What We Learned Building Our Wet Room

Wet rooms have been gaining in popularity over the past few years in master or primary bathroom designs. We fell in love with the aesthetic of them, and decided to build our own. Our choice was based on style preference, but it has turned out to be a very practical and space saving decision too. If you’re considering a wet room in your master bathroom design, here are a few things to consider.

You can shop all the finishings and decor in our wet room design here.

What Is A Wet Room

A wet room is an area within your bathroom entirely constructed with materials designed to get wet. This could include pre-treating floors and walls to protect against spills, larger drains, and grading the floors to slope towards the larger drain. Wet rooms often include a shower or two, a free standing tub, and glass enclosure. Many also have a floor mounted faucet for the tub, and a bench built into the wall.

Why Are Wet Rooms Popular

Wet rooms are a smart design choice for many reasons.

1. Space saving solution – fit more beautiful design elements into a smaller space
2. Beautiful to look at – highlight visually stunning freestanding tubs, without worrying about water damage.
3. Luxurious feel – wet rooms have the feeling of your own private spa.
4. Convenience with a high end look – if you’re like me, and want to enjoy a face mask in the tub, while you shave your legs, and then hop over to the shower for a steamy rinse, a wet room is a convenient solution. It has a much more high end look than a tub shower combo. It also eliminates the need to traipse across the cold bathroom when switching from tub to shower or vice versa.

These are a few of the reasons wet rooms have been gaining in popularity. Having built my own, I can attest to them all holding true.

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Reasons Families Love Wet Rooms

If you are a parent, there are a couple other reasons you might like having a wet room:

• My kids love using it as a ‘water park’. If you need some easy entertainment on a rainy day, let them throw on swimsuits, bring in some water toys, and play in the double showers, and bath. You can do this without worrying about the water mess it would create in a regular bath.
• Family showers. If the kids are little and still shower with you, it gives a lot of extra space for this! You can even pop your toddler in the tub while you shower, or vice versa.
• Inflatable pool in the house! Our family loves water, so sometimes in the winter I will set up an inflatable pool for the kids in the wet room. The only thing to be careful of is that you line up the pool drain and shower drain. I ended up flooding my entire bathroom in the process of draining the pool once. Oops. Obviously you have to be extra careful with all that water in a tiled space. No jumping or diving allowed!
• Pet parent?? A wet room is a great place to bathe a dog who loooooves to shake off all the water or run around while you wash them.

The Downside

Personally, I haven’t found there to be any downside to our wet room, but there are some aspects people might consider cons. The plumbing layout is more complex when including a tub and shower in a single space. You should definitely work with a professional designer and architect on a project like this.

Having a shower and tub in the same space is a personal preference. Some people might not like it, so it could potentially effect resale.

Elements To Consider Including In Your Wet Room

Every wet room includes a designated space that is built to get wet, but beyond that, there are endless design possibilities. Many wet rooms are enclosed by glass, we opted to keep ours open, and divided the wet room area and vanity with just a pony wall.

You could continue the tiles beyond the wet room, to make the entire bathroom feel unified and like the whole space is part of the wet room. This is what we did, and I love how it looks. The whole bathroom isn’t designed to get wet, but it looks like it could be.

Many people opt to do different floor tiles in the wet room than the rest of the bathroom, opposite what we did, and have the wall tiles end at the glass enclosure or the end of the wet room. Our original design included tiles just to the edge of the wet room on the wall, but ultimately we decided to extend it around the entire bathroom and behind the vanity, and I love how it looks. It really is a personal design choice.

Lots of wet rooms include one or more showers. A bench framed into the wall and tiled over is also a style choice many love. You could also include a floor mounted faucet for the bathtub. Two things we didn’t include, and I wish we did, were deeper floating shelves to hide shampoo bottles, and a shower spray bar.

The thing I am most happy we included is rainforest style shower heads from the Moen Colinet collection. The open nature of a wet room can make showering with a smaller shower head chilly. These beautiful shower heads keep you nice and warm thanks to their size, and the pressure balancing capabilities built into the shower head. I was hesitant about getting them because they are on the pricier end, but they really paid off. You can find the same shower heads we used here.

So Should I Do A Wet Room???

It is really a personal decision, but in my opinion, you can’t go wrong including a wet room in your master bathroom design. We love ours!

Did you enjoy our bathroom design?! Check out more home design tips here. You can also shop our bathroom decor and finishings here.

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