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Bathrooms

Walk-in shower or keep the bath

It is the most common single change people ask about, and the decision usually turns on two things nobody mentions in the showroom: the floor, and the next owner.

The Renovation Crew3 min read
A finished bathroom with a tiled walk-in shower behind a glass screen, a vanity unit and a wood floor

The short version

  • A walk-in shower is a floor job. The tanking, the level tray and the re-routed waste cost more than the shower itself.
  • In a house with only one bathroom, removing the only bath can cost you with family buyers.
  • A P-shaped bath is the compromise most people land on: a much wider standing area, and the bath stays.
  • A tray sitting on the existing floor is cheaper and works perfectly well. It just will not look like the photographs.

What a walk-in shower actually involves

The shower is the cheap part. A proper walk-in needs the wet area tanked, the tray set dead level into the floor rather than on top of it, and the waste moved to roughly the middle of the room instead of the corner where the bath's was.

On a suspended timber floor, which is most first-floor bathrooms in Britain, that means lifting boards, notching or re-routing pipework and making sure the floor can carry a tanked tray without flexing. It is a day of work before a single tile goes on.

That is the honest reason two walk-in shower quotes can be far apart. One has priced the floor and one has priced a tray.

The resale question, which an estate agent will raise

If the house has more than one bathroom, none of this matters. Take the bath out of the family bathroom and leave one elsewhere, or take it out of the en-suite where nobody uses it anyway.

If it is the only bathroom, it is worth a moment's thought. Buyers with small children look for a bath, and an agent will mention its absence. It is your house and your knees, and plenty of people decide the daily use beats the hypothetical buyer. It is just better to make that decision knowingly.

Tell us which way you are leaning and we will tell you what your floor allows.

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The compromise most people take

A P-shaped or L-shaped bath widens at the shower end, so you get a genuinely usable standing area with a fixed glass screen, and the bath stays in the house. It is not as good as a proper walk-in and it is considerably better than a standard bath with a shower over it.

In a single-bathroom house it is usually the right answer, whatever the showroom suggests, and it is the option people most often say they are glad they took.

Tell us which way you are leaning and we will tell you what your floor allows.

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Questions people ask

How long does it take to replace a bath with a walk-in shower?

Two to three working days as a standalone job, assuming the floor is sound and the waste can be re-routed within the room. If the ceiling below is lath and plaster or Artexed, add time for making that good, because lifting the floor above tends to disturb it.

Do I need a wet room instead?

Usually not. A tanked tray set level into the floor gives you the look and the step-free access of a wet room with far less risk, because the water is contained by design rather than by the fall of the whole floor. Full wet rooms make sense for genuine accessibility needs and for rooms where the drainage suits it.

Will a walk-in shower work with my water pressure?

It depends what system you have. A gravity-fed tank will not drive a large rain head properly without a pump, whatever the shower cost. Find out whether you have a combi, an unvented cylinder or a gravity tank before you choose the fittings.

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