Buying a New Bathroom London
At any age a new bathroom is a big investment so it’s important to do plenty of research into layout, equipment, and fitting to make sure that you get it exactly right. When you’re over 50, as this article explains, there are a few other factors you also need to take into consideration to ensure that your new oasis of calm will meet your needs and provide you with luxurious enjoyment for years to come.
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Buying a New Bathroom
Planning a new bathroom can be a big challenge at any time of life. For what is normally quite a small room, it can represent a huge number of challenges! You not only have a limited amount of space to work with but you need, if possible, to plan things around existing service points (water, drainage, electrics) as rewiring and re-plumbing can be difficult and expensive.
When you’re over 50 you need to give additional thought to how your household’s bathroom usage may have changed from when you were younger, and what you might want from a bathroom in future. And as the bathroom market has undoubtedly changed radically since last you bought one, you need to spend plenty of time at the outset, researching what equipment is now available.
There’s a huge amount to consider and ultimately everything has to fit together – conceptually and practically. But following these few tips should help ensure that you end up flushed with success rather than watching your dreams going down the pan:
1. Agree a budget: The bathroom is definitely an area where you can spend anything from a reasonable sum to an absolute fortune, so before you start looking set a budget – and resolve that whatever happens you will not exceed it by more than 10%. This is crucial – if you leave this stage until you start looking, you’ll be swept away by all the marvellous items on offer and end up spending far, far more than you ever intended.
2. Discuss your wants and needs: Unless you live alone there will undoubtedly be at least one other person whose views need taking into account in planning your new bathroom. They will have opinions on how much you should spend (see above), what bathroom fittings you should have, how they should be positioned, and the overall style of the bathroom (contemporary, cosy, classic). It’s essential to reach agreement about all of this at the outset, not part way through.
3. Identify the essentials: Now you’re older, you possibly don’t have to take certain practicalities into account in the same way you did when you had young children or a more frenetic working lifestyle. You may want a bigger bath now to allow for longer soaks, or indeed you may decide that you prefer showers these days and dispense with a bath altogether. Don’t choose anything automatically.
4. Look to the future: If you’re in your fifties or sixties you’re a long way from being old yet, but assuming that you’re planning on staying in your house, it is worth considering possible future changes. These are likely to concern issues relating to mobility and stability, which may have implications regarding bathroom access and safety. Often minor modifications can be made easily to existing equipment to allow for this and it’s worth having this conversation with your bathroom equipment supplier at the outset. Also, if you ever get to the stage of needing assistance you need to make sure you have allowed sufficient room for manoeuvre.
5. Cleaning and maintenance: A luxurious, health-boosting bathroom is a spotless bathroom, and unless you’re in the fortunate position of employing a cleaner, that means that you need to consider how easy your bathroom will be to keep clean. At this age, it’s not so much a matter of your physical ability to clean but the fact that you’ve undoubtedly got a lot more interesting things to do. So think hard about any bits of equipment that are likely to leak, break or become loose or unstable. Look into easy care walls and flooring and ensure that you install good lighting.
6. Sensible storage: We all have lots of bathroom “stuff” of one sort or another, and we need to be able to find it easily and keep it tidy. Having good storage in terms of cupboards (and where possible go for something much larger than the normal small bathroom cupboard), and built-in storage bins that can also double as seating, can be invaluable for both stashing your stuff and keeping surfaces clear and easy to clean.
7. Stay calm: Unfortunately choosing and installing a new bathroom always seems to involve a certain amount of stress and disruption. Reduce the possibility of things going wrong by actively project managing the job and checking and re-checking in advance that everything and everyone will be in place on time.
When it comes to it, take the attitude that this is just a challenge to be got through, make lots of tea (assuming the water is still on) and ensure you’ve arranged with family, friends or neighbours to use their facilities if needs be. It will be worth it in the end.
Click here for more useful information for the over 50s from in my prime.
When you’re over 50 you need to give additional thought to how your household’s bathroom usage may have changed from when you were younger, and what you might want from a bathroom in future. And as the bathroom market has undoubtedly changed radically since last you bought one, you need to spend plenty of time at the outset, researching what equipment is now available.
There’s a huge amount to consider and ultimately everything has to fit together – conceptually and practically. But following these few tips should help ensure that you end up flushed with success rather than watching your dreams going down the pan:
1. Agree a budget: The bathroom is definitely an area where you can spend anything from a reasonable sum to an absolute fortune, so before you start looking set a budget – and resolve that whatever happens you will not exceed it by more than 10%. This is crucial – if you leave this stage until you start looking, you’ll be swept away by all the marvellous items on offer and end up spending far, far more than you ever intended.
2. Discuss your wants and needs: Unless you live alone there will undoubtedly be at least one other person whose views need taking into account in planning your new bathroom. They will have opinions on how much you should spend (see above), what bathroom fittings you should have, how they should be positioned, and the overall style of the bathroom (contemporary, cosy, classic). It’s essential to reach agreement about all of this at the outset, not part way through.
3. Identify the essentials: Now you’re older, you possibly don’t have to take certain practicalities into account in the same way you did when you had young children or a more frenetic working lifestyle. You may want a bigger bath now to allow for longer soaks, or indeed you may decide that you prefer showers these days and dispense with a bath altogether. Don’t choose anything automatically.
4. Look to the future: If you’re in your fifties or sixties you’re a long way from being old yet, but assuming that you’re planning on staying in your house, it is worth considering possible future changes. These are likely to concern issues relating to mobility and stability, which may have implications regarding bathroom access and safety. Often minor modifications can be made easily to existing equipment to allow for this and it’s worth having this conversation with your bathroom equipment supplier at the outset. Also, if you ever get to the stage of needing assistance you need to make sure you have allowed sufficient room for manoeuvre.
5. Cleaning and maintenance: A luxurious, health-boosting bathroom is a spotless bathroom, and unless you’re in the fortunate position of employing a cleaner, that means that you need to consider how easy your bathroom will be to keep clean. At this age, it’s not so much a matter of your physical ability to clean but the fact that you’ve undoubtedly got a lot more interesting things to do. So think hard about any bits of equipment that are likely to leak, break or become loose or unstable. Look into easy care walls and flooring and ensure that you install good lighting.
6. Sensible storage: We all have lots of bathroom “stuff” of one sort or another, and we need to be able to find it easily and keep it tidy. Having good storage in terms of cupboards (and where possible go for something much larger than the normal small bathroom cupboard), and built-in storage bins that can also double as seating, can be invaluable for both stashing your stuff and keeping surfaces clear and easy to clean.
7. Stay calm: Unfortunately choosing and installing a new bathroom always seems to involve a certain amount of stress and disruption. Reduce the possibility of things going wrong by actively project managing the job and checking and re-checking in advance that everything and everyone will be in place on time.
When it comes to it, take the attitude that this is just a challenge to be got through, make lots of tea (assuming the water is still on) and ensure you’ve arranged with family, friends or neighbours to use their facilities if needs be. It will be worth it in the end.
Click here for more useful information for the over 50s from in my prime.