Walk-In Shower, or Keep the Bath?

This is the decision that holds up more bathroom renovations than any other, usually because two people in the same house want different things and both arguments are reasonable. It is worth separating into three questions, because they have different answers and only one of them is about taste.

The resale argument, honestly

The common advice is that a house should keep at least one bath or it will be harder to sell. That is roughly true and it is stated far too absolutely.

What is actually true is that removing the only bath in a house narrows the buyer pool, and the buyers it narrows it with are families with small children. How much that costs you depends entirely on what sort of property you own and who buys that sort of property.

In a three or four bedroom family home with one bathroom, keeping a bath somewhere in the house is the safer decision. In a house with two bathrooms, put the bath in the other one and make this room a proper shower room; nobody has ever objected to that arrangement. In a two bedroom unit, or a property that sells to downsizers, retirees and investors, the bath is doing very little for you and is occupying the best two square metres in the room.

The other half of the argument is worth saying too: a bath nobody uses is not a feature, it is storage for shampoo bottles. If it has not been filled in three years, you are keeping it for a hypothetical buyer rather than for yourself.

The practical argument

A walk-in shower is easier to use, easier to clean and safer, and those advantages compound as a household ages. A shower over a bath is one of the more hazardous arrangements in a house, because it requires stepping over a high edge onto a wet, curved, slippery surface.

If anyone in the house is older, has limited mobility, or is likely to be in either category within the time you expect to own the property, that consideration outweighs the resale one. The relevant reading is accessible bathroom modifications, and the important point there is that even if you do not want rails now, the backing for them can be put in the wall during this renovation for almost nothing.

Against that: bathing small children in a shower recess is genuinely difficult, and anyone who has tried it with a toddler will tell you so.

The question that decides what is possible

Before either argument matters, establish whether a step-free shower can actually be built in your room, because it depends on the floor.

A hobless shower needs the shower floor set below the surrounding floor level so the fall can run to a linear or centre waste without a hob holding the water in. In a timber-floored house that means setting the joists down in that area, which is ordinary carpentry and usually straightforward. On a concrete slab it means grinding a recess, which is possible but is a real cost and occasionally is not practical at all.

Where the floor will not allow it, the honest options are a low-profile hob, which is a genuinely good compromise and looks far better than the alternative, or accepting a conventional shower base. What should not happen is a shower built flat because the fall could not be achieved, which produces a floor that ponds after every use.

The middle path

There are two arrangements worth knowing about that avoid the choice entirely.

A shower over a freestanding or inset bath, done deliberately with a proper screen and a well-detailed junction, works far better than the version most people remember from the seventies. It needs a bath chosen for the purpose with a flat enough floor to stand on.

A compact or Japanese-style deep soaking bath takes up considerably less floor area than a standard bath while still being a bath, which in a small room can be what makes both fit.

If you want it looked at in the room rather than argued about at the kitchen table, call 0468 047 067 or send dimensions and a photo through the form.