Ideally, my next bathroom will be a wet room without a door or shower tray, where the water will run off a waterproofed stone floor into an outlet in the floor, which, when it needed cleaning, could be done with a hose and a long-handled squeegee in about five minutes flat.

There is a downside to this dream, though – it will mean ‘tanking’ the room in order to make it absolutely watertight, otherwise I might be showering in my living room! Tanking is a job for a professional, however. So if you share my dream, but are worried about water going everywhere, it might be a better idea to instead fit a glass panel to enclose your showering area 1.

Some of the latest showers have taken the shower cubicle to new heights. Some even have the shower fittings attached in one piece to one of the columns 2, so fitting the shower becomes a real doddle 3. All you have to do is attach the hot and cold supply to the appropriate pipes (that is after you have done all the hard graft of ensuring the pipes and drainage are in the right position). Other designs have evolved into a complete walk-in enclosure 4, which creates the illusion of a wet room, without any doors to close behind you.