What Is a Wetroom and Why You Should Build One Now

What Is a Wetroom? 

If you know what a wetroom is, then you probably love them. If you don’t, the term might have piqued your interest. You might be wondering what it is or why you would build one. All are on the table as we wash through the whats, hows, and benefits of installing a wetroom in your home. 

Fortunately, the wet room has a conveniently descriptive name. Put simply, it is a bathroom that gets wetter than regular ones. In fact, it is a room that is designed to get wet. The floors and walls of a wet room bathroom are sealed so that water won’t leak through them. The other recognizable feature of a wet room is the lack of partitions and self-contained fixtures such as shower pans, allowing for a more open and spacious design. 

Usually, a wetroom includes an open walk-in shower, one large drain at the center of the wetroom that deals with all the water, and inclined floors that guide all the water towards the drain. More advanced wet room designs might even sport heated wet room floor tiles which keep the floor from becoming slippery. 

Because it is intended to be a wet place, it isn’t always as safe to have electrical devices such as shavers or hair dryers laying around. However, there are some compelling advantages of having a wet room which just might make you want one in your home. 

6 Reasons Why You Should Build a Wetroom 

They’re Beautiful 

One of the beauties of a wet room installation is that it gives you a lot of options when it comes to style. Wet room designs are free of clutter which makes them look much sleeker. The extra room makes it easier to come up with design ideas and allows you to use all kinds of different materials such as wood, tile, stone, ceramic, or concrete, giving you a modern bathroom look. 

The Beauty of Why You Need a Wet Room In Your House

Increase the Value of Your Home 

Installing a wet room bathroom is a surefire way to increase your home’s value, especially when it is installed correctly. This is not only because it gives your home a stylish flair of modernity. Wet rooms are very practical and can make even a small bathroom look desirable. This is great news as it makes your home significantly more appealing to buyers.

More Accessible 

Accessibility Is One Of the Perks of Having Wet Room

This is a big part of what makes a wet room more practical than a regular bathroom. Because a wet room shower doesn’t need a shower pan and is therefore level with the floor, it is much easier for children, those with disabilities, and the elderly to use. This makes wet rooms safer by reducing the chance of slips and falls. Thanks to their minimalist design, wet rooms can also be easily adapted for accessibility by incorporating grab rails and other accommodations.

Make Your Bathroom More Spacious 

The Versatility of Wet Rooms Allows It to be Quite Spacious

There are plenty of useful wet room ideas for small bathrooms which can transform a cramped bathroom into a more spacious one. A bulky bathtub can be removed to declutter the space, and a cumbersome shower enclosure with clunky doors can be gotten rid of as well. You will gain even more space if you make your vanity a floating one. All of these solutions allow a small wet room to feel much more spacious.

Easier to Clean and Maintain 

Why Wet Rooms Are Easier to Clean and Maintain

Because they are sleek and wet by design, wet bathrooms are easier to keep clean than regular bathrooms. There are no doors or partitions to worry about, and no shower trays to bend over and scrub. Wetrooms with wall-mounted sinks and commodes are even more ideal because they don’t allow any place for water to pool, making your job of keeping mold and mildew away much easier.  

Increases the Structural Integrity of Your Home

How Waterproofing Your Bathroom Can Increase the Structural Integrity of Your Home

Thanks to a wet bathroom’s waterproofing, the quality of your home’s water resistance can be significantly improved. The bathroom is one of the areas in your house which is most prone to leaks and water damage. This means that water is more likely to go where it shouldn’t, which can cause a build-up of moisture in walls and lead to expensive problems down the road. A wet room with proper waterproofing eliminates a lot of those problems, giving you peace of mind and added protection to your home’s structure. Needless to say, structural integrity is also great for your home’s desirability in the eyes of potential buyers. 

Wet Room Ideas and Solutions

As with any home improvement project, wet room installation comes with a few nuances that are important to consider. Wetrooms are a bit more expensive to build than your average bathroom, and this is partly because you’ll need a professional fitter to do the installation. But although building one may be pricey, the beauty of a wet room is that the versatility of the wet floor design allows for you and the fitter to develop a flexible and cost-effective design.  

Endless Tile Design Options When It Comes to a Wet Room

Wet rooms can cost more to maintain as wet room tiles must be installed on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. More porous wet room tiles will need to be resealed every few months and this can be a lot of work. But there are plenty of things you can do to decrease the cost, including choosing more budget-friendly materials and less porous tiles that won’t need to be resealed as often.  

While a wet room can increase your home’s value, some homeowners may shy away from certain limitations that they pose, like being unwelcoming to a bathtub. It may also be harder to install electric appliances in a wet room. However, you can get around this by making sure to also have a regular bathroom that contains the features your wet room doesn’t have. And if space allows, you can also break tradition and include a tub in your wet room — a combo that is becoming increasingly desirable. This will give your home the best of both worlds and make it more attractive to all buyers. 

Electrical appliances can be safely used in wet rooms if they are kept away from sources of water and are connected to ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) equipped outlets which can instantly stop an electrical current from flowing if a short is caused by water.

Tropical Wet Room

Convert your wet room into a serene tropical haven and fill it with some lush green plants. Your indoor jungle can be made of potted and hanging plants and will do wonders for your modern bathroom’s ambiance. Put in some wet room tiles with wood embellishments and you’ll be well on your way to having your own tropical sanctuary.

How to Design a Tropical Wet Room

Scandinavian Style

You can also take the wood effect in a different direction by capturing the essence of the Finnish Sauna in your wet room. Put in some wood-style tile, minimalist wooden wall-mounted vanities topped with white granite, complement it with some patterned wall tiling, and watch your Scandinavian bathroom remodel take shape.  

Ideas and Solutions for Designing a Wet Room

Wet Room With Bathtub

An easy bathroom design idea that will truly turn your wet room into an oasis is to install a bathtub. Bigger wet rooms will benefit the most from this addition, as a minimalist bathtub can really help tie a wet room together. The icing on the cake of course is that this will also make your wet room even more desirable to buyers.

Turn Your Wet Room Into An Irresistible Oasis