A wet room and a shower enclosure do the same thing for the person standing under the water. Underneath, they are not remotely the same job. One is a fitting installed into a room. The other is a room built to be waterproof. Getting the distinction clear before you commit saves a great deal of money and a certain amount of grief with the flat below.
Definitions first, because the words get used loosely. A shower enclosure means a tray — acrylic, stone resin, steel — with an enclosure or screen on it, sitting on a floor that is otherwise a normal floor. The tray contains the water. A wet room means the floor itself is the tray: the whole floor is graded to a drain, the floor and the lower walls are waterproofed as a system, and the shower is simply an area of that floor rather than an object on it. Everything else follows from that difference.
The question that decides it: how much floor depth do you have?
A wet room floor has to fall to a drain. That fall has to be formed in something, and the waste it falls into has to run somewhere with fall of its own. All of that lives inside the depth between the top of your structural floor and the finished level you can live with.
In a timber-floored period conversion — which describes a great deal of Central London — the joists are often shallow and already carrying pipework someone else added. Notching or drilling joists is a structural question with limits, not a decision the plumber makes on the day. In a mansion block or a post-war block with a concrete slab, you generally are not cutting the slab at all, so any fall and any waste run has to be built up on top of it, which raises the floor. Raise the floor and you have consequences: the door bottom, the threshold, the skirting, the ceiling height, and possibly the lease.
This is why the honest answer to "can I have a wet room?" is "let us look at your floor". Not because we are being coy — because the answer genuinely lives under the boards. There are low-profile former and drain systems designed exactly for shallow build-ups, and linear drains at the wall can sometimes buy you the fall you need across a shorter run, but there is a floor depth below which a proper wet floor stops being sensible and a low-profile tray becomes the better engineering. A contractor who says yes to a wet room without lifting anything is guessing. See plumbing for the drainage side.
The neighbour below
In a house, a slow leak in a shower floor is your problem and you will probably find it eventually. In a Central London flat, it is somebody else's ceiling, and you will find out about it from them. This changes the risk calculation in a way people underestimate.
A shower tray is a manufactured, tested, single-piece object. Its weak points are known and few: the seal at the tray edge, the waste connection, and the junction with the screen. A wet floor has no single-piece anything. It is a system — tanking membrane, corner and junction detailing, the collar around the drain, the upstand behind the wall tiles — and its integrity is entirely a function of how carefully it was detailed and installed. Done well, it is excellent and it lasts. Done casually, it is a slow leak into a stranger's ceiling with a tiled floor over the top of it.
That is not an argument against wet rooms. It is an argument that in a flat, waterproofing is not the stage to economise on, and that the person doing it should be able to name the system they are using and show you how they detailed the corners. Our tanking and waterproofing guide covers what a proper system looks like.
What the lease is likely to say
Most leases require freeholder or managing agent consent for alterations, typically via a formal licence to alter, and the triggers are usually the things a wet room needs: altering waste, affecting structure, and changing floor finishes or floor build-up. A tray-and-enclosure swap in the same position is often closer to like-for-like; forming a wet floor rarely is. Many freeholds in this part of London sit with large estates and their requirements and timescales vary considerably, so read your lease and ask your managing agent before you design around an assumption. Our freeholder consent guide and licence to alter guide set out the usual shape of it, and in a protected building listed building consent may bite on internal works affecting special character.
Where a wet room genuinely wins
- Very small rooms. In a tight bathroom, a wet floor with a single fixed screen removes the tray upstand, the enclosure frame and the door swing. The room gets bigger without moving a wall. This is often the strongest case for one.
- Awkward shapes. Sloping ceilings, chimney breasts, returns and odd corners in period conversions defeat standard trays. A formed floor fits whatever shape you actually have.
- Accessibility. Level access with no step is a real, practical benefit — for now or for later.
- Cleaning. No tray lip, no frame, no seal to scrub. Fewer places for water to sit.
- Appearance. A continuous floor reads as one calm surface. A tray always reads as an object placed in a room.
Where an enclosure is the better call
- Shallow floors you cannot raise. If the build-up is not there, a low-profile tray is the engineering answer, not a compromise.
- Rentals with fast turnarounds. Simpler, quicker, and a tray can be replaced without rebuilding the floor. Landlords with a void to fill should think hard about this — see refurbishing between tenants.
- You want the rest of the room dry. An enclosure contains spray. A wet room with an inadequate screen wets the floor you have to walk on and the towel you were going to use. This is the most common real-world complaint, and it is a design failure rather than an inherent one.
- Keeping the bath. If space forces a choice, a bath with a good over-bath screen keeps a wider audience happy in a family flat.
- Risk appetite. If the thought of the ceiling below keeps you awake, a tray is the lower-variance option.
The middle ground people forget
You do not have to choose the extremes. A low-profile or flush-fitted tray set into the floor build-up gives you almost the visual of a wet room with the reliability of a manufactured tray — the tray becomes part of the floor rather than an object on it, and the tile runs to its edge. It is a genuinely good compromise in a flat, and it is under-specified because it is less exciting to talk about.
Equally, a wet floor with a generous fixed panel and no door gets most of the wet room benefit while keeping the spray in one part of the room. The screen is not an afterthought; it is what makes a wet room liveable.
What both need regardless
Whichever you choose, the same fundamentals decide whether you are happy in five years. Extraction that works, because a shower puts a lot of moisture into a room and Part F applies whether or not you have a window — see ventilation and condensation. Electrics designed for a bathroom, installed to BS 7671 and certified under Part P — see electrical. Hot water and sanitation to Part G. A substrate that is flat and sound before anything is bonded to it, which in period stock is real preparation work — see tiling. And a thermostatic valve, because scalding is not a design feature.
Grout and silicone are consumables in both cases. Anyone selling you a shower that never needs a silicone joint replaced is selling you something else.
Questions to ask before deciding
- What is my structural floor, and how much build-up do I have to play with?
- Can the waste be routed with proper fall without cutting anything I should not cut?
- What does my lease say about floor finishes and altering waste?
- What tanking system is proposed, and how are the corners and the drain collar detailed?
- Where will the screen go, and will the rest of the floor stay dry?
- Who is below me, and how much do I care?
How we handle it
We look at the floor before we give you an opinion, because the floor is the answer. Then you get a fixed quote against a defined scope before any work begins — bathroom refurbishment starts from £2,800, tiling from £55/m², and wider refurbishment is per quotation. If the survey shows a wet room is a bad idea in your flat, we will say so rather than sell you one; a well-detailed tray you never think about again is a better outcome than a wet floor that worries you.
One point of contact, our own sequencing, protection down from the first day, and the flat left clean. Send us photographs of the bathroom and tell us what is under the floor if you know, and what is below you if you do not.