Wet room or shower room?

[coffeequeenindevon]

Hi all,

It’s a simple as that really! It will be part of a full loft conversion. Not en suite. What are the pros and cons of each? Are there practical considerations, or is it just a matter of aesthetic and taste?

Many thanks!

Not sure but personally I hate wet rooms. Why would you want to get water all over the floor? So unpleasant. I hate that feeling after having a shower and you're just using the bathroom to get ready and you have to stand on an inevitably cold slimy wet floor with hairs sticking to it. Unless your bathroom is big then I'd avoid. But I'm sure there are plenty of people that love them and will speak in their favour. I may have just had very bad wet room experiences.

There are some practical considerations. If the bathroom is small, the whole room will get sprayed when you shower so you might want to incorporate a shower screen to form more of a walk-in shower with a continuous floor throughout. Otherwise clothes, towels, loo roll all get wet.

You can buy bespoke fixed shower screens, cut to fit sloped roofs and custom measurements.

You need someone very competent to install a wetroom to ensure it is properly waterproofed, and that the floor is sloped sufficiently to drain. Again if the bathroom is small you may need to think about whether the whole floor will be damp - not nice if someone pops back in to use the loo ten mins later.

Also tiled floors can be slippery when wet so beware. - you are best off with textured floor tile. It ruins the look to have bath mats down. And when you have tiles, you have grout to maintain, so that’s a consideration too.

Think about the flow rate of your proposed shower, whilst it is not likely to be a problem, a powerful shower could flood a small wetroom if you don’t have enough drainage gradient and enough drains/water traps.

Pros are, space saving, modern, looks lovely.

I'm in a holiday let with a wet room. The floor is soaking wet after a shower. It doesn't get in the toilet or sink because there is a shower curtain, but you have to mop the floor up afterwards otherwise you are ztading in wet floor.
Plus aesthetically it looks like a public shower room, but that may be the cheap tiles.

You can get shower trays very thin these days so you don't step up into the shower. So it's the best of both worlds.

We went for low profile shower tray and a large glass screen and a digital shower button so you turn the shower on from outside and it tells you when it’s reached temperature. It looks fab.

Ours is a second floor en-suite in an old house. I think ground floor wet room seems more likely to work well. I would worry about leaks upstairs….