Small bathroom shower design options | How to fit a small bathroom shower
How do you get a shower into a very small bathroom that wasn't designed to have one?
There's nothing that I like better (well maybe there is one thing) than soaking in a hot bathtub. I can spend hours in it just relaxing and forgetting that the world outside exists. Sadly I very rarely get the chance to do this nowadays because I always seem to be so busy. Most of the time I use a shower and before I remodeled my small bathroom my shower was above the bathtub. It was a situation that I hated and I was determined to include a separate shower in my bathroom remodeling project.
No matter how difficult the problem looks to begin with there is usually a way to solve it if you just take the time to sit down and design your bathroom makeover carefully.
Lets take a look at your options.
Throw the bathtub away
Discarding the bathtub should give you more than enough room to fit in a sizeable shower enclosure. The problem is that you won't have a bath anymore. While this might suit your current lifestyle you might want to think about what you might need a few years in the future and when you come to move out and sell your property.
Most people like to see a bathtub in the bathroom and might be put off if there isn't one even if there is a great shower in there instead. You might find that your property sells for less than it should do as a result of this.
Design a shower over your bathtub
If you really have no other option then you can install a showerhead above your bathtub and use a shower curtain or splashguard to keep the rest of the bathroom dry. This will probably be your easiest solution, as it will take up no extra floor space. Personally I don't like this option and would prefer a separate shower.
The Wet Room approach
Turning your whole bathroom into a wet room could be the most difficult and ambitious solution to putting a shower in your bathroom. It will most likely require extensive modifications and will probably be very expensive. It will however enable you to put your shower almost anywhere you like and even the very smallest bathrooms should have enough space. On the other hand, everything and I mean everything, in the room will get wet when you take a shower. This is an option to be considered but you should think seriously before going this route.
Install a curved quadrant shower cubicle
If you can rearrange your bathroom to get even the smallest of shower cubicles in then that has got to be close to the top of your list of possibilities. The shower enclosure can be free standing or installed along a wall or in a corner.
The problem with this idea is finding the space in a small bathroom to fit the shower enclosure. Enclosures come in various sizes so you will need first of all to decide on the smallest size that you think you can live with. Even a very small shower enclosure is better than none at all.
Depending on how tiny your bathroom is you might need to consider many ways to save enough space. You can now find some very small and narrow toilets and your washbasin can be very small if necessary. Use some graph paper to help you to arrange the new fixtures in the most space efficient way. Cutting out paper shapes of toilets and showers and other things and then moving them into different arrangements on your graph paper can be fun.
Finally look at curved quadrant shower enclosures as a space saving alternative to square or rectangular ones. Finding one of these was the turning point in my small bathroom shower design. Everything fell into place nicely after that.
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