Bathrooms
Ivy Ngeow RIBA
July 2003
Copyright reserved, see legal statement

One of my memories growing up in Malaysia was the monsoon season. As children, we would run into a rainstorm with huge banana leaves as makeshift umbrellas. These are purely decorative, because resistance is useless. This kind of power shower is all-drenching and all-encompassing. It rained so hard you were left gasping with exhilaration. There was nothing more invigorating in the steamy tropical climate. In the dry season, it was sweltering and sticky. For a therapeutic salt bath, we plunged into the warm sea. The water never got cold, nor ran out.

The modern bathroom imitates nature. It should be designed as an all-inclusive resort of the mind. Bathrooms at the back of the house or downstairs or low-pressure showers are no longer acceptable. Decades ago, a bathroom was no more than a damp utilitarian space lurking with spiders. Bathrooms today increase the value of the house, because they reflect character, practicality, and lifestyle. The en suite bathroom is popular because it symbolises privacy and exclusivity, therefore hierarchy in the household.

Early washing in the UK was carried out in a portable tin tub hand-filled with hot water from the fire. Family members took turns to bathe and depending on the family, bathing was not essential or regular. Smelliness was simply masked with perfumed oils. By the middle of the 19th century, bathrooms were installed in wealthy family homes. They were decorated with grand marble washstands, needle showers with overhead shower rose, dressing tables displaying the ubiquitous perfume bottles, and slipper baths. Cleanliness was obviously not next to godliness, because even pious folk could not afford to wash. The Great Unwashed simply remained so. By the 1970s, there was a glut of fitted bathrooms, with crazy tiling, wacky-shaped sanitaryware, jacuzzis and coloured bathroom suites including the infamous avocado suite.

Only clever planning and design can make the tightest of spaces seem large and pleasant. Bathrooms are expensive to install, and they need to comply with building regulations. Lifestyle is the most important consideration because it will determine how much time each family member will spend in it. You need to assess how well you use the existing bathroom, and whether or not the layout works.

If your wish list is long and complicated, involving moving the bathroom into another room altogether, or extending the existing room, you would consult a qualified architect. He or she will discuss your proposed bathroom and provide you with advice on building regulations relating to plumbing and wiring. The architect can specify the right sanitaryware for you. Glossy brochures are misleading. Many people have bought baths which are too big, showers whose doors cannot open due to a WC being in the way, taps which are too big to turn them on without grazing your knuckles. The architect can also design fitted bathroom furniture such as storage. He or she will provide you with a scale drawing to make sure that the layout works and looks good.

An effective shower needs to have at least 2.0 bar pressure, and 3.0 bar for a power shower. The types of pumps, hot water tanks and boilers affect how many times a day you can have a shower, and whether someone else can have a bath when you are having a shower.

The choice of basins and taps depends on the number of people using them at the same time, how tall they are, do they own a lot of lotions and potions and are there children. Mixer taps are more practical for people with children to prevent scalding.

With WCs, how well the flush works and the length of refilling time are important. There is nothing worse than going to someone's house and the loo cannot flush because someone else has just been in there. If space is tight, the concealed cistern and a wall-hung WC free up more space and make the room appear bigger.

People now have seen enough Vicwardian style traditional bathrooms in the 1990s. The trend at the moment is the wet room. The wet room is originally an Eastern concept, and which brings me back to the monsoon image. Basically there is no shower tray and this concept is best applied in a very large bathroom, so that the water naturally runs off. In a small room, you will get the effect that you are in a Hong Kong bedsit, sitting on the loo, cleaning your teeth and having a shower all at the same time.

The wet room is achieved by tiling over a concrete floor screeded to fall towards a floor waste. With beautiful tiles such as handmade Balinese tiles or limestone, the wet room can look magnificent. If you have a timber floor, there are many ways to make the room watertight, one being glass reinforced polymer tanking which takes the floor and wall tiles. There is always a risk when converting a timber construction space into a wet room because timber moves and is not watertight. Nowadays many boutique resorts in hot climates boast entire wet areas, using outdoor showers.