New bathroom must dos and don’ts- ideas please!

[AnotherDeadSparrow]

We are about to convert a small bedroom into a shower room with toilet, sink and shower. There’s no plumbing etc there so it’s a blank canvas. Would primarily be for a teen girl but also any guests.

Any things you wish you had or hadn’t done in your bathroom?

Teen would like a decent rain shower (they all fight over our en-suite), and for it not to be too cold. We are thinking of maybe LVT for the floor as warmer underfoot, and plumber has suggested shower panels rather than tiles.

I’m rubbish at interior design and Pinterest etc so thought I’d ask mumsnet instead! Thanks in advance 😊

Have a rain shower if you like, but put in a hand held as well. Not everyone wants their head wet every day.

Wall hung toilet and basin, drawers for storage, toothbrush/shaver plug, big tiles and dark grout, lvt floor, lit mirror, good extractors fan, fake ceiling with spotlights, handheld shower as well.as rainwater (for cleaning mainly)

Also if there’s room, get a seat built into the shower. My sister recently sprained her ankle badly, and she ended up sitting down in the shower on her toddler’s step stool!

Getting children to thread a towel onto a towel radiator correctly is a lost cause. Something like this, where they threw it on top, meant it didn’t end on the floor, festering.

More to clean!
Yes, I can see that having loads of space is nice and your has that class hotel look about it (at least those are the only places I've seen such large showers).

Well of course it depends on the style of a bathroom, if you have a modern bathroom you'd not go for a cast iron rad. Either way I find heated towel rails to be low-functionality, take up a large amount of wall space and generally not to be aesthetically pleasing objects in their own right. Nicola Harding is a huge hero of mine and this is her tip , to credit it where it's due.

My teens have never threaded a towel onto a conventional radiator alas! They just hang them on the two upper corners.

So hooks are a great idea, or a towel rail which has sticky out or open ended bits that they might cope with 🙄

A thing I never knew I needed. My absolute horror is the wet sock of bathroom floor doom.

I swear I quoted the stone bathmat post 😆

I have a wet room style shower that I would never choose again. The room is fully tiled and there are some faint water marks on the ceiling below. Is it the tanking system that has failed? Can we get away with just re-grouting for the umpteenth time. Definitely a shallow shower tray for me in future.

I’d talk to the water softener people. Ours advised us. You can drink the softened water fine, and we do upstairs from bathrooms etc, but it tastes a bit different and because there’s a (tiny) bit of salt in it, it wouldn’t be suitable for babies, kidney problems etc.
How the plumbing works will depend on where you’re having the softener fitted, where your pipes are etc. Have they been round to have a look?

Also I don’t think it would be a big deal to have an extra tap fitted at the sink if you needed one - I’ve seen it done neatly enough when people have water filters etc.

FWIW in America we were advised by our GP (equivalent) not to drink the softened water because of the salts.

@AnotherDeadSparrow the wall panels are great in terms of avoiding grotty tile grout but if you go for this option make sure you choose carefully and check quality.
I had panels fitted (two full walls with the shower in the corner). I chose panels that were white with flecks of holographic in it- terrible at describing but they look really pretty when they catch the light.
What I didn't realise was that the holographic flecks were on a film over a plain white panel, rather than embedded in the panel itself. After just a couple of weeks the film obviously started peeling off and it looks shabby at the joins/edges now where it's peeled. Too big a job to pull the new suite out and replace with plain white so now it just annoys me every time I see it!

I think we are all being overly unfair to teens here - I just went upstairs to find DD had hooked her towel over one corner of the towel rail - and 63 year old DH had hooked his over the other!

To be fair, DH and I have hooks on the back of the door for our towels so I’m being a hypocrite 😂

Make them check the height of the toilet before they tile it in mine is far too low, I picked a floating one but I can't clean under it I'm gutted

I like a low toilet. Roca Senso is great. Humans should really squat. I have sympathy with those you want a higher toilet so you can stand up afterwards though! I reckon other 10 years and I will be cursing!

We got a glossy white shelf, and cupboard under sink, and they have "warped" if that's the right word. The shelf seems to swell in the damp atmosphere, despite window always open, and extractor fan on, and room drying very quickly after showers. I wouldn't get anything similar again. Karndean flooring has worked very well.

It’s been 8 years since I had my bathroom done and now I’d make different choices. I’d have a walk in shower instead of a bath. I’d have wall panels rather than tiles. I’d probably have flooring different to tiles. I’d even go for a different basin tap, one that doesn’t trap limescale so much.

If you have relatively low water pressure and water flow then a rainfall shower will be rubbish as it’s distributing the limited flow over a wider area. They are great in hotels because hospitality buildings tend to have been built with bigger pipes; little English residential pipes can’t always match it.

That’s why we had the plumber install a pressure vent system - the water gushes out of the taps at a high speed!

I love my Miro digital shower/bath.
Also if you do tile the floor make sure you have anti fracture matting underneath, my lovely stone tiles cracked in weeks 😡

Totally non-slip shower tray the larger the better, plus non-slip floor or dull finish floor for safety. Also shower head/spray should not point towards the opening. Remote on/off/temperature control placed near entrance if possible.

Watching with interest -really useful suggestions thanks!
I hate rainfall showers a don’t want to get my hair wet always and in hotels always end up accidentally drenched.

Depending on your house and any risk of mould, get an extractor fan that automatically senses humidity and turns itself on. Replying in teenagers to remember to use he fan is hopeless.