The client had recently moved into a larger family home. Their new property included a family bathroom and 2 shower rooms. Our brief was to create a stylish yet practical family bathroom whilst taking into account a future project of an adjoining en-suite shower room. The en-suite shower room has a Jack & Jill door effect giving entry from both the main hallway and the master bedroom. Our Client’s wish list for the family bathroom was to incorporate a separate walk in shower but if this wasn’t possible then I had to retain the Jack & Jill door effect in the en-suite shower room. The client wanted a luxurious feel to the bathroom with a bath that was practical to use with a young child and another baby on the way.
Problems & Difficulties
The bathroom upgrade formed part of a large renovation project of the whole house and were were given a budget guide of “reasonable”. We were aware that installation costs would be high due to the amount of re-modelling work required.
The main hot water tank was housed in a cupboard within the family bathroom but this was being moved into the attic as part of a boiler and heating system upgrade. There was also a chimney breast that had to be taken into consideration.
The other major obstacle to overcome was a low bulkhead within the bathroom that made standing room for a shower impossible.
Our first step was to employ the services of a structural engineer to see if the bulkhead could be reduced to give us the head room required for the showering area. We found that the floor could be raised without impacting on the floor above. This enabled us to reduce the bulkhead in the bathroom by 230mm which meant we could have a height of 2150mm in the proposed shower area.
Products & Materials
When choosing products it was nessary to consider not only style but practicality, as there would be 2 young children using this as their main bathroom.
- We wanted to find a bath that would be comfortable to soak in but practical to bathe young children in.
- We didn’t want taps on the bath that children could play with or scald themselves on so we used an overflow filler with a thermostatic valve and added a pull out hand shower. By placing the hand shower strategically it could be used both in
The bath and showering area:
- We used wedi to create the shower area and tanked the walls, we used wedi to create a bath panel as it could be curved.
- We used Villeroy & Boch Subway range for the basin and WC as it is a timeless, classic design that fits well into any age and style of house.
We included a pull out vanity drawer and mirrored wall cabinet for storage.
There was also opportunity to incorporate bespoke elements. Niches were created around the chimney breast. We used the small gap to the right of the chimney breast to create 2 small niches in the wet area for shampoo etc. We then extended the chimney breast in-line with the ceiling bulkhead and created 3 niches outside the wet area for towel storage and display use.
The Design Process & Final Design
We drew up different options with the 2 rooms in mind. In option 1, We opened up the en- suite into the bedroom slightly to give a large shower in this room, giving the family bathroom a feature bath area but no separate shower. In our second option we included a walk in shower area in the family bathroom and closed off the Jack & Jill door to the en-suite leaving a smaller shower area.
After consultation with the client they decided to go for option 2 as the en- suite would eventually be used by one of the children as they would like to move the master suite to the top floor of the house at a later date. So we decided to:
- Make a feature of the bulkhead and extend the chimney breast in-line with this.
- Use the extra space to create storage/feature niches at the end of the wet area.
- Use a ceiling mounted fixed head in the shower to maximise on height.
- Highlight the wet area with lights to ensure the step was visible but also to create ambience in the room.
- Design in a bath with a curved end to make it easier to bathe the children.
- With careful positioning of the towel warmer and the pull out hand shower make them both accessible from the bath and the shower.
We chose tile from Villeroy & Boch Fire & Ice range as it had lovely colour choices and different sizes of tile available.
- We wanted to use the rich copper colour as a feature so we used it to highlight the wet area floor, then as a feature strip in the shower area and to highlight the basin.
- There was also a small strip mosaic tile available so we turned it on it’s side and used it to tile the bath panel and overcome the problem of tiling the curve.
- We also used the copper colour on the horizontal surfaces of the niches and above the WC into the window area.
- The rest of the walls and floor were finished in the pale cream colour.
The final design is a stylish bathroom with lots of lovely features that is also practical to use with young children. It can be turned into an atmospheric haven with the flick of a switch leaving the ambient lights from the floor and niches.