Summary:
What are the points to consider for a bathroom plan?
Bathroom plan: the elements to be integrated
Bathroom plan: don’t forget about electrical safety
What is the optimal arrangement of the elements on a bathroom plan?
Drawing a bathroom plan is not always easy. There are many points to take into account so that the room becomes both practical and aesthetically pleasing, functional and comfortable at the same time. In this post, you will discover the keys to make your thinking easier and get the bathroom that suits you.
What are the points to take into account for a bathroom plan?
There are some essential criteria that will dictate the layout of this room.
Locate the water drains and inlets. If your project is new construction on one level, you have fewer constraints. Its location in the house will be done according to practical criteria. The room should be in the night zone of your house, next to the bedrooms, to maintain a certain intimacy and avoid going back and forth throughout the house.
If your project has one floor, the bathroom on the upper level should be located above a bathroom on the lower level (kitchen, bathroom, toilet) so that it can easily be connected to the existing water supply and drainage systems.
Under renovation
If your project is a renovation, its positioning in the house will be dictated by the existing situation and in particular the different possible points of connection to the drain and the hot and cold water supply: old kitchen or old bathroom, or not far from one of these two rooms.
Be careful, however, if your future bathroom includes toilets, its positioning will be less free, and must be located close to the evacuation dedicated to toilets. (called black water or black water, and of larger diameter).
Each toilet must join the drains with a minimum slope of 1 to 2 cm per meter. This rule will allow you to see how far you can move away from existing drains. However, there are solutions to gain a few centimeters: the creation of a raised platform, for example.
Bathroom surface area
It all depends on the role of the bathroom.
It is the family bathroom, the only one in the house. In this case, it must be able to accommodate two basins, a bathtub, a shower: count a minimum of 5 to 6 m².
It is a bathroom used by children and another bathroom exists in the dwelling. This one can be a minimum of 3 to 4 m².
It is a secondary shower room or in a parental suite. The room can be a minimum of 2 m².
Distances of clearance
You will find below the more or less standard dimensions of the sanitary facilities, but another dimensional criterion is to be taken into account: the clearance distances, i.e. the space left free in front of the sanitary facilities to move around and access the various functions.
To do this, do not hesitate to put yourself in a situation.
Apart from the standards for disabled people, there are no predefined rules. Everything depends on your corpulence, on the presence or not of swinging doors requiring a sufficient distance, and on the general layout of the room. Allow a minimum of 60 cm of clearance in front of a vanity top, for example.
Bathroom plan: the elements to be integrated
List and prioritize your desires and needs. Take the time to analyze your habits or the things you have been missing until now.
- Would you rather take a bath or a shower? Both?
- One or two basins?
- Should the toilet be in the room?
- Should the bathroom also be used as a laundry room?
- Will it be used by several people at the same time?
- Do you need a lot of storage space?
- What is your heating system?
The bathtub
There are many different styles and sizes of bathtubs. From the space-saving sabot bathtub, which is a little outdated, to the corner bathtub for chromotherapy, let’s see the variety of choices available to you.
Type of installation: wall or isolated? Built-in or free-standing?
Shape: Rectangular/corner bath / asymmetrical cut-away bath (to meet certain space or passage constraints)?
Dimensions: 70 to 90 cm wide and 140 to 190 cm long for the straight bathtub, 115 × 115 to 160 × 160 cm for the corner bathtub.
The shower
For the shower, the choice of size is based on the type of shower desired: with a shower tray or a tiled shower, often similar to a walk-in shower.
Italian shower: this type of shower is minimalist, uncluttered, at the same level and often of the same material as the floor; however it is important to realize that its implementation is more complicated and must be carried out with the greatest care (especially with regard to water tightness). Its size and shape are unrestricted, so you can tailor-make your shower.
Shower with tray: there are a very large number of shower trays, both in terms of size and shape (square, rectangular, quarter round and asymmetrical) and materials (resin, acrylic, ceramic, enameled steel, etc.). The smallest are square 70 × 70 cm and sizes up to 170 × 90 cm can be found.
Type of installation: against a wall, in a corner, in a niche, on an island? This positioning will lead to different solutions concerning its closing (shower screen, curtain).
Finally, a technical point of importance concerning the shower: the hot and cold water supply and the choice of the tapware, recessed or exposed. A concealed fitting requires the pipes to be able to pass through a lining.
Toilets
As seen above, the location of the WC is the one where we have the least flexibility: it must be located as close as possible to the drain (large diameter drain pipe Ø 90 mm approx.).
If it is large enough, its location in the bathroom must allow for a minimum of privacy: it can be separated from the rest of the room by a small wall, pretty claustra, storage unit, etc…
Finally, for installation, you have the choice between suspended WCs, requiring the presence of a recessed or dressed support frame, and horizontal or vertical wall-hung WCs.
The washbasin or basin unit
Your choice here is between a vanity unit with one or two basins and significant storage space in the lower part, or a more refined version: a single washbasin, free-standing, column washbasin.
The vanity unit: the most compact, with a single washbasin, will measure 40 cm wide by 35 cm deep (almost like a wash-hand basin); more commonly, for one washbasin, count approximately 60 × 45 cm, and for two washbasins 120 × 50 cm. Custom-made products can help you to obtain the desired size.
The single washbasin: it is available on a stand, on a column or suspended. Without lower storage. Its minimalist look sometimes saves space.
Laundry machines
If your bathroom is also to be used as a laundry room, generally count 60 × 60 cm for a standard machine footprint. As for the installation, it depends on whether it is a front-loading or top-loading machine. Depending on the type of machine, you can place them next to each other or on top of each other. Do not forget to provide a place for the laundry basket and washing products, ideally next to the machines.
Heating
If you don’t have underfloor heating and need to provide heating for the room, choosing a towel warmer is the ideal option, whether the bathroom is small or large.
Hot water production: depending on how your home is heated, a hot water tank may need to be provided and housed in the bathroom. Its volume generally depends on the number of people living in the home, from 50 to 300 L.
Most hot water systems are cylindrical (approximately 60 cm in diameter) and can be installed on the floor or suspended (in this case, the wall or ceiling receiving the cylinder). If you have a high ceiling, you can plan to place the cylinder horizontally under a (accessible) formwork, but there are now also less bulky (rectangular) and more aesthetically pleasing balloons available.
Bathroom plan: don’t forget about electrical safety
Electricity meets strict standards, and when it is located in a bathroom, the NF C 15-100 standard applies, in order to avoid any risk of an accident. It defines different volumes around water points, determining which appliances can be admitted or not, depending on their protection index and their protection class (from I to III). The bathroom plan must, therefore, take these different volumes into account.
Electrical standards for bathrooms
What is the optimal arrangement of the elements on a bathroom plan?
Each bathroom has its own optimal layout, which must take into account all of the above elements. Although some configurations may seem more obvious than others, a typical layout may inspire you but may not be exactly what you want and how you want to live. That is why you can call Marlin Plumbing in Miami. They provide reliable water heater installation, bathroom remodeling, drain cleaner, leak detection, faucets repair, pipe repairs, and plumbing services.