Size considerations: Bathroom and Shower doors

Space is at a premium today, and often a developer or builder will take the approach that smaller rooms mean fewer materials and thus lower building costs.   There is certainly a trend towards smaller blocks of land as well as high-density accommodation, and this can translate to restrictions in the size of houses or units.   As a result, it’s quite common to have a small bathroom, particularly where multi-density housing is concerned.

If there’s not enough space to swing the proverbial cat in your bathroom, here are some ideas to consider ensuring that you make the most efficient use of the limited area available.   It’s all about doors.

Space-saving bathroom doors

Traditionally, bathroom doors open inwards.  When there’s not much room to manoeuvre inside the bathroom, you can consider fitting the door to open outwards.   This option can have safety issues, with people walking past the room and having the door opened into them, especially if the bathroom is off a hallway.   Also, an outward-opening bathroom door may intrude too far into the space outside the room – perhaps not the optimum answer.

A much better solution would be a sliding door or a concertina door.   A sliding door can run along a track against the wall.   However, if you are in a position to have some input into the construction, the door can be designed to slide into the wall cavity, saving even more space and providing a much neater result.

Now that the entrance door has been sorted, you can concentrate on using the space inside the bathroom more effectively.

Types of shower doors

Again, a door on the shower enclosure that fully opens outwards can be awkward in a small room.   Three-part sliding shower doors have been around for ages and will certainly save space but can be difficult to keep clean.

A hinged, single shower door is easier to clean, arguably looks more stylish, and if it is pivoted some distance along its width, so that it opens partly into the shower enclosure and partly into the bathroom, may solve the space problem.

To actually save on floor space, you could settle for a curved shower enclosure, with two right-angled sides located in a corner of the room, and a curved front.   This design will typically save about 1 square metre of floor space, and this might be enough to give you the extra area you need for comfortable access.

To take these ideas a little further, you could choose sliding doors or no doors on bathroom cabinets.   And the open-front look may just be the incentive you need to make sure that your bathroom cabinets are always tidy.