning a small loft bathroom with a freestanding bath which will be almost (but not quite) touching the wall. No shower attached to the bath - it is just for luxuriating in and will be used by adults rather than splashy kids. This won't be a heavily used bathroom (main bathroom with shower is downstairs) - just for guests and the odd occasion when I have time for a long soak.

So - wise minds of Mumsnet... Do I need to tile the wall behind / around the bath? Or can I get away with just using bathroom paint? Would the paint be likely to peel / stain with occasional splashing? Would I regret not having tiles?

Yes. A bath without waterproof surround is silly. Everyone splashes occasionally by accident .

That layout also sounds a muck and water trap.

There's space to get a mop behind there.

I don’t have tiles and my bath touches the wall. It’s been fine for 20 years even with splashy kid and dogs.

With a small gap, water will go down the wall rather than straight onto the floor. I'd tile.

My (rather old and dilapidated) loft bathroom is like this , but the bath us touching the wall. The previous owners put just a single tile row around the bath. Would it look out of place in your bathroom to do just 1/3 of wall behind bath?

If you don't want to tile, something like a glass kitchen splashback?

Have a bath with newspaper masking taped to the wall. Be your splashiest self. See how much paper you've wetted by the end.

We lived quite happily without tiles for a few months but the plaster did get splashed, I wouldn't have done it long term. That was in a normal bath right next to the wall though.

I am.just going to add, the bathroom in the loft is NOT waterproof - and it doesn't get used very much at all.(just now while the other bathroom is getting done). When sanding the toilet downstairs, the ceiling fell down. Because a small amount of water from.above had rotted one joist..use this example as guidance :)

In the last house, we had a loft bedroom with a freestanding bath. We tiled the floor but the wall was just painted with a bathroom paint. Absolutely no problems at all.

No, you don’t, I didn’t, freestanding bath, no tiles, over bath shower, bathroom most used with a 3-10 year old, no issues, the wall rarely got splashed.

Thanks for the feedback. Floor will definitely be tiled - it's just a question of the wall, which I'll probably end up tiling too... Think you can definitely get away with it if bath is right in the centre of the room, but we don't quite have space for that.

If this works (was a tiny thumbnail) you can see that we only had an inch. This bathroom was essentially a child's bathroom, the walls were newly plastered when it was done and painted with matt paint. No tiles anywhere in this one.

as an option, what about half height wall tiling up to 1.2m high?

Yes, you will be able to get away with it.

An alternative is to tongue and groove your walls to 1 m+ and paint with gloss/satin. We have that in all our bathrooms, even with ones that the bath is affixed to the walls.

We have a bath like Barchester with tongue and grove behind painted in eggshell for wood. No problems at all.

In another bathroom with a freestanding bath, we have a fully tiled bathroom but we also have a separate shower with a glass panel so the whole bathroom is more of a wet room look. If you have a really deep bath, you don’t splash much.

Ooh - tempted by the tongue and groove idea... Yes - bath is very deep.

Won’t you also get condensation on the wall, especially with a long hot soak? I’d tile with something sparkly and pretty.

No condensation issues, worked so well I am planning on doing it again shortly, turning a 9x10 bedroom into a second bathroom modelled on my blue one.

The wall was half tiled before this - much preferred the painted walls.

Do you have an extractor fan BarchesterFlowers? I’m curious because I don’t (and have one small window) and get lots of condensation temporarily when I have a bath.

No pebbles I don’t. Condensation on the window is caused by the glass being cold.

Condensation is stopped by either ventilation or heating (or both). My walls are above dew point temperature wise so it isn’t an issue.

The radiators in my bathrooms don’t have TRVs so they are on if the heating is on rather than the other rooms which are on if it drops below a certain temperature.