Technically, a shower only needs to be 2’-6” in each dimension. A nice one person shower is 3’-6” square. For a soaking tub, you’ll want at least a footprint of 3’ x 6’ (although some vessel tubs can be smaller or more compact).Ī good two-person shower is 3’ x 6’. However, you can get ones wider - 3’ is common, and a shorter 4’-6” is common enough. In the interest of providing some more rules of thumb, here are some common codes and typical dimensions to consider:Ī normal tub is 2’-6” by 5’-0”. Push the limits of what your bathroom can be, and make it better than the vast majority of bathrooms out there! Common Codes for Bathroom Design The door behind this free-standing tub is an access hatch to the attic space beyond.ĭesign is an exercise in understanding the rules of thumb and then building or expanding upon them to create something great. Regardless of how you feel, here’s how it generally can lay out. Fans of this point to the compact design and the general aesthetic, and detractors think you’ll be freezing cold in a big open shower and can’t imagine how you can clean around a free-standing tub. People divide into factions of either 'pro-shub' or 'anti-shub' - wait, you probably have no idea what a “shub” is, do you? Here at Board & Vellum, we’ve coined the portmanteau, shub, to cover the situation when a shower contains a tub. If you want to add some extra space to this, you can easily pull the tub into a wider space and have it be free-standing. This gives you options for door layouts and for window locations, as well.

Here is an efficient way to get all of those program elements into an 8’ x 12’ space (less than 100 square feet). In an 8'x12' space, this master bathroom floor plan is efficient and is flexible enough to accommodate more than one option for door and window location.

This allows for two people to use this bathroom at once - making it great for a shared kid’s bathroom - with some built-in privacy. You can easily get two nice sinks in a more public area, and then have a pocket door into a toilet and bath/shower room. With this plan, you commit to the idea of one plumbing wall, but then extend the bathroom (and hopefully widen it) a bit. I won’t hate on you for going down this road, I promise. I’ll be honest, I don’t love it, but I understand the value, and it can sometimes be a good solution. The other tweak to this one is the “banjo” top which has a smaller countertop extension above the toilet. And - wow - I just typed the phrase “bathroom powerhouse” - I’m checking off life milestones left and right today. Still, it is a classic and always a bathroom powerhouse. However, that efficiency comes with the downside that the room isn’t all that special, and it has limited counter space. There’s an efficiency in plumbing cost, as all the plumbing is on one wall. This is an efficient bathroom, and, it just plain works. These bathroom floor plans are simple, efficient, and basically get the job done with no extra fanfare. Lesson 1: Start with the Basics – Standard, and “The Banjo” Alternate It is around 40 square feet (5’ x 8’) and here are the typical rules of thumb for how it works. This is the good old “three-in-a-row” bathroom we’ve all seen. (If you'd like to learn more about either of these, let us know, we’d be happy to elaborate in a new post!) Rules of Thumb for Bathroom Design Lesson 1: Start with the Basics Also, bathrooms in multifamily buildings (like apartments) are a whole different ballgame due to accessibility rules. Bathrooms with just a toilet and a sink, known as powder rooms, are a different animal altogether, and not covered in this post. We’ll look at bathrooms with a shower (¾ bath), or bathrooms with a tub (full bath), or even combinations of both. Side Note: This post covers the basics for single-family residential bathroom design. So, in the selfless interest of trying to make the bathrooms of America a little better, read on for some standard rules of bathroom design. When planning a bathroom (either when building new or remodeling) there are plenty of rules of thumb to follow for bathroom layout. Weird-shaped rooms angled tubs, toilets, showers and generally, spaces that are just plain awkward - these all seem to be hallmarks of poorly-designed bathrooms. I’ve been in enough homes over the years to observe that designing and laying out a bathroom is apparently a tough nut to crack for a lot of American production builders.

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