Wet Rooms & Walk-In Showers
Built to Last.

A full level-access wet room is typically £6,000 to £8,500 fitted. Taking a bath out and forming a shower room in its place runs £3,500 to £5,500, a small en suite turned into a wet room starts from around £5,500, and swapping a shower enclosure with everything staying where it is comes in at £1,200 to £2,200. Move the drainage and you are past £8,500, because that means opening the floor. The cost table further up this page sets the bands side by side, and our shower room cost guide for Glasgow shows the workings.

Set against dropping a new tray and enclosure into the space you already have, a wet room does cost more, and the extra is all in the part nobody ever sees. The floor has to be shaped so the water runs to the drain, the floor and walls have to be sealed properly, and a timber floor has to be stiffened first. Set against a whole new fitted bathroom, where most Scottish rooms land between £5,500 and £14,000, a wet room is not the outlier people expect. Finance is available from £22 a week, subject to status, if you would rather spread it.

Reckon on 3 to 6 days for most rooms. You get the running order for your own job before anyone lifts a tool, and if the house has only the one bathroom we sort temporary facilities so nobody is stuck. What stretches it is drainage that has to move or a floor that needs building up first, and the designer will flag either of those on the visit rather than on day three.

A walk-in shower still sits on a tray, usually a low one with a small lip at the edge, and only the cubicle is sealed. A wet room has no tray at all: the floor itself is the shower tray, laid to a fall and waterproofed wall to wall. The walk-in costs less and suits plenty of rooms. Go for the wet room when you want a completely level floor, when the room is too tight to take a tray, or when somebody in the house needs to walk or wheel straight in without stepping over anything.

Not if it is built right. Leaks come from corners that were never reinforced, a waterproof layer that stops short of the drain, or a springy timber floor that cracks the seal a year later. We bond a continuous waterproof layer across the floor and up the walls, dress it into the gully, reinforce every corner and joint, and flood test the room before a single tile goes down. All workmanship is guaranteed.

In practice, only the bit you shower in. The floor is laid to a gentle fall so the water heads for the drain instead of spreading, and a glass screen or a half-height panel keeps the spray off the rest of the room. Most people put the WC and the basin at the dry end and never think about it again. A warm floor and an extractor sized for the room mean the tiles are dry again within minutes of the shower going off.

Most can, but the floor decides it. Concrete is straightforward. A timber floor has to be checked for movement and stiffened, and there has to be enough depth under it to take the drain and the fall, which is the usual reason a room gets ruled out. Upstairs and in tenement flats we also look at what sits underneath before committing to anything. The designer checks all of that on the visit and will say plainly if the room is better off with a walk-in shower.

It is one of the main reasons people ask us for one. There is no tray to step over and no door to squeeze past, so a walking frame or a wheelchair goes straight in, and a carer can help without fighting a cubicle. Grab rails, a fold-down seat, a slip-resistant floor and a thermostatic shower that cannot run hot can all go in at the same time. Our accessible and adapted bathrooms page goes through the fittings in more detail.

No installer can promise you a figure, and we are not going to. What we can say is that a level-access shower room is the layout a lot of buyers now look for, it makes a second room usable that was always too small to take a bath, and a room that has been sealed properly is one less thing for a survey to pick up. A tired bathroom puts people off a house more reliably than a good one sells it. Our en suites and cloakrooms pages cover the same ground for the other small rooms.

For replacing what is already there, usually not. It can be a different answer if a new drain connection is being formed, if the structure is being altered, or if a bathroom is being created where there has never been one. Building standards are handled locally and the view can vary, so give your own council's Building Standards team a ring before anything is ordered. We will tell you what we believe applies to your job and where to ask.

Yes, and it is the job we get asked for most. The bath comes out, the floor is opened so the waste and the fall can be set, the room is sealed wall to wall, then it is tiled or panelled and the screen goes in. Reckon on 3 to 6 days, and £3,500 to £5,500 where the drain can stay roughly where it is.

Yes. An electric heating mat sits happily under the waterproof layer and works well beneath large-format porcelain, warming the floor surface quickly and taking the damp out of the room after a shower. We lay it as part of the build rather than as a job for later, because it has to go in before the floor is finished.

Yes. Finance runs from £22 a week, subject to status, and the first check is a soft search, so nothing is left on your credit file by asking. Various deposit options are available. Ultimate Home Solutions Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and acts as a credit broker, not a lender.