I once went to a spa that had this amazing shower… words can’t do it justice, but it had water spouts all over the place in different (adjustable) configurations so that essentially, you were always enveloped in warm water no matter which way you turned. None of that twirly-dance stuff to keep the water stream on your body as the frigid air hits other parts, which I’ve been doing in conventional showers all my life. There was room to sit or stand as you please, and of course it was also aesthetically beautiful with decorative blue and turquoise tiles. It was by far the best shower experience of my life, and I vowed that one day, one day, I would have a similar shower in my own home. Sure, it will use a lot of water and energy but I don’t care - it’s a luxury that would be worth it to me if I could start off every day like that.
I’m not there yet, but I’m sure there are some of you who have awesome showers of your own. Help me fuel my inspiration by sharing. (Descriptions are okay, but pictures would be even better!) I’m also curious whether these came with your place when you bought or rented it or if you had custom work done, and if the latter, how much it set you back.
The best shower we ever had was in the last house we had in Florida. It was a huge stall - at least 4’X5’ - maybe a little bigger. It only had the one showerhead, but I often wished it had had a handheld one also. That stall was perfect for bathing our dogs at the time, since they were too big to haul into the tub. They had room to walk around, which meant I had room to wash them all over. If they shook, no biggie - it was all tile. The only downside was the lack of the aforementioned hand-held showerhead - that would have made rinsing them (and the walls) so much easier.
It wasn’t fancy or anything, but it was one of the best features of that house.
When we bought this house just about 5 years ago we had a bunch of work done and the bathroom in the basement needed to be completely rebuilt. It was a disaster.
The shower we put in is my husbands dream shower. 2 sets of 2 side jets on the west and south walls, a rainfall shower head, a handheld shower head and a bench seat. The cherry on top is the steam unit. He chose a white marble with grey streaks for the walls and black for the seat. The floor is dark gray slate.
Features I added: the hand held shower head and a low entry at the door to allow the dogs to get in.
Cost to redo the bathroom with a normal shower stall like area would probably have been in the 5k range, there was a lot of plumbing rework and reconstruction. We paid just over 10k and that included all the hardware and steam unit. In retrospect I should have paid more and got someone else to do it. The guy who did the renovations for us did a terrible job on any detail work. The tile in the shower floor does not all slope towards the drain for instance.
One semi clear iphone picture for your viewing pleasure.
We have essentially that shower with a handheld unit, and I love it! (Just need to get the longer hose for the shower head… 60" is good, but the 84" would be better when one of the dogs wants to cower in the corner.) On one memorable occasion, when Sebastian was so filthy that I needed backup, the stall proved big enough for me, a 10-year-old, and a Pyrenees.
It’s not absolutely beautiful - needs to be re-grouted - but it’s awesome!
My shower in my Kansas City apartment is not especially fancy, but it was installed by my brother, the Master Plumber. So he made damn sure there was enough water pressure. We replaced all the pipes right up the the point where it comes into the house, so we have 3/4" copper coming into the 75 gallon water heater and a pair of 1/2" copper pipes to my shower. The second one? A recirculating line, so it heats up instantly. The shower valve is by Delta (“The only brand that is still worth a shit”*) and the shower head is by Grohe.
The combination is a shower that, should I wish, remove graffiti from a cinder block wall. No, it doesn’t have a dozen heads, but for a pure, one head shower experience, it cannot be beat.
Do NOT get him started on the plastic trash Kohler has become.
I live in an apartment built in the 70’s in an area that gets a ton of rain. The apartment building is heated with a large boiler that also provides the hot water. My bathroom and shower are really ugly and dated but, the shower head pumps out gallons and gallons of hot water at high pressure for as long as you can stand it. I love it.
My Dad put a steam unit into my parent’s large basement, spa type, bathroom. Every time I go home for the holidays I rediscover how great that is.
I installed an outdoor shower in the garden by the hot tub. There is no better way to start the day.
CPVC fittings, a 4X4 post in concrete, and an overturned bakery tray for the floor plus blue and green spraypaint
$80
When I started dating my husband he lived in an apartment and his shower was a two-shower-head system. The main one was one of those rain shower heads, and that’s what you stood under. Then from the rear of the tub area was a lower-mounted hand-held shower head that pointed forward, so you were always getting hit with the hot water, front and back, plus you could remove the hand-held one and use it to rinse wherever. I thought it was pretty dang great at the time.
My dad built a house when I was in my teens and the master bathroom had a separate room for the shower. The whole room was tiled, and there was a bathtub on one side. The room was as long as the tub, and as wide as it was long, so square. There was a regular shower head where you’d expect it at the head of the tub, and another one in the wall opposite the tub, pointed at the tub. There was a drain in the middle of the floor. You could sit on the edge of the tub while showering with that head, which could be useful.
What made that shower not as good was my dad’s rule about use: if you used it, you had to squeegee the WHOLE ROOM before you got out. I only lived in that house for one semester of high school (I primarily grew up with my mom in a state on the opposite side of the country) but because of the PITA and time involved in the squeegeeing process, I rarely used that shower.
He also had an atrium in the middle of the house large enough for small trees. It had a porch off to one side and a crossing path through the middle of the garden area. Mounted above the crossing (screen roof), but there were beams there) was one of those rain shower heads. The controls were over on the wall. So you could basically stand taking a “rain shower” in the middle of all of this foliage. The main problem with that one was, of course, that you had to either be home alone or close all the vertical blinds on all the sets of sliding doors if you wanted any privacy (one on the end and two on each of the two side walls–one into the atrium area and one into the porch area. The porch had an exterior wall as the fourth wall.)
I LOVE showering outside. Our beach house has an outdoor shower which I didn’t use for a long time but finally tried a few years ago- so awesome. It just feeds my lifelong desire to be completely naked outside, without the inevitable self-consciousness.
I sadly had to drain the pipes for the winter, but am looking forward to Spring. Our first outdoor shower was merely lines run from the washing machine with a watering nozzle at the end. It was a temporary measure while I rebuilt the bathroom. Showering on the deck was so nice I didn’t get around to installing the new shower until fall.
We have a shower that was added to our half bath/laundry room some time after the house was built, but before we bought it. It’s built in a bump-out into the garage, and takes up what would be useful real estate there. But what makes it awesome is that it has a shower head that dates back to before the Reagan era, I think - before the Conservation Kops decreed that a shower head can only deliver tepid water by the eye-dropperful at a time.
This thing will happily scald you with a deluge of water, delivered at high pressure. There are not any other settings like “mist”, or “sprinkle”, or “pulse”, or anything like that. Just a tight cluster of needle-fine sprays. The only things I can control are how hot, and (by turning the valves to almost off) how hard. But when I really want a hot shower, nothing is better, at least in my house. My wife wants to tear the plumbing out, and convert the space to a pantry. Not as long as I can help it! And someday if/when we ever move, that nozzle is going with us.
The house we rented in Ohio had a shower head (one of the handheld ones) that had many settings. One of them was a nice massage pulse, which was good if you were sore and had extra time to spend in the shower. Then there was the typical average flow that you used most of the time when you were just cleaning yourself like most people do in the shower, and it had a weak-ass setting that I have no idea what the purpose of it was, and then it had this setting that was for… I’m not sure. Maybe removing mildew stains from aluminum siding? Cleaning stains off of driveways? Drilling through granite? All I know is that you twisted the dial past that setting really fast because it hurt!