My biggest bathroom renovation regrets

Rose Washbourn, sub-editor and books editor, H&G

Heated towel rails are a must, and if possible, install one that can be operated independently from the heating system (ie electric) so you can turn it on for short bursts during the summer to avoid horrible damp towels. And make sure it’s positioned high up enough on the wall so that the lower rungs are actually usable. Dark tiles might seem atmospheric and chic, but they really show limescale! If you have the space, have a walk-in shower with a large shower screen to avoid the problems that come with doors – leaking, dodgy sealant, failing hinges…

Virginia Clark, digital director, H&G

I wish I’d known that those standard glass shower screens you use with a shower-bath are utterly, utterly useless. They’re not long enough to prevent water trickling over the side of the bath at the corner where they end, and mine also leaks at the corner nearest the shower head. It took a few cartoonish slides across the floor and a bulging bath panel before I resigned myself to festooning everything with towels every time I have a shower, and when I called the builder back to have a look at it, he just said ‘oh yes that always happens, they’re terrible.’

Charlotte McCaughan-Hawes, deputy digital editor, H&G

I learnt a lot of lessons along the ten days it took to renovate our tiny bathroom, the first coming as soon as our builder turned up on day one: make sure you know where your water stopcock is before they arrive to start ripping the whole thing out, otherwise you’ll delay the process as you trawl every inch of your home trying to find it. Stand your ground with builders; mine were not thrilled with my choice of tiles and pushed and pushed for me to have giant slabs so they didn’t have to fiddle with smaller ones. Similarly, it pays to know what you’re willing to compromise on and where you draw the line. For me, I was happy for them to lay the new cork flooring over the existing tiles (albeit a rather lazy move on their part) as it saved us extra costs in laying down screed. Spend the budget on the things you touch and notice – taps, shower fittings, tiles – and save on the parts you gloss over. Lastly, make sure you know what colour you’re painting your bathroom in advance of work starting as we paid plasterer to paint it all white for us, but he could have painted it in any colour we wanted for the same price. Sadly, I’m very indecisive and hadn’t pinned that down at that point so we ended up repainting it ourselves.

Jenny Lister, creative director, H&G

When we were having our bathroom done, a friend advised me to have a tiled nook set into the shower so that we had somewhere to store bottles of shampoo etc. But I didn’t take it in – I completely forgot. These projects can go really slowly at first and you think you have forever to make decisions about details, but then they they suddenly move very quickly and you’ve lost your chance to make changes. A notebook or a some sort of ideas list would have kept this detail in the mix. So instead of a shelf or two I have plastic bottles wedged in between the wall and the shower fittings.