Planning your new bathroom

The bathroom has taken on a new life in the modern home. No longer just a place to remove the grease and grime of daily life the bathroom is now a retreat, a place to relax and sooth away your cares.

Planning your new bathroom with care is essential. That new bath may be wider than the old one - and the last thing you want is to find you can’t lift the lid of the loo!

Budget

Prices of bathroom suites vary from £150 to several thousand. That is an obvious cost of your new bathroom but how much is plumbing going to cost? That new power shower will need new wiring going all the way back to the fuse box. Unless you’re going the DIY route you can easily spend six times the cost of the suite on building and decorating costs. The trick to keeping the cost down is not to plan too many changes in the position of things, particularly where plumbing is involved.

DIY, independent installer or chain?

Only you will know whether your DIY skills are up to the task of fitting out a bathroom. You might consider getting the suite installed professionally but doing tiling and decorating yourself the safest option. Leaking water can cause serious damage to your property - if you are not sure of your plumbing skills it's probably best to play safe!

Choosing between installers can be difficult. The ideal is a personal recommendation from a friend. Failing that ask around your friends and acquaintances for any horror stories. When you compare installers remember it may be better to use a company that uses it's own staff rather than sub-contractors.

According to a recent Which report 59% of customers of independent bathroom installers were very satisfied with the quality of the work. The figure for brand-name installers was 14% lower. And even fewer would recommend them to a friend.

Steel or acrylic?

When choosing your suite you’ll quickly find that baths loom large in your choice of options. Many manufacturers buy-in baths to suit their chinaware so you may find the same baths on offer from different manufacturers. A major choice is whether to go for steel or acrylic. Steel baths tend to wear better but are cold to the touch and can suffer “drumming” making them noisier to fill. Acrylic baths have a reputation for flexing when in use but that is usually because of poor fitting. They are warmer to the touch and available in a greater range of shapes and sizes.

Gravity-fed, power or electric?

Showers are also available in many different types. The first question is whether to have a shower fitted to your bath or whether to go for a separate cubicle. Space will probably dictate which you go for although the fact that shower cubicles can be surprisingly expensive may help make your mind up!

Gravity-fed showers tend to be less powerful than other types but require no additional mains wiring. Neither do they suffer from the affects of hard water as badly as some electric showers. One plumber we spoke to reckoned an electric shower may only last a year in a hard water area. For many people power showers are the only way to go - they love the invigorating feeling of a high-pressure shower. Do bear in mind you’ll need to find a suitable location for the pump and you will need a dedicated pipe from your cold water tank as well as a beefy electricity cable direct from the fuse-box.

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