Image credit: BC Designs

When it comes to luxury interiors, installing a bath in a bedroom can recreate the feel of a high-end hotel in your home. While it’s not for everyone, a bath in a bedroom can be a showstopper statement and extension of the latest spathroom trend. There are however some practicalities and budget decisions to think about before you start.

Barrie Cutchie, Design Director at bathroom design company BC Designs, explains that when installing a bath in a bedroom, “It will be hard to create the look with a low—to mid-market product. If you’re going to have a bathtub at the end of the bed, it’s got to be a feature; it’s got to have a presence and make a statement. Cast iron, claw-footed, roll-top baths are ideal.”

“While many consumers can be put off of installing them in a bathroom – the plumbing needs to be moved, coming up from the floor rather than out from the wall – this is the case for the bedroom too and involves about the same amount of work it shouldn’t put people off.”

He adds, “A bath in a bedroom is an experience and gives the room a real sense of luxury. It’s lovely for relaxing and taking time to unwind. However, when it comes to family living and splashing children, a separate bathtub in a family bathroom is most likely a must. Bedrooms tend to have electrical equipment, expensive items, and soft furnishings that don’t mix very well with bubbles or water.”

Make your guest bedroom feel like a hotel room

When creating a guest bedroom that feels like a hotel room, Barrie explains, “This has been helped with an explosion of new sanitary ware, brassware, and the resurrection of coloured ceramics. Showstoppers in their own right, these new products have helped bathrooms cement their place as one of the most desirable rooms in the house and led to a new trend; the desire to bring these products into other rooms in the house.

Copper baths look showstopper and retain heat for much longer than their acrylic counterparts. BC Designs explains, “A little-known fact few homeowners know is that copper is a super metal for killing germs. While most viruses can last for days on steel and glass, they’re killed within hours or sometimes minutes on copper. The same applies to Brass as well.”

Place your bath at the end of the bed for optimum space

If you don’t have a lot of space to play with when adding a bath to your bedroom, right at the end of the bed could be the best positioning to maximise space in the room, as it’s often an underutilised area. Integrating the bath at the very end of the bed can also help create a more cohesive design and symmetry in a bedroom layout, like the Waters of Ashbourne tub pictured, which is a two-person, double-ended, super-slim profile bath.

Consider creating a division between the bath and the bed

Adding a dividing space between your bed and bath creates a sense of privacy and a bathing area that feels a little more secluded, making each area more defined. It can also help from a practical point of view to improve ventilation and prevent moisture spread to the sleeping area. A well-designed divider for the bath and bed taps into the trend for broken-plan living rather than open-plan living, a hybrid between closed rooms and open-plan layouts.

A divider also allows you to bring beautiful and practical tiling to the bath side of the room while retaining all the soft finishes on the bedroom side. The recessed shelf pictured is also incredibly handy for neatly storing all of your products. It’s a space-saving solution that gives the room a sleek, minimalist look.

Use your tub as a statement art piece

In West Cornwall, perched above Penzance’s bustling harbour, 1790 built Georgian townhouse turned super chic, boutique Chapel House is a masterclass in how to put a bath in a bedroom. The egg-shaped baths by Cabuchon (pictured) in four of the rooms look like pieces of art and offer beautiful sea views from the tub.

Two of the other rooms have brilliant Japanese soaking tubs (with sea view windows), and up on the light-bathed top floor, you can enjoy a moonlit soak in the open air, under the bright stars of Cornwall as the panoramic glass roof slides right back.

Opt for a tiny tub

If you fancy a tub in the bedroom but are short on space, then The Albion Bath Co. is perfect. Billing themselves as the “home of fine freestanding baths”, their sizes range from a bijoux 1200mm long to a generous 2000mm wide. Each tub is handmade in the UK using Iso-Enamel, which is lighter than cast iron and retains the heat of the bathwater for longer. It’s also tougher than acrylic and made from a high-gloss that’s easy to clean.

The teeny tubs (as pictured) come in four main styles, the to-floor Torre with its full roll top, the Torre duo, which is double-ended, and the super-deep, super-comfy, the super-cute Tubby (pictured), and the Tubby Too, for two. All of the baths can be painted in the colour of your choice.

Try a bath on a mezzanine level in the bedroom

When it comes to putting a bath in a bedroom, if you’re short on space in the room, you could try the genius idea of a bath on a mezzanine level of a bedroom. Latitude 50’s gorgeous Church Lane House in Daymer Bay in North Cornwall has done just that. Tucked away on a small track and a three-minute walk to the beach, the homestay by the sea has some great rooms to choose from.

The master bedroom (pictured) has an Emperor bed, a private balcony, a separate dressing room, an en-suite shower room with double hand basins, and paddle steps up to a freestanding bathtub on a mezzanine floor. Bliss.

Use your bath to add colour to the room

“Having a bath in a bedroom isn’t a new trend;” Barrie Cutchie says, “It can be traced back to the Middle Ages when many of the rich lords would have a bath in their bedroom. Fast forward to the 1990s, and the trend was revived by boutique hotels placing free-standing roll-top baths at the end of huge beds. Popular with holidaymakers, but thought to be too impractical to have in one’s own home, bathtubs in bedrooms are becoming a desirable feature; separate bathrooms are out, hello open plan bathing.”

The bedroom pictured is a riot of colour with its vibrant patterned wallpaper, bright green door, and raspberry-coloured bath.

Bring your bath out of a bijoux en-suite

For master bedrooms that have space constraints but still have a small en-suite, you could keep the en-suite and bring the bath out to the bedroom. Here, the bath is right outside the en-suite but placed in the corner near the window for maximum views and ventilation. If you can’t place your bath near a window, then a discreet ceiling fan or vent can help manage humidity.