When combining a WC & bathroom into one room the old WC often makes an ideal position for a large shower. Here are a couple of options of how to treat the space.
Overview
In UK houses there is often a bathroom and a separate WC at the top of the stairs.
Many people choose to knock these through into one spacious room and the merits of doing this vs. keeping them separate are discussed here
However, this article focuses on what you could do with the old toilet assuming you DO knock through……
Option 1: Block up the old WC entrance and make a huge shower enclosure with a single door.
This approach involves keeping the old entryway into the bathroom.
In this example, the shower tray takes up the whole of the old toilet. (This shower tray is 1200 x 800mm, though you may be able to fit in a 1400mm long tray depending on the size of your house.)
The shower valve on the right sits in the space that used to be the old doorway into the toilet and the glass door occupies the space that the dividing wall between the toilet and the bathroom previously occupied.
PS You can see the rest of the installation here.
Option 2: Remove the old WC & bathroom entrances completely, and fit a shower in the old toilet (this time with a glass ‘return’ panel.)
A brand new entrance to the new larger bathroom is planned.
The dividing wall between the two rooms is removed along with both doorways.
Hall space is incorporated into the new bathroom with this approach, and it arguably makes the room feel bigger by ‘opening it up.’
Here you can see the position of the shower tray in the new, larger bathroom relative to the initial layout.
As the old toilet doorway is removed rather than being blocked up it means that the shower (though in the same position as option 1 above) requires a glass return (side) panel as can be seen above.
This means that the shower has to be located on one of the two other walls.
Summary
It often makes sense to put a shower into an old toilet when knocking through a WC & bathroom, mostly due to the fact that the size of UK toilets are often the same as large shower enclosures.
PS In larger bathrooms, this can allow the installation of a bath in addition to the shower.
I hope that this has given you some ideas for your own bathroom.
Leave a comment or ask a question relative to your plans and I’ll see what I can do to help.
Chris