Wet rooms normally consist of standalone tubs and shower space separated from the rest of the bathtub with sheets of glass. While curbless showers, look like the traditional but they don't have any entrance and they usually consist of a clear glass wall and door.

Over the years, homeowners have wanted to make their bathrooms look pleasing and appear larger than they seem to be. This is why they model their bathrooms with a curbless shower or wet room, this way it opens up the room, which in turn makes it appear larger and feel airy. Also, when there aren't any certain prerequisites to bother about, it makes the design accessible to everyone. This happens to be a necessity for many homeowners and can also be sold.

Now once a design is made by the homeowner to remodel the bathtub with curbless shower or wet room, the flooring would be removed and replaced. It's therefore important to select the ideal flooring type that will suit your new curbless shower or wet room.

It’s also going to be the right time to add inner flor heater to the setup. The electric floor-heating system can be placed right under the new flooring you would be installing, and depending on the system used, it can be complemented with a waterproof mechanism.

The benefit of adding a waterproof membrane underneath the tile is that it prevents the tile above from rupturing or cracking.

So we decided to separate the information for each bathroom upgrade; wet rooms and curbless showers. In each section, you would get the explanation of how to plug radiant floor heat and the best flooring type for the particular section.

Wet Room Flooring

Vinyl Flooring

Tile has always been a great option for showers and bathrooms. Nevertheless, in the situation where you're using a wet room, we're going to focus on concrete and – agree or disagree – vinyl flooring. The reason is simple. Wet rooms have larger spaces, so the slip factor should be put into consideration. You know stepping out of a bathtub inside a wet room can be unsafe if you chose the wrong flooring material.

Normally a sizeable-format, shiny tile can create slippery conditions when wet, compared to a small hex tile or mosaic tile, which uses a wide array of grout lines to reduce slippery conditions. Nevertheless, concrete and vinyl proffer better slip control, together with it being resistant to water.

Vinyl floors are created in sheets or tiles/planks. Sheet vinyl is the cheapest amongst other vinyl types. It is also waterproof due to its fewer seams/pores for moisture infiltration.

While Luxury vinyl tile (LVT) and other vinyl types, like vinyl planks, come as the flashy offerings because of their ability to mock real stone or wood at a proportion of the cost with little to no maintenance.

Most of these products inhibit mold and mildew, safeguard from water infiltration, and eliminate slippery factors, as spoken by Restoration-Master. You can also heat vinyl floors using a Temp Zone floor-heating system.

Concrete Flooring

Concrete flooring recently started carving its niche in kitchen countertops, so don’t be surprised of its entrance into wet room similarly. You can choose the type of stain or stamps used on the concrete to suit your design needs.  Concrete flooring can be an excellent choice for waterproof-based flooring, as long as it is sealed properly.

To sum it up, electric floor-heating can also be integrated while installing concrete flooring/ Doing that will guarantee your wet room is continuously warm notwithstanding concrete’s COLD nature.

Curbless Shower Flooring

Tile Flooring

Although vinyl and concrete flooring can be used in a curbless shower, tile flooring is the ideal option for curbless shower flooring. Even if your choice is the large-format or small tiles with a considerable amount of grout lines, you should still get sufficient slip resistance within the curbless shower as far as you don’t choose a lustrous tile.

Porcelain Tile

Porcelain tile is one of the most long-lasting alternatives. It’s created from denser clays than ceramic. It gets heated at a higher temperature, making it stronger and less pervious. That is why it is resistant to water. Porcelain tile is a low maintenance tile, which makes it attractive to many homeowners.

Natural Stone (Travertine & Marble)

Natural stone is one of the most luxurious choices out there, not only is the most expensive but it has the highest maintenance. There are popular options which include travertine, marble, limestone, granite, slate, and sandstone. But for the sake of this guide, we would only focus on just two of the natural stones; travertine and marble

Travertine

Travertine is another stylish stone with different patterns. It can be chiseled, polished tumbled, or honed. This natural stone is endowed with nature's greys, browns, golds, and creams, all combined into elegant designer tiles.

When installing it on your shower you can pick from different sizes, which includes 10cm x 10cm tiles, 30cm x 30cm square, and 10cm mosaics.

Marble

Marble is a natural stone, but “soft” with an even softer look. It focuses on two popular finishes that are honed (matt finish) and polished (classic gloss). The spiral for cream and grey is beautiful to behold with the eyes and it’s ever getting popular.

In Conclusion

Did you enjoy reading this guide? Was this article helpful to you?

Nonetheless, you choose any type of heated shower, note that all tile types can be warmed up using an electric floor-heating system.

​What type of flooring material do you prefer for your curbless shower or wet room? Please let us know your answers in the comments! If you enjoyed this article, please share gracefully!!! ~Remember sharing is caring! ~