The bathroom design of a small house should carefully be designed. The most important feature that makes a difference in a small bathroom is placing the best shower.
Three options are there for the shower of a small bathroom.
i- You can insert a shower cubicle (or named as either a kit or stall)- which is a both having all the appliances and fixtures for showering. You place it in your small bathroom and you can buy from any hardware stores.
ii- You can create a wet room- which includes plumbing and hardware works
iii- You can design your custom shower design together with your bespoke bathroom design.
Best shower options for your small bathroom
1- Shower cubicle (kit, stall):
If you don’t care much about the design and go for a practical solution the idea of placing a shower cubicle/kit/stall is ideal because they are usually easy to install. However, the design style options and the number of suppliers are very limited. The suppliers are mostly in the American market.
More importantly, people, have complaints about specifically the walls look cheap and flimsy. You can check the comments from Amazon; such as Sterling, Mustee-L-Shower, Mustee-Durawall.
2- Wet-room:
If your space is really limited and small, then creating the whole bathroom as a wet room (sometimes it is said that as wet baths but the correct terminology are wet room) is also another option.
In the idea of the wet room, you turn your whole bathroom into a shower cubicle so that you don’t need to place a shower tray separately.
However, in this choice, you should think of the cost of the wet room and professional installation due to bring the solution for the technical solutions for water insulation and drainage. The JS Building Services company says that the cost of installing a wet room about 4m2 costs usually between £5k and £10k.
So the cost of a wet room is more than the cost of a standard shower cubicle/ kit/stall.
“This cost includes professional installation – something that is really important for this job. If it’s not done properly, leaks can cause significant water damage.”
The average cost of a wet room
Taking a 4 sq.m. room with walls of a 2.3m high, we can now put together the average cost for a wet room using a robust shower tray former and tiling the entire floor and walls.
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Labour
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Cost (£) Including VAT
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Shower Tray Former
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480
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Tanking Shower Kit
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150
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Underfloor Heating 2m2
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150
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Shower
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450
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Shower Screen (corner panel)
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300
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Tiles (£40 per m2)
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816
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Tile Adhesive
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70
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Grout
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40
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Spacers
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20
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Labour (2 person team for 5 days)
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1800
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TOTAL COST
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4276
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*Please note these figures do not include adding any further features such as basin or toilet.
Other wet room alternatives in the UK
Bathstore – design and installation of wet rooms
Homebase – supplies wet room panels and kits
Solidity – offers an alternative to tanking using HI-MACS
Wetrooms UK – provides a tanking service with a 10-year guarantee
Wetrooms Online – wet room products and installation guides.
Obviously, this cost will reduce if you go with a DIY option. However, you should pay attention to the details and quality of the all but-specifically the insulation materials.
Since there is no shower tray you have to carefully do the water insulation of the walls, drainage the water either in the middle or at the corner of your bathroom and select the necessary appliances appropriate for the wet room etc.
3- Shower Panels in a Bespoke Bathroom Design:
The last option- unless you buy a built-in tiny house- and do the DIY construction of your tiny house or re-decorate the tiny bathroom of your small home, the bespoke design gives the freedom of budgeting, design style and technical details according to your terms of conditions and likes.
Of course, all the options have pros and cons and the last option is the most time-consuming one. This is already the same procedure with designing your bathroom.
You have to think the infrastructure such as plumbing and electricity, the flooring, wall panels and your shower appliances.
Though the plumbing and electricity should be implemented before the flooring and shower, your bathroom design also should have finished before starting the construction of the infrastructure. So, you should have finished the design phase already.
The basic schedule is;
1- Plan, sketch or draw the floor plan based on the dimensions of the bathroom
2- Place all appliances such as shower, toilet and washbasin on to the plan
3- Built or hire a plumber to build the pipes, and ask the electrician place the cables for the fan, electricity and shaving socket.
4- Do all the plastering and insulation construction works.
5- Finish the flooring- such as tiles or venial and the wall coverings- such as tiles or shower panels. (If you read more about shower panels, please go to this blog.)
6- Place the appliance of shower, toilet and sink
7- Implement the sockets, electricity bulb and all the accessories that you like to see in your tiny bathroom.
Tile construction cost:
Tile_£20.79sqm
Tile Adhesive, grout, spacers_£7.19sqm
Trims_£7.19
Fixing costs_£50.00
Total sum_£82.84
The total cost of 15sqm bathroom_£1,242.60
Panel Construction Cost:
2400 x 1200mmx2Panels_£43.35sqm
Adhesive&Silicone_£2.22sqm
Trims_£5.21sqm
Fixing Costs_£15.00sqm
Total Sum_£65.78sqm
The total cost of 15sqm bathroom_£986.70
The shower panels give a 25% advantage in price over the tiles. The assumption made is that you do pick mid-range tile in price and it would take a joiner half the time workmanship to fit the panels.
Shower Panels
Shower panels are usually made up of MDF or PLY, covered on the face with high-pressure laminate and balancing laminate to t the back of the panel with waterproof quality.
Here are different materials for shower panels. Glass, Ceramic, acrylic, composite and laminate are the material options for the wall panels.
The glass and ceramic are usually bespoke. The acrylic, composite and laminate are fixed size and more affordable to buy for small bathrooms.
Ceramic Panels:
The panels have the look of ceramic and the panel sizes are 2420 mm height and 1000 mm width. The price per panel is £699.72.
Price Range:
Acrylic Panels:
Having modern look, the acrylic panels can come either with solid bold colours or in digital prints. Both matt and gloss look is available for the acrylic panels.
The sizes of the panels are;
a- 2400 x 1100 mm
b- 2400 x 900 mm
c- 2400 x 600 mm (Special Order)
Price Range starts from £420.64 to £758.91.
Composite Panels:
With composite panels, you can get the look of the traditional look of stunning metro tiles but with all the benefits of the waterproof panel system. They are easy to fit and no grout is required- which is also easy to clean.
The panel size is 2400 x 1200mm and the price range is about £129.95
Laminate Panels:
Laminate panels have the most design choice and details. They are usually prepared as shower kit, wall kit and end kit.
The shower kit is for two-sided shower having 2 panels, whereas the wall kit is three panels for your walls and end kit for the use in conjunction with shower kit or wall kit.
Thank for the printing technology, you can ask for bold colours, textures, prints or images in matt or gloss options. “The advances in laminate design allow much bigger realistic large scale images to be created on each panel, which gives a more organic, authentic look;” says Multipanel.
The dimensions of the laminate panels are;
900 × 900 Shower Kit
1200 × 900 Shower Kit
1800 × 900 Wall Kit
900/1200 End Kit
Flooring:
The waterproof flooring panels are better options than tiles in terms of workmanship. They are easy to build and they require no grout. You can easily cut and requires no specialist filter so that they are good for DIY.
There are not only cost savings, due to no underlay required, but also time savings during installations.
Tile Sizes: 305 x 605x 5 mm and Plank Sizes: 146 x 1218 x 5 mm, which the prices of both are £86.73.
Finally- How to install your shower panels:
The high-end panel manufactures/suppliers provide the trade experts. However, if you do like to follow DIY, you can read in detail the instructions of ‘Mermaid Trade.’
