Wet Room Derby

A wet room in Derby is a fully waterproofed, level-access shower room with no tray, cubicle or step to catch a foot, a wheelchair wheel or a pushchair on the way in. The whole floor is tanked and tiled, water falls away to a discreet drain built into the floor, and the room reads as more space than the same square footage would with a shower cubicle sitting in the corner of it. If you're weighing up a wet room against a standard shower enclosure, or wondering whether your floor build-up will even allow one, that's the kind of question worth working through with someone who fits them regularly rather than guessing from a brochure photo. Derby Bathroom Fitter fits wet rooms as part of full bathroom renovation projects and as standalone conversions of an existing bathroom, en-suite or spare room, across Derby and the surrounding Derbyshire towns and villages.

1. Home visit and floor diagnosis -- A project manager visits to talk through how the room will be used, then works out what's actually under the existing floor - solid concrete or suspended timber, checked from below via a cellar or loft hatch where there's access. That single answer decides which fall-forming method applies and what the job will cost, so it happens before any figure is put on paper.
2. Fixed price and a drawing of the drain, fall and tiling -- You get an itemised fixed price plus a CAD or 3D drawing showing where the drain sits, which way the floor falls toward it, and how the tiling lays out, so the room is agreed on paper before anything is stripped out.
3. Strip-out and forming the fall -- The existing suite, tiles and flooring come out to the subfloor, and the fall is built using whichever method the floor diagnosis called for - screeded directly on solid concrete, or built into a pre-formed former or tray on suspended timber. The drain goes in and gets pressure tested at this stage, before any covering goes over it.
4. Tanking and a flood test before a single tile is laid -- The waterproof membrane goes up the walls and across the whole floor, and the room is then held under water for a set period to check the tanking and the drain actually hold before tiling starts - covering a tanking fault with tile is how a wet room ends up leaking two years later, so this check happens while it can still be put right.
5. Tiling and the rest of the in-house trades -- Floor-to-ceiling tiling goes down once the membrane has properly cured, followed by electrics, plastering and the shower screen from the same in-house crew who tanked the floor, not a separate subcontractor coming in cold.
6. Commissioning and handover -- The extractor fan is commissioned, silicone joints are finished, all waste is cleared by our own licensed waste carrier, and you're handed the paperwork for the 5-year labour and installation guarantee and 2-year product guarantee.

UK-wide, a proper wet room installation typically runs from around £6,000 to £14,000, and a basic conversion of a small existing shower room can come in from about £2,500 where the floor is already solid and the drainage run is short. A premium or fully accessible wet room - wider door, level threshold into the hallway, mobility fittings, larger format tile - tends to sit from around £8,000 upwards. Where a job lands in that range depends on things that only become obvious once someone has actually looked at the room: whether the floor is solid concrete or suspended timber (timber floors need a tanked former or a drop-in tray to build in the fall, which adds cost and time), whether the waste run needs extending or altering to reach a new drain position, the tile chosen (large format porcelain lays faster than mosaic, which needs more grout lines and more labour), and whether you want underfloor heating, a bespoke glass screen, or mobility fittings. As with the rest of our bathroom work, we quote as a fixed, itemised price after a free home consultation and design visit rather than a figure guessed over the phone - a wet room touches structure, drainage and electrics all at once, and no two Derby floors behave the same way once the old flooring comes up.

Once tile goes down over a wet room floor, there's no way to see whether the tanking underneath actually held - which is why we flood-test every wet room before a single tile is laid, holding water on the tanked floor and drain for a set period to check nothing weeps through a corner, a pipe penetration or a screed joint while it can still be stripped back and put right. That test exists because a wet room fails differently to an ordinary bathroom: a slow leak sits under the floor rather than dripping visibly, and by the time it shows up as a damp patch on the ceiling below, it may have been running for months. The 5-year guarantee on labour and installation covers that tanking and drainage work specifically, not just the tiling sitting on top of it, and it's backed by keeping the same crew on the job from the floor diagnosis through to the final silicone line - the people forming the fall and running the membrane are the same people wiring the extractor and laying the tile, rather than a chain of separate contractors who never see how their piece of the job connects to the next one. If a wet room ever does develop a problem, it's a return visit from the people who built it, working from their own drawings, not a fresh trade starting cold.

Most of our wet room work is in Derby itself, from apartments around the Cathedral Quarter, where floor space is often tight and a level-access shower makes a small bathroom feel usable, to family homes further out. In Allestree, Darley Abbey and Markeaton, close to Markeaton Park and Darley Park, we see a lot of family bathrooms being converted for growing or ageing households rather than for new-build spec. Along the Spondon, Alvaston and Chellaston side of the city, in the commuter belt around Pride Park, houses from the 1930s through to the 1990s more often have solid concrete ground floors, which usually makes tanking and forming the fall more straightforward than a suspended timber floor. Heading up the Derwent Valley Mills corridor toward Belper, Duffield and Milford, older stone and brick properties tend to have suspended timber floors and sometimes sit within conservation-sensitive areas, so the floor build-up gets checked carefully before any joist is touched. Further out toward Matlock, Bakewell and Ashbourne on the edge of the Peak District, wet rooms tend to run to a higher spec, with natural stone-look porcelain and larger format tiling. We also cover Nottingham, Sheffield, Nottinghamshire, Long Eaton, Ilkeston, Ripley, Heanor, Swadlincote, Mickleover, Littleover, Breadsall, Quarndon, Borrowash, Alfreton, Willington, Repton and Buxton - if you're outside Derby itself, mention your postcode when you get in touch and we'll confirm it's within reach.

The longer an old, worn shower tray or a slippery step-in bath stays in place, the more likely someone in the house ends up regretting it - usually after a slip, not before one. A free home consultation costs nothing and doesn't commit you to anything; it's the fastest way to find out whether your floor is a straightforward conversion or needs a bit more thought, and to get an actual fixed price instead of a guess. Get in touch and we'll come out, measure up, and talk you through what a wet room would look like in your own home.

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