Bathroom mistakes & non negotiables

[Iceache]

We’re planning our new bathroom and am in the market research phase! Some things I learned doing our last bathroom:

Heated towel rails don’t heat the room

White grout and small tiles looks crisp and clean but you will be in the shower with a toothbrush and bleach for the rest of your days

Teracotta tiles are great for hiding dust & dirt

What would you do differently? Do you love or regret anything? Our bathroom will be a decent size (approximately 3.5 x 2m) but not enormous (plenty of space for a large walk-in shower & bathtub).

consider tanking the whole room.

If you are putting in a built in cupboard, get a shower socket installed inside it so you can charge toothbrushes out of sight

Vanity units with deep drawers work best (shallow drawers not very useful for toiletries and cupboards are a PITA)

We used panels in the shower rather than tiles to avoid the mouldy grout issue but have learnt white sealant also shows mould really quickly so will do coloured next time.

Exactly this. They are very light to move around, and nicer to sit on than a tiled shower shelf. I sit on mine to dry my feet once I'm out of the shower.

Mount the controls for the shower where they are accessible from outside so the shower can be turned on and be warm by the time you use it. Especially useful if the shower has fixed panels and is a rectangular shape.

Plumb the radiators (agree with the suggestions of using rads with towel rails) to the hot water so they come on in the summer with the water in order to dry towels rather than having to put the CH on.

Sorry, but I think wet walls don't look great. I was willing to consider that they might be better these days, but my brother just had a beautiful new bathroom fitted &, in my opinion, has been significantly affected by fitting wet walls- despite being rather expensive they look plasticky & not stylish at all.

I did our main bathroom 5 years ago, & went for very dark grey grout- I really like it. But we do have original tongue & groove & tiles are just around bath & shower.

My taste has moved on a bit & planning downstairs loo, so will need to think carefully about that. Thinking green tiles, so not sure of grout yet.

Definitely have shower controls away from the shower heads.
Stand in the shower and work out the height you want the head to be fixed (if going for rain head). I left that to the plumber and it’s far too high. Just needs to be high enough for an average height chap to get wet.
Underfloor heating is a must for tiled floors. This is not where you should try to save money, you will regret it.
Lots of lighting. We have mood lighting and options in ours for when you want lots of light or not so much (no window in either bathroom).
Huge tiles!

If you like having a bath, sit in the ones you like before buying one and check the depth below the overflow hole is sufficient for a nice depth of water. Mine is really shallow and makes for miserable, cold baths!

Storage in drawers rather than cupboards so you're not scrabbling round trying to reach things in the back of them.

Plan where a loo roll holder will go and pick one which makes it really easy to change the roll.

An extractor fan you can easily turn of so it doesn't wake others at night. Or go for a really, really quiet one.

If you have an openable showerscreen, make sure it's watertight under the bit that it's mounted on, so water doesn't sneak under and pool on the floor.

I bought my house with a bathroom tiled floor to ceiling and it's a bugger. There is no way to change the decor AT ALL (unless I paint the ceiling and I am not going to), so I am stuck with the previous owner's colour choices unless I rip out ALL the tiling which would cost a fortune.

If I get to do another bathroom (or even this one), I shall have tiles where tiles are needed but painted walls where they aren't, then at least I can paint/paper/panel those walls if I fancy a change.

Decent lighting by your mirror, accounting for natural light potentially from one side which could be brighter/darker depending on the time of day.

If you paint the walls, ensure it's with bathroom paint that will handle the moisture. Normal emulsion will crack over time.

Just get a good white grout and sealant and you won't have a problem these days. I haven't put a toothbrush to mine once and it's 3 years old and still looks new.

Dark grout always looks dirty.

Square/rectangular sinks with a flat bottom are a bastard to clean.

My tips:

make sure your tiler can tile in a straight line, especially floors, and don't listen to excuses!

make sure all the pipes are properly tightened because it's amazing the number of professionals who don't do it/mean to do it later and forget

don't buy your backlit mirror off Amazon because there are too many dodgy Chinese fakes

don't let them cause 10k of damage to your central heating system and not be able to fix it

Do not have sliding doors in shower, hard to clean. Also have hand held showe as well as rain shower , again for cleaning.

Aqua board for shower ✔️
Radiator towel rack (does heat room) ✔️
Small gap between bath and sink ❌

black sinks (ours is black marble - was here when we bought) are ridiculous
and our sink was installed by a short person so we both struggle not to hit our heads on the roof beams (it's in the eaves) when cleaning teeth

If you have a flush panel decide in advance if you want it above or behind a raised toilet seat. Ideally it shouldn't matter as you should always put the lid down to flush, but anecdotally, I've heard friends complain their children and DHs 'forget' to flush when the panel is behind the seat 😡

Check the height of the step into/ out of the bath. We fitted ours ten years ago and DH (taller than me) chose a high-sided bath which I now find more difficult to get into/ out of!

Shiny finishes look nice but are very slippery!

We got large travertine tiles, different sizes and really thick, they look great (I think).
we replaced a free standing bowl type basin, nowhere to put the soap etc, it was so annoying!
we have dimmer switches which are great.

The biggest general mistake is insufficient storage. Bathrooms have to store a lot of stuff - toiletries, medication, sanitary protection, makeup, shaving kit, towels, loo roll, loo cleaner etc.

The other is tiling the loo and bath instead of using removable panels so you then can’t access the plumbing or replace it without retiling the bathroom.

We have a light up mirror that's great. especially late at night.

Everything else is neutral and simple so easy to update with different items/towels etc. A nice basin too not boxed in unit.

If you have a bath and a separate shower, make sure the bath taps also have a shower spray for washing hair over the bath if you don't want to get in the shower and cleaning the bath out. Also better for rinsing out hair dye and anything you might choose to clean in the bath.

Check how many Kw heat the radiator gives out, we bought a bigger one than recommended. It is enough. With adjustable valve it is adjustable to seasons weather.

Wall panels instead of tiles. We've just redone our bathroom and it's so easy to keep clean now.

Some things obviously depend on the size of the bathroom. Mine is so small it doesn't need heating, so I removed the radiator and replaced it with a heated towel rail. What I would do differently next time is have the heated towel rail on a separate connection from the main (gas) central heating, so I don't have to have the heating on in the entire flat just to dry a couple of towels.

If you have tiles on the floor, grey grout is the way to go. But personally, I find tiles cold and, over time, they crack due to age. Next time I'm just going to put lino down.

Bathrooms don't have to be boring. If you find a beautiful wallpaper you like, paper one wall (not the one getting wet, obviously!) with it.

Don't be obsessed with hiding pipes in walls/boxing things in. Life will be much easier if you can identify and repair leaks quickly and easily.

Have a different switch for the extractor fan and bathroom light so you have the option of when to turn the fan on.