Bathroom or utility?

[AwkwardPaws27]

We have a three bedroom Edwardian semi.
Floorplan attached (hopefully!).

We are splitting a bedroom to create an upstairs bathroom (5' x 9'3") and a boxroom / home office (6' x 9'3"). It isn't unusual for homes in our area to have small (6' X 7', 6' X 8') boxrooms, and three beds go for more than 2 beds, so I'm reluctant to lose a room to accommodate a larger bathroom.

DH would like a large luxurious shower cubicle, and to keep a bath downstairs. Lovely as that sounds, I'm thinking we should have a shower over the bath upstairs, and use the downstairs bathroom as a utility (keeping the separate downstairs toilet).

No DC yet but hope to have 1-2 in the next 5 years. The kitchen isn't very big and I've already had to hijack a base unit to hide the laundry basket. I'm concerned it will be buried by a mountain of laundry post-children.

We can't afford kitchen extensions or loft conversions at this time or for the foreseeable future.

Thoughts? Would you prefer one bathroom, one shower room, or a bathroom, downstairs loo and utility?

we had the same floor plan as you and made a box room and family bathroom out of the middle bedroom, we made an ensuit out of the airing cupboard and enlarged the kitchen knocking the back wall out to make french doors onto the garden. We are now (15 years on)filling in the side return to enlarge the kitchen and puting a downstairs clockroom at the back of the dining room and creating a laundry cupboard and storage area under the stairs.

we had also taken down the downstairs hall and lounge/dining room walls so the floor space downstairs is very flexible

Our staircase is on the adjoining walk so the understairs cupboard can't really be repurposed as a laundry cupboard or loo (plus we need the storage for coats, hoover etc really).
I thought about knocking through the kitchen but I'm not sure it's the best use of space for us, as I'd rather have a downstairs loo.
Open-plan living doesn't work as well for us as we prefer having a snug living room (furthest from the noisier kitchen appliances!) plus it would cost £££ as the living-dining room wall is load-bearing.

Thank you for your suggestions though!

I'd have a utility.

I have 3 dc and washing is never ending. If I didn't have the utility I'd be constantly running a tumble dryer which I detest.

Toilet and utility downstairs. I don't get downstairs shower rooms at all. Nobody ever uses them and it's just another bathroom to clean! Whereas I genuinely couldn't live without my utility.

Could you have a down stairs shower room/utility.

Take the wall out between the loo so you have a bigger space to work with.
You could have some integrated appliances fitted and have a shower and loo in there. I know someone who has this and it works really well.

I think your idea is probably the most sensible, assuming you can get a handwashing sink in the downstairs loo so guests don't have to go into the utility to wash their hands.

However I would be tempted to do your DH's idea and add a stacked washer and dryer to the bottom left corner of the downstairs bathroom. You could still put a wall mounted drying rack over the bath. Perhaps reduce the wall between bath and loo but keep it out as far as the front corner of the bath, so it provides a bit of separation from the loo.

I've been considering the shower room with washing machine in it. The attached image shows the adjoining wall to the neighbours (red) - if the washing machine/ tumble dryer goes against that wall, then I'll have to run the pipes quite far along the wall, I'd rather have them under the window so they can go straight out.
There's only about 60cm between the door when fully open and the wall so it would be a small shower cubicle.
I think I need to convince DH that a shower over the bath is superior....

Ideally you’d have utility in the same floor as the bedrooms. But as you don’t want to loose a third bedroom/box room, then converting the downstairs bathroom into toilet and utility sounds best way to go. Shower over bath is fine and I bet once you have an upstairs bathroom your husband won’t go all the way downstairs thru the kitchen to have a shower.

I did consider the upstairs laundry room idea before, but I like hanging stuff outside as much as possible so downstairs makes sense for us.

For me I would prefer a WC and utility downstairs

Large P shaped bath with shower over upstairs in the new bathroom

If you’re going to have children, then it would make sense to work towards having a bath for them + an eat-in kitchen. Babies/small children are messy articles and you can’t reasonably feed them in the sitting or dining areas as it’ll be complete carnage. Another thing to work towards would be tucked away washer and dryer as they’ll be on constantly post-children.

Personally, I also feel that showers over baths can be fab. You can install a filler tap for the bath but then put in a proper rain shower for showering.