Bathrooms: the materials that still look right in ten years

A bathroom is small, wet, expensive per square metre and effectively permanent. Everything in it is either tiled in, plumbed in or both, which means that unlike a living room it cannot be improved incrementally. That makes it the room where restraint pays best: the bathrooms that still look right after a decade are almost always the ones that were designed around durability and light rather than around a trend.

The decisions that are effectively permanent

• The layout and the waste positions. Moving a WC in an apartment is constrained by the soil stack and the available fall. This is a plumbing question before it is a design question.
• Waterproofing behind the tiles. Invisible, non-negotiable, and the single most common cause of expensive failure. A tanking membrane in the wet zone is not optional.
• Ventilation. An apartment bathroom without a window depends entirely on mechanical extraction, and in many buildings that duct is communal. Undersized extraction produces mould regardless of what the walls are finished in.
• The tiling itself. Removing tile means removing the substrate behind it.

Taps, mirrors, lighting, towel rails and storage are all changeable. Spend the design attention on the first list.

Materials that hold up

Large-format porcelain

The most reliable surface for a bathroom. Non-porous, dimensionally stable, available in convincing stone and concrete effects, and with fewer grout lines than a small tile, which means less to clean and less to discolour. A 60 by 120 format makes a small bathroom read larger because the eye counts fewer joints.

Natural stone

Beautiful and demanding. Marble and limestone are porous, need sealing and will etch with acidic products. In a family bathroom that is a maintenance commitment rather than a finish. In a guest cloakroom it is a reasonable indulgence.

Microcement and tadelakt

Seamless and currently fashionable. Both depend almost entirely on the quality of the application and the substrate. Done by a specialist over a correctly prepared base they are excellent; done cheaply they crack at the junctions within two years. Ask to see completed work that is at least three years old.

Grout, which nobody thinks about

Grout colour changes the whole reading of a tiled wall. Matching the grout to the tile produces a calm, monolithic surface. Contrasting grout emphasises the grid, which is a decision rather than an accident. Epoxy grout resists staining far better than cement-based grout in showers and is worth the extra cost at the wet end.

Layout rules for small apartment bathrooms

• Wall-hung sanitaryware on a concealed frame keeps the floor visible, which makes a small room feel larger and makes cleaning straightforward. It requires a stud or a duct, which is usually achievable.
• A walk-in shower with a single fixed glass panel reads as more spacious than an enclosure with doors, and there is less to go wrong.
• Run the floor tile continuously into the shower where a level entry is possible. Every threshold you remove makes the room read larger.
• Recess a niche into the shower wall at the design stage rather than adding shelves later. It is the cheapest storage in the room and it must be planned before tiling.
• Bath or shower. In an apartment with only one bathroom and any prospect of a family, keeping a bath is a commercial as well as a practical decision. Removing the only bath narrows the pool of future buyers and tenants.

Light, mirrors and the thing hotels get right

Bathroom lighting in apartments is almost universally a single ceiling fitting, and it is the reason people dislike how they look at home and like how they look in a hotel.

Light the face vertically, from both sides of the mirror, at around head height. Two wall lights flanking the mirror, or a mirror with integrated vertical illumination, remove the shadows that a downlight casts into the eye sockets. Add the ceiling light for general illumination, at 2700K or 3000K, never cooler.

A mirrored cabinet gains storage without consuming the room, and in a bathroom with no window a large mirror is the only way to borrow light.

The apartment-specific cautions

Two issues come up constantly in Luxembourg co-ownerships.

The soil stack and the ducts belong to the building, not to you. Boxing them in is fine; cutting into them, relocating a connection or altering a communal ventilation duct is a matter for the syndic and may require a vote. Establish this before the design, because it determines whether the layout you want is possible at all.

Water damage travels downward. A leak in an apartment bathroom becomes the neighbour's ceiling, and the resulting claim is one of the more common disputes in Luxembourg buildings. This is the argument for spending on waterproofing and for using a plumber who will issue an insurance-backed guarantee.

Ventilation, and the reason bathrooms fail

Almost every mould complaint in a Luxembourg apartment bathroom is a ventilation problem wearing a decorating problem's clothes. Repainting solves it for a season; moving the moisture out solves it permanently.

• Establish what system you have. Many apartments use a communal mechanical extraction system with a fixed grille rather than an individual fan. That grille has a designed flow rate, and it works only if it is clean and if the duct behind it is unobstructed.
• Clean the grille and the filter. This is the maintenance step nobody performs, and a blocked grille can lose most of its effectiveness.
• Do not block the air path. These systems draw replacement air from the rest of the apartment, usually under the door. Fitting a heavy draught excluder or a floor-length threshold seal on a bathroom door stops the extraction working.
• Run the extraction after the shower, not only during it. Most of the moisture leaves the room in the fifteen minutes afterwards.
• If the system is communal and underperforming, it is a matter for the syndic rather than for you, and it is worth raising in writing because it will be affecting other apartments in the same stack.

Before spending on a new bathroom, establish that the ventilation works. A new bathroom in an unventilated room is a new bathroom with mould in it within two winters.

Three questions we are asked

Does a new bathroom add value at sale?

A dated but clean bathroom is discounted less than most owners fear. A visibly failing one, with cracked grout, mould or a leaking enclosure, is discounted heavily because a buyer prices a full replacement plus disruption. Fixing the failure is usually a better return than fitting a new bathroom.

Underfloor heating in a bathroom, worth it?

In a tiled room in a northern climate, electric underfloor heating is one of the higher-satisfaction upgrades per euro spent, and it is straightforward to install during a retile. It also allows the towel rail to be sized for towels rather than for heating the room.

Small tiles or large in a small bathroom?

Large, in almost every case. The instinct to use small tiles in a small room is exactly backwards: fewer grout lines mean fewer visual interruptions, and the room reads as one surface rather than as a grid.

Where this fits in a Luxembourg apartment

At viewings, the bathroom and the kitchen carry a disproportionate share of the decision. If you are deciding whether to renovate a bathroom before selling or letting, ask us first: the answer is often to repair and relight rather than to replace.

In bathrooms: the materials that still look right in ten years, the section on the apartment-specific cautions should end with a test the reader can actually perform.

A useful editorial test for materials that hold up is to look at the consequence rather than the headline feature.

For materials that hold up, note what you can see, what you can measure, what you need to ask and what would be expensive to change.

A stronger reading of where this fits in a luxembourg apartment starts by asking what would change for the resident on an ordinary weekday.