While the shower may reign supreme in your morning routine, having a showstopping bath as a centrepiece and place for relaxation will elevate your bathroom to sanctuary status. The Reece Bathrooms Annual Insight Report 2021/22 found the bath is the third most important bathroom feature (up 5% since 2019/20), but how do you know which one to choose? Daniela Santilli, bathrooms & kitchens merchandising leader at Reece Bathrooms, shares her thoughts.
Kado Lux Petite Freestanding Bath via Three Birds Renovations
The main consideration is selecting a bath that will stand up to the rigours of your household needs and how you use the space. And with a rise in new materials, shapes and colours, there are several considerations which will inform the bath type and look you choose.
Whether you’re catering to a family or designing your dream bathroom, here’s what you should consider when choosing the right bath for your space.
Why choose a freestanding bath?
Freestanding baths have a bold, luxe look, forming the absolute focal point of your bathroom. But when would you choose a freestanding bath, and what should you consider?
KADO Era bath
Freestanding baths work best for bathrooms with a little more wiggle room.
They don’t need wall support, so they can be placed anywhere in the room – under a window or skylight or even in the centre for dramatic impact.
One of the biggest considerations when looking at the placement of a freestanding bath is ensuring it’s far enough from the wall to allow for ease of cleaning behind the bath – we recommend at least 100mm.
If renovating, think about existing plumbing and keep to the footprint of your current bath to avoid unnecessary expense.
If practicality is a priority (hello young children) and space is scarce, inset baths are a great choice. Here’s what you need to know about choosing an inset bath.
They work well with a smaller floor plan, with a number of different sizes available – from 1200mm to 1900mm.
Inset baths are built into a hob — a tiled section that holds the bath. They’re often installed next to the shower enclosure or with shower over bath installation to fit both a shower and bath in the one room.
The surrounding ledge makes access easy for children and is particularly handy for parents when bathing youngsters. It can also make for some added storage space.
You can clean the space easily, as there are no nooks for dust and grime to hide behind.
The best of both worlds: back to wall and back to corner baths
Back to wall and back to corner baths are great for those who want the convenience of an inset bath, but still want the striking design of a freestanding bath.
Posh Domaine Back to Wall Freestanding Bath
Back to wall and back to corner baths are a hybrid solution, designed to sit against a wall and/or in the corner of a room, but are freestanding in that they don’t need to be fixed into a recess. They’re perfect if you don’t have the space, but still want the benefits of a freestanding bath.
Interiors Addict’s Jen Bishop chose a back to wall bath for her own reno
With an ever-growing focus on the bathroom as a sanctuary, we’re increasingly investing in products that elevate our daily routines through tactile materials and striking design.
Baths are available in a variety of materials, from pressed steel to the organic matte feel of a solid surface. The style of the bathroom and those using the bath can inform the right material and colour for you – think: sanitary grade acrylic and pressed steel for those with young children, or sleek matte black to make a statement.
The best way to get a sense of a bath is to experience it! Visit your nearest Bathroom Life showroom to find a bath of any type that will fit your space.
There is so much to share about my recent bathroom reno and I couldn’t possibly fit it all into the reveal post, so I’m sharing a little more detail today, with why I chose the things I did and how those decisions have (thankfully!) worked out really well. Phew!
TILES: In some ways, this is the starting point; the blank canvas! In the 2.5 years of saving up and waiting to do the bathroom, I was sure I’d go for a feature patterned floor, therefore keeping the walls simple. And feature floors certainly only got more popular during that time. But when it came to it, because we were knocking the WC and bathroom together and trying to get so much (i.e. separate shower and 1700mm bath) into a still quite small space, I decided it wouldn’t be the best idea. A simpler floor has, I’m sure, given the illusion of more space. And with the other choices I made, I was very conscious of not having too many heroes (hello gold tapware and hardware, solid timber vanity and big tub!).
In my last bathroom, we used subways but I wanted something a bit different as subways are definitely everywhere! I loved the smaller and uneven look of the tiles we chose and the size makes them a bit different to the more popular larger format wall tiles. So although we went for white tiles with white grout, I felt there was enough texture there for it to still look interesting. And I couldn’t love the end result more! Until the grout went in I was a little worried it was looking like a public toilet, and I did question and re-question the decision to have them stacked rather than laid in a brick pattern. But all’s well that ends well! I also almost went for a feature tile in the niche (probably a pastel coloured version of the same tile) but with the brass trim on those, I felt that was enough. Restraint is hard though, let me tell you!
I knew I wanted something matte and simple for the floor and I love these (they’re more greige than grey although the name of them is grey). So far, they’re hiding dirt and a variety of hair colours very well! They also dry quickly which is a consideration with an open shower.
TILE TRIM: Probably one of the cheapest things in the bathroom, but one that gets a heap of comments and compliments, is the brass tile trim, which I found online. It caused me a fair bit of angst because although chrome would never have worked, it was quite a brave choice and I knew it wouldn’t match perfectly with the tapware. But white wouldn’t have looked half as good! And without a feature tile in the niches, they needed this little je ne sais quoi!
I’m totally okay with the two golds not being exactly the same too!
BATH: I cannot rave enough about this bath! I have always been against squashing a freestanding bath into a small space because I don’t think it looks great visually, not to mention the issue of cleaning behind it. So when I started to see a few of these back-to-wall or D-shape baths on the market I knew straightaway this was my perfect solution! So while it is technically freestanding, it is right up against the wall on one side.
We had a hob bath in my last bathroom which we tiled up the side of and I didn’t like how many right angles there were! Here I love that we have the curve of a freestanding tub without it really being one. It definitely adds to the sense of space as well. And a curve is always a good thing in a room full of squares and rectangles, which a bathroom usually is by default.
So there’s technically still a gap at this end to clean around, but you can’t have it all when you’re working with a tight space!
Regular readers will know I love my baths and have a soak almost every single night, summer or winter! I really wanted to have a decent sized bath if we could manage to fit it. And this one is so deep and amazing! The good thing about a deep bath is that you can lie back against it, without your head being above the top of it. It’s like a bedhead in the bath, if that makes sense! We switched out the waste it came with for a tiger bronze one from Meir to match the taps and shower.
VANITY: After getting custom blackbutt solid timber vanities from Ingrain Designs in our last bathroom, I didn’t even consider getting the vanity for this room from anywhere else! But while blackbutt is quite a statement, knotty timber, I wanted something more subtle here so we went for reclaimed Tassie oak (more on this in a future blog post).
The clever and stunning handle-free design of the vanity was a very easy choice! And the matching shaving cabinet above is a larger version of what we had in the old place and has so much storage (seriously, we must have increased our storage ten-fold from the old bathroom) it makes me very happy! And yes, all our regular toiletries live in here while only the fancy stuff is allowed in the bath and shoer niches. We’ll see how long this rule lasts…
I knew the timber would warm up the all-white space and work beautifully with the warm tones of the tapware and other hardware. It’s a real showstopper!
TAPWARE & SHOWER: This was one of the easier choices because I’d already used a Meir tiger bronze tap in my kitchen and I love it! And as well as wanting to make the bathroom somewhat consistent with the kitchen, I was always going to choose gold! If you’ve seen the rest of our home, that will be obvious!
My selections:
Meir Tiger Bronze round wall mixers, round combination shower rail, round curved spouts, round toilet roll holder, bath popup waste, square floor grate and robe hooks (instead of towel rails).
TOILET: I’ve never cared much for fancy toilets or putting much thought into which one I’d like, but that changed with this bathroom. Bringing the WC and bathroom together meant, obviously, having a loo in the bathroom. and because space was tight it ended up right next to the bath and there was no space for a nib wall or anything like that to disguise it (although it is behind the door, so when the door’s open and you walk past, you don’t see the toilet).
This wall hung one not only adds to the sense of space, but it is so simple and compact, it just blends in. And you don’t really want to make a feature of your toilet! The white glass flush plate also adds to the streamlined and subtle look. I can’t believe how excited I got about this toilet with its in-wall cistern! Who knew?! And it’s a Philippe Starck collaboration. What more can I say?!
BASIN: I love a lot about this basin, from its generous size to its white ceramic waste (so sleek) to its beautiful and simple curved shape (see above under bath choice regarding curves!). I also learnt from my last bathroom reno that it would be best to right align rather than centre it, giving more useable space to the left side. It’s a large sink (600mm wide) but it works perfectly on the 1200mm vanity. You can’t go wrong with an established brand like Duravit and once I told the staff at Bathe what I was after, they helpfully shortlisted a few for me and it was love at first sight!
I have so much more to share about choosing and working with our builder, our electrical choices (mostly fancy lighting!), getting the floorplan right from the start, but I’ll leave it here for today! I hope you find this useful!
