A utilitarian walk-in shower works just as well as something nicer, so why spend the time and effort — and the money — to upgrade it?
“It boils down to the idea of comfort at home,” said Paloma Contreras, an interior designer in Houston. Your shower, she explained, is “a space where you’re setting the stage for the day. If you’re aesthetically attuned to your environment, it impacts your state of mind.”
If you’re renovating, you don’t have to resort to generic materials and fixtures, or whatever your contractor suggests. The goal, Ms. Contreras said, is to “surround yourself with a space that’s not only beautiful, but that functions really well and caters to your preferences.”
Here’s how she and other designers create walk-in showers that their clients love waking up to.
Consider Changing the Layout
Installing a new shower often goes hand-in-hand with a full bathroom renovation, and if you’re demolishing what was there before, you don’t need to put everything back where it was. Take some time to consider how you might reorganize it.
A combined bathtub and shower, for instance, could easily be replaced with a walk-in shower. Depending on the size of your bathroom, it may be possible to install a stand-alone tub elsewhere. A shower and stand-alone tub can occupy different zones of a bathroom or sit side by side in a wet room — a larger waterproof area designed to resist errant shower spray.
