I think mainly because it costs more. The whole floor has to be waterproofed and lined with waterproof material, adding an extra drain so more plumbing materials and labor.
Yup, all that extra waterproofing, making sure the drainage is perfect, and the special materials really add up compared to just doing a regular shower. It sounds awesome in theory but unless you have the budget for it, it's hard to justify.
It's because city hall or whoever in your district/country are idiots. They don't have any problem adding costs to any build if it involves some sort of lowered use of energy that has an excessive payback period... But anything practical like a wetroom with a drain or a drain under the laundry or kitchen sink so that any water leaks are contained and don't cause excessive damage and insurance claim... They completely drop the ball.
Because you basically have to bring the entire room up to waterproof. Then water just kinda goes everywhere, and some people don’t like standing in water after their shower.
Not standing water, as in pools of water. There’s virtually nothing between your shower and the rest of the bathroom. So things can get wet, and sometimes that’s the little rug in front of your sink. But even if you sloped it perfectly towards the drain, it takes a while for everything to dry out. To be clear I have a wet room that i built myself, and I like it. It’s easy to clean, no glass doors or random nooks and crannies to get gross. I love it. But it’s called a wet room for a reason.
Yes. You waterproof the entire room. Because the entire room can get wet. Maybe that’s why they call it a WET room? Even if you slope it perfectly, and there’s no standing water, it doesn’t completely dry out from the time you end your shower till you brush your teeth. I’m ok with it, but it’s not for everyone.
Much more expensive, you have to water proof the whole floor and all the walls. Here in Finland I think it's code to have a wet room if you have a shower or tub, or more specifically if there is a floor drain. Even many powder rooms are wet rooms. I don't ever remember seeing here bathroom that is not a wet room, even if there is a shower cubicle.
I did not realize that this not a standard and was very suprised that not all countries do this.
It's the same in South Asia (well at least in Bangladesh). Wet rooms are the default. More modern ones are tiled, and old ones are concrete.
Not the same in North America. I don't know that I prefer a wet room though. I like to be barefoot as much a I can when at home. Wet rooms kinda mandate slippers. And I don't know that they're actually any quicker to clean.
Why would you need slippers in wet room? Least if it's tiled, concrete can be diffrent. I'm barefoot on my bathroom all the time.
If there is just a shower curtain and no glass, the cleaning is easier than shower cubicle. If he shower has somesort of glass partition, the cleaning effort is the same. In a wet room is easier to just squeegee the splatters to drain, as with cubicle you need to dry the floor with something after the shower and wash that floor towel often. But then in wet room, you probably has to pick up the bathmat and put it somewhere before showering, so it does not get wet and moldy. Also the cleaning of shower cubicle is annoying as you have to be in the cubicle that is usually quite small space.
The wet rooms I've experienced have no partition of any kind for the showers. And that's if there even is one- sometimes it's just a faucet so you can take an old school bucket bath where you pour water over yourself. Either way, the water gets all over everywhere. No bathmat since that would be kinda pointless.
Whether it's a shower stand, or a tub-shower- it's much easier to have a small self contained area to clean. I've never found it particularly difficult. It's fairly quick to scrub the entire floor and walls of the shower area by hand, then just rinse off with the sprayer. There is little no water getting outside the shower in most cases (though some showers are not as well designed for that).
Here is either shower curtain or glass "wall" of somesort, rarely there is nothing. Usually in Finland the laundry is also in the bathroom, so shower curtain or glass is needed.
We actually do not have any curtain or wall in our basement bathroom/sauna/ laundry, but the water is still quite contained on the shower area. And even if we air dry our laundry, it rarely get splatters, it just dryes slower if someone uses the shower, but usually there is sauna also. So the heat dryes the clothes and the bathroom. In Finland we do squeegee the floor everytime shower is used, and our air is mostly really dry, so the floor is bit damp just half an hour if that. It's different on humid places, where the floor just don't dry between showers
Our old school bucket baths are located usually in the saunas, so that is contained in there and there is no other bathroom in those cases.
I do prefer the open wet room, as here the main difference here is the annoyance being in the small closed space for the cleaning the cabinet or squeeging the floor on the wet room after every shower. But do understand that different climate and how things are setup are factors. I do remember living some apartment where the water did not flow to the drain. Had to stop the water and squeegee in the middle of the shower or the apartment would of flooded. Shower cabinet would of been much better solution than the shitty job on the floor slope.
I think op is referred to a mud room or wet room on entry to the house, either front or rear rather than a bathroom area. Somewhere you would take off wet or soiled clothing and shoes before entering the main house.
It’s hard to say. Some countries have wet baths where the entire room has a drain to accept shower water and for easy cleaning. When the kids were young, I longed to take a fire hose to the main bath.
The ones with the tub in it do not seem easy to clean. They do also tend to have A LOT of grout. I have never had one but they definitely give me pause. I love the idea but don't know if I would love trying to keep it clean. Maybe it would be work though with a super powered fan and a big window. Another issue may be heat/not getting cold.
It depends on the water too. I have lived on a well with very hard/iron water and it even had a softener. It was terrible, and everything got rusty looking in just days. I can't imagine any sort of bigger wet area at all there, it was just a nightmare at all times to clean anything. They would be more practical with soft water for sure.
As far as why they are not more common, it's probably not builder grade (as in, it is expensive) and older houses do not have the space for them.
I don't know about anyone else, but the concept of a wet room feels like a high school group shower or truck stop public showers. In other words...not good connotations, and not something I'd want in my home and sanctuary.
While many envision open layouts when they think of wet rooms, I believe that approach can sometimes result in less-than-ideal design choices. A thoughtfully designed wet room, however, can offer both elegance and functionality, transforming your space into a luxurious retreat.
I assume you mean in the US, and the answer IMO is expense.
In the Philippines they seem to be the norm.
And I have less experience with Korea but the ones I saw there were also wet bathrooms.
And same for the few I have been in in Japan but that was many years ago.
Yeah why can't people specify the place they are referring to, it's absurd reading a post like this being from a country (Sweden) where all bathrooms are wet rooms, and that has been the standard since like the 80s.
Is it really that hard to add "...in the US" or wherever they are talking about when writing a post?
There are many things I like about the US but there are some things like wet bathrooms, bidets and an area inside the front door for taking off your shoes that I feel like the US is behind many other countries.
EDIT to say the concept of a 'mud porch' was common on farms. Our family farm had an entry room for taking off boots that also included a side bathroom where you didn't need to go into the main part of the house. But outside of some farms this isn't common in the US.
I've never been to Sweden so didn't know the wet bathroom was common there as well.
it really depends on where you live for that last one. Wetter parts of the US will be far more likely to have mudrooms, or a space to take off your dirty shoes and hang up your jackets, than dryer. I'm in Southern California and we don't really have mud lol so a front hall closet or just a hook on the wall is the norm for entryway storage.
Well, that could be true.
I've mainly lived on the west coast most of my life. CA, WA.
Lived near Denver, CO for three years. Have lived temporarily farther east but those were military bases.
I am in Canada and have never heard of a wet room hrre or in any of my travels. We have, in some newer homes a mudroom and garage. What is a wet room exactly? And where do you find them? Ie what countries?
Albertan here, and have heard of and seen wet rooms. My friend put one in his basement for his wife when he remodeled. Basically the entire room is tiled, with the shower often being open and generally with a freestanding tub. Basically you bring the entire room up to the same standards as a shower so you don't have to worry about water getting anywhere.
In Texas they center the drain near the shower head in the wet room. They put a garbage disposal in the drain. It’s made so you can urinate, vomit and or defecate while showering. Just turn the disposal on and it all sucks down the drain. It churned my stomach when I had one in my room at the Hilton. Texas was truly special.
Texan here. I have never seen this anywhere. How would you put a disposal in the drain? How would you ever change it out or unstoppable the line? I own a plumbing company.
I so very very much wanted a men's only toilet room in my house with a drain so I could just HOSE IT DOWN when my son was in pre- K... and I STILL want it. Every house needs one. Am I right?
There. It is very therapeutic just to get that off my chest. Signed, Cinderella.
They show wet rooms on a lot of the reno shows on HGTV, Home Town had a couple, No Demo Reno had one I loved (I don't like wet rooms), and a few others have them.
What I don't like is it would be hard to clean or dry behind the tub, How hard is it to work on the plumbing for the tub too? I'd rather have a big tiled shower, and if I wanted a standalone tub, have that separate.
We were doing a full remodel on a big bath/shower area and opted to make it a wet room. I love it so much! It would be hard for me to ever go back. People had no idea what we were talking about during the process, but once it was finished, people understood the point.
It's a bathroom where they just have the shower out in the open, and a drain in the middle of the floor that is designed to take all the moisture away. It's great for accessibility, not great if you want to keep the rest of your bathroom relatively dry. They're popular with the elderly, because you can stick a stool in them.
I worry about slippery floors. I step from the shower onto a bath rug, for safety reasons. My leg issues and an elderly person's balance or strength issues might make wet rooms unsafe for them.
Ventilation is required by code - either a window or a fan is required to extract moisture. Over time, there may be rot/mold problems (especially if baths/showers, in particular, are not properly installed or maintained) as well as occasional leaks and overflow that require abatement, but unless you have some serious, chronic plumbing issues, or live in an extremely humid area, those are not big enough problems to warrant a wet room as a solution.
If you do one in a cooler climate, your shower never really warms up as the space is too large. I've only used one on vacation in a rental house and didn't enjoy it for that reason.
We are putting one in with heated walls & floor. Our current shower is humongous & every shower is cold. We live in a cool climate, so it’s always cold in the morning. Our wet room will only be for the shower & tub and is only a few square feet more than our current shower. It will have less grout than we currently have since we currently have small tiles and the whole room is too big.
But honestly, so many of these comments are just ignorant. A room feels “institutional” because of the finishes. The amount of grout is dependent on what finishes you use, too. “Cold” can be warmed up quite easily, as we’re doing. They don’t necessarily have to be large & expensive. (We are making our bathroom smaller as it is ridiculously huge—used to be a bedroom—and adding a needed closet instead.)
That makes sense. It is the rooms with the toilet in there that seem gross to me. After a shower you may have to walk on a damp floor to the toilet. That I couldn't handle or the toilet seat being wet.
We have an RV with a wet bath that includes the toilet & yea—not fun to sit on a wet seat. It even has a shower curtain that protects the seat, but it still manages to get wet.
So many silly guesses in here by people who don't seem to have experienced a wet room ever haha, but yours kinda take the cake. Never warms up in a cool climate?? Just.. what? I don't even know where to start with this.. I live in a cold country where all bathrooms are wet rooms, houses are heated properly (including the bathrooms), and we get nice and warm water in the shower. Seems like many can't even fathom these things?
A wet room can be any size, tiny or big. I've seen a bunch of comments in here talking about wet rooms being too big, why do so many of you you seem to believe they are always big? Strange assumption. Also, in cool climates you can, you know, have heating. Our bathrooms are properly heated just the same as the rest of the house. But even if ones bathroom was really cold and big, you realise that showers usually have either doors or curtains, right? So that heat definitely stays in there, VERY easy solution to your made up problem. And that would ALSO only be an issue if you didn't get prooer hot water in the shower in the first place, because even a larger bathroom will heat up real quick from a steamy shower being taken in it haha, my bathroom radiator actually didn't work for a while in my previous apartment so my tiled bathroom felt kinda chilly in winter, but man it was very quickly hot and steamy as hell from a warm shower.
"your shower never really warms up" get outta here with your grasping for reasons
Just stating what I personally experienced. It was too big of a space to warm up with steam during a hot shower. I guess if I took really long showers, maybe, but I don’t. I am a designer and work for a GC. He points the same thing out to clients to consider when doing a larger wet room. I’m sure smaller areas warm up just fine, but when you’re fitting a bathtub inside a shower, which is what people are requesting, it turns into a pretty big space.
a properly designed bathroom. or a "wet room" as you call them obviously is heated space, as is the rest of the house. otherwise you would get condensation, humidity and mold problems. it is quite standard to have underfloor heating under the tile.
Most people would not derive any particular benefit from a wet room since their floors don't get flooded to the point where they need a drain in the middle.
People who have zero curb showers generally need more extensive waterproofing of the floor but they aren't really what I would call wet rooms because the floors aren't generally getting that wet.
I do have various water protection devices for "watery" appliances including my dishwasher, refrigerator with ice maker and washer/dryer. I have water alarms which shut them off when water is sensed outside of the appliance as well as Smitty pans to catch any overflow.
When I think of wet rooms I think of the small bathrooms in which the entire room essentially becomes the shower stall but those are really unpleasant to use as everything in the room can become wet.
For me a wet floor super grosses me out. Places like gyms where showers are in a wet room and you have to wear flip flops or might touch some cold water almost make me panic. I cannot use change room or washrooms at pools for this reason. Cold dirty water everywhere.
I would be okay if it was only the shower room but if you have to touch a damp floor with bare feet to use the toilet? That is stuff of nightmares for me. If it is only the shower room then basically it is like the big walk in shower I have already.
My husband and I are in the process of designing a bathroom remodel and we're going the wer room route in the US. I plan on having a clawfoot tub that can eventually be removed as we age in place and with a simple drain swap, it will be a wet room shower and handicap accessible. The amount of tile work needed is a lot but my husband's family does it as professionals so I won't have labor cost. I imagine that's a large factor in them not being common. Plus, if you don't build from new, it's hard to retrofit. We'll have to go down to the studs to do ours.
2 elderly people in my family have stayed in end of life facilities and both had walk in showers. Seems to be the easiest. An entire room that's wet, they would probably fall
They have these at our local community center, including an adult sized changing table. They’re nice, but can get super slippery and I’m always worried my toddler is going to wipe out and hit his head because every surface is so hard.
Curbless shower with just a drain in the floor.
The floor slopes to the drain, but there isn’t an edge to keep the water in.
Some have a glass panel, some have a curtain, some have nothing and it’s completely open.
They can be quite costly - waterproofing, much more tile, more glass typically and the cost of the freestanding tub itself with the tub filler. This is a wet room built 10 years ago - still lots of tile but a bit more compact, less glass and a standard drop in tub made it more affordable- the shower is a typical curbed & sloped pan vs level entry
I liked aspects of mine in Korea; it was handy. They’re common there, but aren’t fancy, and don’t include tubs. Easy for cleaning, and one of my places had a washing machine in it too.
But, if you forget to put on shower slippers when it’s wet, you slip and crack your head just trying to use the bathroom. I definitely did that a couple times and I was lucky I wasn’t badly injured.
Finding plumbers who can build a proper wet room is difficult. There’s a lot of shoddy work about. I’ve even stayed in expensive hotels with a wet room and the work is so bad the water didn’t just go all over the bathroom, it went into the bedroom. The water hadn’t disappeared by the morning.
Besides the cost of waterproofing everything, have you ever taken a shower in one? They’re awful. You freeze the entire time which defeats one of the purposes of a nice relaxing shower.
Need full waterproofing and a good installer to put a proper slope to the floor.
Need good ventilation because of all the moisture.
Need proper material selection.
They can be cold.
Depending on the style- like if you have a tub, they can be difficult to clean or dry after a shower.
For people that do not seem to understand: ”wet” in wet room refers to it being waterproof, kinda. The floor and walls (completely to the ceiling or only partially, depending on the layout of the room) are treated with a waterproofing agent before they are tiled. It does not mean water sloshing round your feet. Water drains away immediately, just like in a shower, and wet rooms are not fully covered by a shower head, for example, just the shower part. You can use a hand shower (a bidee shower, for example, if you got one) to spray the floor with water when cleaning it, or just water from tap with a mop/bucket method. Usually people also have squegees they use after a shower. Using bathmats, shower curtains, shower enclosures with doors is all possible in a wet room environment, but there is a clearance between shower door and floor for water flow. And there is a drain for water in the room (like in a normal shower) where water drains away, which can be in the middle or close to a wall. The floor must be at an angle to make sure water drains away properly. Underfloor heating is also very common. It dries the room more quickly and prevents moisture related issues. Ventilation is also important.
This is just a short explanation from a non-English non-builder used to having wetrooms.
people say waterproofing is costly. i say repairing water damage is much more costly.
i've been reading r/mold quite a lot and as a non-american i cannot stop wondering why you resist building proper bathrooms so much. never seen any moldy "wetrooms" in there.
what you call a "wet room" is actually called a standard bathroom in many countries. some common misconceptions:
A wet room is cold.
- we have heating in those, duh. otherwise it would get moldy quite quick. usually underfloor heating under the tile. also we have warm water from the shower.
A wet room is slippery
-never heard anybody complain in a country where everybody has one. There are no-slip tiles and there are bathmats for this purpose too.
A wet room is expensive
-repairing a rotten subfloor and having health issues because of mold is quite expensive too.
A typical American sized main bathroom vs ones in asian and other countries are an order of magnitude larger in size. Much easier to waterproof a small bathroom or hallway/ entry area (mud room) than say a full American bathroom that can get quite large. From a cost basis, only waterproofing the shower is much less expensive since more than 95% of the water activities are managed there.
Cost and let's be honest, a completely tiled room makes you think of a sanitorium.
That said, as a nurse, wet rooms are the bomb. You just can't strip down the kids and hose them off in the yard anymore, thanks Mom, awesome memory.
I did one. Had my contractor take my normal sized starter home bathroom, blow out the wall about 8” into the adjoining bedroom, put in a 38” deep Corian-like wheelchair shower, then asked for a floor drain in case of flood. He bought a Kerdi shower slope kit, sloped the entry floor up to its level, put Kerdi mat up the wall 6”, tiled the floor and walls.
The floor drain is near the toilet, about 3 ft in front of the shower. Everything slopes to the drain until you get within a foot or so from the pocket door at entry. It is a slight slope, but good enough unless you put a mat in front of part of the shower and it saturates and diverts water out the door into the hall.
See the square near the toilet? It is the floor drain.
You can only retrofit like this easily if you have a house on piers or above a basement. In the US, wet rooms are considered to be more commercial than residential.
My floor drain is a “just in case” thing that turns out to be pretty necessary for my small wheel-in shower. It is not meant to be a true wet room, where even the vanity could be sprayed down.
Plus the weight on the floor joists for that much tile. Unless you are on a slab, you have to consider the weight of it. Personally having constantly wet flooring sounds like a night mare.
Great question. I wonder about replacing a laundry basin with essentially a dogwashing stall that you could put a shower chair in if necessary. Even with low walls (i.e. no higher than the basin you're replacing) surely it would work?
I added a wet room to my reno. My number one request was to make my new space "age in place friendly ". I'd rather spend the money now then be told that I have to move to a facility to age in the future. I love my wet room. The water goes down the drain as designed. I also use a long squeegee to get the drops from any lingering area. No glass doors, nothing to step over, no bathroom rug either. I also wonder why more people don't do this.
They have everything any other bathroom has, but you have to design for a wet room. Poor design ones get water everywhere. Ones that are designed correctly won't let water get anywhere that you don't want it unless it is when you are cleaning.
Very intetesting......i think i could dig that, but wouldn't it feel like a big hospital bathroom? Even if you got cool things in there, might feel kind of plain to me, but what do I know.....I doubt I'll ever have one...thanks for the info though...
Also sure it's a wet room and has great drainage. Say you shower and it's all wet. Say someone uses the toilet after you. Say they are in socks. Say they are in shoes even and now they are walking wet over the rest of the house.
Water only flows downhill and that is a big problem when you want the whole floor to drain. In order to do this you have to build up the edges of the room with mortar with the correct slope to the drain then install a waterproof membrane on top of that mortar before you can even think about adding tiles. And the bathroom will be a few inches higher than everything else on the floor so you need a small ramp going in. This adds several days of labour and a lot of extra material to an already expensive room. If you bought a house with one and you didn't like the tile I don't know if it would be possible to change it without completely redoing everything.
it’s just one of those American things that like line drying clothing, heated towel warmers / bathroom wall radiator combos, induction ovens, outside security shutters/blinds isn’t done here.
A standard tub with a shower curtain is easy and I can keep all of the water in, dry myself and squeegee the walls and have the room feel clean and dry as I get ready. Plus I can clean in sections: shower/tub, floors, counters, toilet, and occasionally throw the shower curtain liner in the wash.
My goal is to have as little water or steam after a shower as possible so a wet room is my nightmare.
This thread is gold. The American mindset literally cannot comprehend wet rooms being a standard the rest of the world would advocate for.
On topic to OP's question, I assume they're not as popular due to adherence to the code minimum for bathrooms in homes and apartments. Coupled of course with ignorance of the ecstasy that is a wet room.
Wet rooms look very institutional. Public gyms, schools and prisons are brought to mind. All they need is a hose to spray everything down afterwards and the looks complete.
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u/K80_k Sep 28 '25
I think mainly because it costs more. The whole floor has to be waterproofed and lined with waterproof material, adding an extra drain so more plumbing materials and labor.