Cost to Convert a Bathroom into a Shower Room

Converting an existing bathroom to a shower room, removing the bath and installing a larger shower enclosure in its place, typically costs £4,500 to £7,500 for a mid-range specification including new tiling, a new shower enclosure and making good the surrounding areas. This is often similar to or slightly less than a full bathroom refit, because you're generally keeping the WC and basin in place.

Costs rise to £8,000-£12,000 if the conversion also involves tanking a full wet room style floor rather than a standard tray, or if the room needs re-tiling from floor to ceiling on every wall to match the new layout.

Removing an old bath sounds trivial but can be more involved than expected, especially with cast iron baths in older properties, which are heavy and sometimes need to be broken up in situ to get them out. Acrylic and steel baths are usually straightforward to remove whole. Either way, factor in £100-£250 for removal and disposal as part of the overall quote.

Once the bath is out, the wall and floor areas behind and beneath it are often untouched for years and can reveal damp, old adhesive, or uneven substrate that needs addressing before new tiling goes down, which is the most common source of unexpected cost in this type of job.

A bath and a shower drain differently. Bath waste pipes are sized for a large volume released quickly, while shower waste needs to cope with continuous flow at a lower rate but from a larger open floor area if a tray isn't used. In most conversions the existing waste connection can be reused with a new trap fitted for the shower, keeping costs down.

If you're converting to a level-access wet room style shower rather than a tray, the drainage work becomes more significant, since a point or linear drain and floor falls need to be created, similar to a full wet room conversion. This is the main reason costs can jump from the lower to the upper end of the typical range.

Wherever the bath used to sit needs to be properly waterproofed before the new shower goes in, since the area will now see significantly more water exposure than it did before. This means tanking the floor and walls around the new shower position, typically adding £400-£900 depending on the size of the area involved.

This is not an area to shortcut. A shower enclosure that isn't properly tanked behind and beneath it is one of the most common causes of hidden water damage in older properties, showing up months or years later as damp in the room below or adjoining walls.

It's worth thinking about resale before removing the only bath in the house. Family homes with more than one bathroom can generally lose the bath from one room without affecting saleability, since buyers with families usually want at least one bath somewhere in the property. Removing the only bath in a two or three bedroom house aimed at families can be a harder sell.

If resale is a consideration, some homeowners choose to convert an en suite or second bathroom to a shower room while keeping a bath in the main family bathroom, giving the best of both worlds without a major compromise either way.

Before converting, check what's behind the bath panel and tiles, ideally during the free design and quote home visit, so any substrate issues are priced in rather than discovered mid-job. Confirm whether the new drainage will reuse the existing waste run or need extending, and decide early whether you want a shower tray or a level-access wet room style floor, since that decision changes the scope of the floor and drainage work significantly.