The family bathroom

Great family bathrooms work hard to cater for everyone. Here's how to design a practical room that's stylish, too

A family bathroom, although not always the biggest room, often has to work hard to cater for everyone's needs on a daily basis. Whether A you're renovating and reinvigorating the space or designing the room from scratch, planning the space before you start buying your favoured sanitaryware is key.

"One of the most important things to consider in a bathroom is the layout," says Barrie Cutchie, design director at BC Designs. "Getting it right from the start will mean that you have a bathroom that works for the whole family.

"Don't think about how you use your bathroom currently, but how you'd like to use it in the future and use that as a starting point. Think about ways you might be able to make small but effective changes. It might be that you add in a folding shower screen or wet room to provide a larger area to move around in, for example."

Without a doubt, family bathrooms must be practical. They should be safe, spacious and ideally incorporate lots of storage to keep clutter to a minimum.

That said, there is absolutely no reason why they cannot also be luxurious. Flush (or almost flush) shower trays and feature lighting, for example, look great but also make sense, as do sleek, fuss-free contemporary basins and baths which are easy to clean and easy on the eye.

Include touches such as a designer towel warmer, large format or patterned tiles and bold paint colours to ensure the space is beautiful as well as practical.

Here are our top design tips for creating your family bathroom.

1 Start with the floorplan