Is it time to rethink wet rooms?

A bathroom, says Kelly Hoppen, is a sanctuary – but it’s also a room where it’s particularly important to “achieve perfect harmony between reality and fantasy, practicality and aspiration.” Recent years have seen an embracing of the type of traditional country house bathroom originally espoused by Nancy Lancaster, complete with wallpaper, carpeting, paintings and proper furniture, a look that is undeniably stylish and inviting – but not necessarily universally suitable. Indeed, in certain instances, applying this look would definitely be to disregard reality and practicality. “Sometimes in a small room in a terraced house you can’t shoehorn in all that sanitary ware and furniture,” points out Olivia Outred. Then there are splashy children (and teenagers), anyone with mobility issues, and the alleged 57% of the population who prefer a shower to a bath – though not if it’s in a slightly too small cubicle where you have to turn off the shower to shampoo your hair.

And so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the most reported bathroom trends of the past year or so is the increase in the installation of wet rooms – a solution to all the above situations that simultaneously future proofs a home. And yet the words ‘wet room’ have the potential to send shivers down the spine of anyone who encountered early iterations of the genre, many of which came complete with consistently damp loo paper, towels, and floors, and often seemed to leak despite feeling somewhat sterile.

The good news is that wet room design has been finessed in the intervening period, and there’s much to learn from excellent examples that are not only exquisitely beautiful, but entirely damp-free. Today’s wet rooms might also be a combination bathroom-steam room (sometimes called a spa bathroom), or even, says Olivia, “a hybrid wet room-country house bathroom.”

Todhunter Earle kept this shower design simple, adding a single paned window between the walk-in shower and sink.

Alicia Taylor

Defining a wet room

A wet room is a bathroom where the shower’s floor area is integral to and flush with the rest of the flooring, i.e. there is no step up or down. A spa bathroom is one that has been inspired by spa-design, might have a steam room element, and thus they too are often wet rooms.

A wet room may or may not also have a bath in it, as well as a basin and a loo (in Japan, where wet rooms are the norm, the basin and loo are in a different room.) The whole floor will be waterproofed, and very slightly inclined towards a drain. If it’s a small room, all the walls will be waterproofed too, potentially up to a certain level; in the trade, this type of waterproofing – creating a completely impermeable waterproof barrier – is referred to as ‘tanking’, and it needs to be installed by somebody who knows what they are doing. (A wet room is not the ideal project for a first-time DIY enthusiast – see the earlier mention of wet rooms that leak.) Traditionally, a wet room would not have had any sort of shower screen, “but I think it’s nice to have one to limit the splashing,” says Olivia.

Why a wet room?

“It’s a clean look, and can be peaceful – or slick,” says Olivia – and Yousef Mansuri, Director of Design at C.P. Hart confirms that clients are choosing wet rooms on “both functional and aesthetic grounds.” To return to small rooms, “bathrooms feel more spacious without breaks in the floor,” Yousef explains, “and wet rooms make the most of the available area while being easy to maintain.” If you’re squidging a bathroom into the eaves of a house, where headroom might be at a premium, doing away with the shower tray saves valuable inches. Then, the flush flooring “eliminates the risk of tripping, which is advantageous when designing for family bathrooms or those with reduced mobility,” says Yousef. It’s that aspect, incidentally, which explains why you might want to create a wet room area even in a larger bathroom.

A quick disclaimer: installing a wet room might not be the cheapest option, and you should think about the actual floor underneath. “Timber”, says Youssef, “is straightforward – there are voids between joists for the drainage system. But a concrete floor is more labour-intensive, as pipes and drainage will have to be chased in.”