Both wet rooms and walk in showers give you that open, easy-access showering space, but they are built very differently and the right choice depends on your house, your budget and how you use the bathroom. Having fitted both across Cardiff and the surrounding valleys, we can tell you honestly that neither is better in every case. Here is how to decide which one suits your home.
A walk in shower is a large showering area with a low profile tray, usually 25mm to 45mm high, and one or two glass screens. The tray sits on or in the floor and directs water to a standard waste, so the rest of the bathroom floor stays a normal, non-waterproofed surface.
A wet room does away with the tray altogether. The whole floor is tanked, which means waterproofed with a membrane, then tiled with a gentle fall built into the subfloor so water runs to a flush drain. The showering area is level with the rest of the room, often with just a single glass panel to control spray.
For a typical Cardiff bathroom, a good quality walk in shower conversion usually lands somewhere between £2,500 and £5,000 fitted, depending on tray size, tiling and whether pipework needs moving. A full wet room conversion more commonly runs from £5,500 to £10,000 or more, because the whole floor has to be dug into or built up, tanked, screeded to falls and tiled.
The gap widens in older properties. Much of Cardiff's housing stock is Victorian or Edwardian terrace with suspended timber floors, and forming reliable falls in timber means installing a former between the joists and tanking very carefully. It is absolutely doable, we do it regularly, but it takes more labour than the same job on a solid concrete ground floor.
If step free access is the priority, for ageing in place or wheelchair use, a wet room wins comfortably. There is no lip at all, turning space is generous, and grab rails and fold down seats fix easily to tiled walls. Many walk in trays still leave a small upstand of 25mm or so, which matters more than people expect with a walker or wheels.
On the other hand, a walk in shower keeps water more contained. In a wet room, spray can reach the toilet roll, towels and anything stored low down, so layout planning matters, and in smaller rooms under about 2m by 1.7m you may find everything gets damp. Ventilation also works harder in a wet room, so a decent humidity sensing extractor fan is not optional.
A properly tanked wet room should be trouble free for decades, but a badly tanked one is the most expensive bathroom failure there is, because leaks travel into the subfloor and ceilings below before anyone notices. If you go the wet room route, make sure your installer tanks the full floor and at least 1.2m up the shower walls, and ask what membrane system they are using. This is not a job for a general handyman.
For resale, it depends on the buyer. Families often prefer at least one bath in the house, so if you only have one bathroom, think twice before removing the tub for either option. A well finished walk in shower is the safer all round choice for a typical three bed semi, while a wet room adds genuine appeal in en suites, ground floor shower rooms and homes adapted for accessibility.
Choose a walk in shower if you want a modern, open feel on a tighter budget, your bathroom is upstairs on a timber floor, or you may sell within a few years. Choose a wet room if you need fully level access, you have a small or awkward space where a tray will not fit neatly, or you are creating a high end en suite and want that seamless tiled finish.
If you are unsure, get someone to look at the room in person. Floor construction, joist direction and where the soil stack runs will often make the decision for you, and a ten minute survey is far cheaper than discovering mid job that the drain cannot go where you hoped.
Call Simon for an initial chat, or send a couple of photos of the space and Sycamore will come back with a quote the same week.
A few photos and a sketch of the room is usually enough for a first quote. For anything structural or tricky, we come and look.