Bathroom Planning - Designing Your Bathroom
Fitting a new bathroom can become one of the most major and expensive tasks you ever undertake in your home, possibly second only to fitting a complete kitchen. It is important, therefore, to decide what you need and want from your bathroom - for both the present and in the future - and to incorporate all these requirements in your bathroom master plan.
OVERALL CONSIDERATIONS
In most house designs the bathroom is a relatively small room, which wethink is totally inappropriate to the amount of use the average family bathroom gets. Small bathrooms are a legacy of Victorian times, when a weekly bath was considered the ultimate in personal hygiene and so only required a relatively small space.
If your home doesn't have sufficient facilities for your family's needs, this scenario could become a serious inconvenience. So plan carefully, not just for now but for the future, when your little girls, and boys, grow up to hog the bathroom for hours on end. A second bathroom, or perhaps a new shower room, may be the answer, if you have room to fit one in your house. Although this might not guarantee the completely smooth running of the bathroom facilities in your household, it would go a long way to help.
To help you think things through, the following pages list some basic ground rules to consider when planning a new bathroom. There are also some tips on timing, budget and drawing plans.
VICTORIAPLUMB's ADVICE
Bathroom Planning, there are a number of things you need to think about and plan carefully before you start work. For example, you need to consider the size of the room and whether you want to enlarge it, the kind of bathroom suite you want, and how much money you actually want to spend. Here are some points you should take into consideration:
GENERAL POINTS
– Is the existing bathroom big enough for future, as well as present, requirements?
– Ask everyone who's going to be using the bathroom on a regular basis what they would like from the new room.
– Could you increase the size of your bathroom? How?
– Could you join a separate bathroom and toilet together to create one spacious room?
– Could you move the door to incorporate a section of hallway, or an adjoining room to create a larger bathroom?
– To retain a separate toilet, could you install a new one elsewhere, for example under the stairs?
– What style of bathroom do you want - period, traditional bathroom or contemporary bathroom?
– Is there a room adjoining a bedroom that could be turned into an en-suite bathroom? Or could part of a bedroom be altered to create an en-suite bathroom or shower room?
– What could you fit comfortably in your bathroom? Should you sacrifice the bath for a big shower? Should you have a 'his and hers' washbasin unit instead of a bidet?
– What decorative finishes - tiles, glass, marble, wood and so on - do you want?
– What lighting and accessories do you need?
IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS
– Consider carefully the long-term effect of your choice of colour for the bathroom suite. White is easy to clean and never goes out of fashion.
– When choosing fittings and attachments, consider maintenance. Chrome is low maintenance and polishes up beautifully. It's also a perfect match for a white suite.
– Ceramic tiles completely covering all walls and floors might make the bathroom appear cold and also create condensation problems.
– A free-standing shower 1 is vital if you have the room. Ensure the shower is correctly fitted - damage resulting from a poorly fitted shower can be expensive and difficult to repair.
– Ensure the bathroom is effectively heated. A cold bathroom is unwelcoming and not conducive to a pleasant ambience. Consider installing a radiator that doubles as a heated towel rail 2.
– Try to incorporate adequate storage in your bathroom 3. This enables you to avoid lots of messy clutter, which would spoil the look of your new bathroom.
– Create attractive and interesting lighting. This will, effectively, be the icing on the cake. Done well, it will make the bathroom look and feel wonderful 4. Seek advice on the suitability, safety wise, of any lighting designs you choose.
– Think through the decoration options carefully - would you like -a bright and breezy bathroom or a rich, themed colour scheme. The days of slapping a coat of neutral emulsion across everything are thankfully gone, and you can now choose from a range of wonderful colours.
– Ensure you have adequate ventilation in order to avoid condensation problems, which could ruin the look of your new bathroom in no time at all. This may mean installing vents or an electrically assisted ventilation system.
TIMING
In order to create a successful campaign out of remodelling your bathroom, plan carefully how long it will take. You won't like not being able to bathe for very long, so if you are going to undertake the whole project yourself over a period of time, it may be appropriate to arrange for bath sharing with relatives or neighbours. We don't mean literally, of course, but that'll depends on who your neighbours are!
Avail yourself of all the tools and materials you'll need, and store them carefully in the spare room or somewhere convenient before you start. If you feel the whole project may be too much for you, consider breaking it down into more manageable chunks, and bring in skilled tradesmen to advise, check, or carry out any work you feel uncertain about undertaking yourself. You can save a considerable amount of money by doing a lot of the preparation work yourself even if you call in an expert; you can cap off the water supply, strip out the old bathroom suite, remove any tiles and demolish any partition walls beforehand.
BUDGET
Don't lose sight of your budget, and always allow for a 20 - 25 percent overspend when working it out. When buying a new bathroom suite, beware of budget-price suites costing a few hundred pounds only. The quality is normally poor and only very basic items are included; Do look around - great bargains are sometimes available from quality ends of line and ex-showroom suites. Quite often, expensive design look-alikes are available from different manufacturers at a huge saving. It is also worth checking out the Internet and phoning around your local suppliers to ask if they have anything on special offer before you set out.
DRAWING UP YOUR PLAN
Once you've decided on the style of your bathroom, you can draw up your plan, taking all the points mentioned above into consideration. Make a rough drawing of on paper then measure your space accurately and mark it on the plan. Take the longest dimensions across the room, including every alcove and return, note the way the door opens, and mark where the window is - how high up from the floor and the distance on either side. Mark exactly where the radiator and water supply pipes are.
Now you can draw up the final plan accurately on graph paper 2. Some bathroom suite brochures include scaled shapes that you can cut out and move around your plan. Many manufacturers and suppliers offer a planning service and will draw up detailed plans for you.
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