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Shower Ideas For Your Bathroom - The most common bathing arrangement found in homes is a shower. The shower stall or cabinet, which occupies less floor space than a tub, is most often found in the second bathroom of a home. A quick shower in the morning is a way of life for many people. Some find a shower a convenient way to wash their hair. A shower is used in conjunction with swimming pools and saunas. In many instances, the shower unit is integral to a bathtub. In other bathrooms, the shower is a separate stall or compartment, or a portion of the toilet may be tiled for use as a doorless shower area. When the shower unit is combined with the bathtub, the wall surface from the top of the tub to the ceiling, or almost to the roof, must be finished in a moisture-resistant material. Plastic laminates, ceramic tile, cultured marble, and fiberglass-reinforced plastic are some of the materials that can be used. It is essential that this wall surface be installed correctly, for considerabl...

Increasing in popularity is the bathroom with a view of a garden setting. In some instances the garden is located outside the bathroom and viewed through a large window, and in other cases the garden area is actually a part of the bathroom. Ordinarily such bathrooms are located at ground level in the home, but this need not always be so. The moisture and humidity present in bathrooms makes them an ideal location for growing many types of plants. One approach is to have the plants growing in containers and arranged to present a gardenlike setting. Another approach is to have a permanent planter area where the plants are planted directly in the ground or in pots sunk in the ground.  With this approach, it is necessary to contain the soil so that a continual cleaning problem is not presented. A glass divider, similar in construction to one wall of a shower enclosure, can be used to separate the garden area from the bathing area; it need not reach to the ceiling, as the plants benefit ...

The trend is toward more and more fiberglass-reinforced plastic bathroom fixtures. In fact, entire bathrooms may be constructed of fiberglass and lifted into place for connection to the pipes and drains. At least one manufacturer is doing this now. Selecting a bathroom may become very much like selecting an automobile — you will select the bathroom with the accessories that you want. Hopefully, this will not involve any planned obsolescence which would date bathrooms to the year of purchase or installation. Although today the approach to bathrooms is primarily a "component" or "integrated" approach, it appears that the "systems" bathroom is not far away. Instead of components being gathered from various manufacturers and placed in the bathroom, one manufacturer will assemble them all together and market the bathroom as a single unit or system. All the plumbing in the systems bathroom will be pre-installed except for connections that must be made to water, ...

Bathrooms can include saunas, exercise rooms, lounging areas, sunbathing facilities, soaking tubs, dressing areas, and steam rooms. Fixtures are improving and at the same time becoming more decorative. For close to 40 years the bathroom remained basically unchanged. But now a spectacular change is taking place. The emphasis is on more space, division of the bathroom into compartments so that the facilities can be used by more than one person at a time, and a general feeling of luxury, if not sheer opulence. Many of the features going into new bathrooms are equally applicable to remodeling. Add a skylight in the bathroom and it becomes a sun room. Replace a wall or two with glass and it becomes a garden room. Put in infra-red lamps, sauna, hydro-massage, and exercise equipment and the bathroom becomes a home health spa. Don't limit your thinking. Whether you are remodeling, redecorating, building, or buying, keep your mind open to new ideas they may not be as expensive as you think,...

Bathrooms, in a sense, are representative of the attitudes of the civilization in which they exist. History records that bathing began as a religious ritual a ceremonial purification, in ancient Egypt. Elaborate public baths date from the Bronze Age over 5000 years ago in Crete. Homer's heroes are depicted as having bathed in tubs made from stone, marble, and wood, and in Rome, the elaborate baths of Caracalla and Diocletian could accommodate more than 1000. Bathing as a matter of personal hygiene has had a checkered history, from the social aspects of the Roman bath to the preference for uncleanliness in the Middle Ages. Even during the reign of Elizabeth I few baths were found in houses, and the Queen was reported to bathe only once a month. In fact, it wasn't until the Victorian era that bathrooms came to be a separate room in the house. Even the White House didn't have a bathtub until after 1850.  Customs Change Bathing and bathrooms change with the times and with chang...

Though the American sauna usually is simpler, is its most complete form the sauna process has the following stages. First you sit or lie down on the lower platform until perspiration begins. Then you move up, lie down, and raise your feet if you like. After perhaps 10 to 15 minutes, you throw a dipper of water on the heated rocks (special rocks should be used, for rocks gathered at random may contain water and explode when heated). This produces an immediate superheated (invisible) steam that makes the skin tingle and causes moisture to condense on the skin. The heat is momentarily oppressive, but the moisture is soon absorbed into the wood walls and then is replaced by the dry air through the vents. A Finn will now use the birch whisk, a 2 to 3-foot bundle of leafy birch twigs. Switching the body with birch, aromatic with oil, helps cleanse the skin and stimulate the circulation. After a cooling plunge in a pool, a shower, or a rest on the open air, you re-enter the sauna and wash you...

If you’e ever wondered what euphoria means, some people would say one way to find out is to tray a sauna (pronounced SOW-na). The finish sauna is a method of bathing that is also physically restorative. You’ll find that to benefit from this dry heat bath you don’t have to undergo so strenuous a procedure as a Finn who plunges through a hole in an ice-covered lake or rolls in a snowbank afterward; A cold shower will do as well. Saunas can be either quite elaborate or very simple. American versions usually are fairly simple, in that they are not used for washing. The key to a sauna is dry heat, which enables the body to withstand heat ranging from 180 to 240. ( A few drops of water on heated rocks in the sauna is enough to change the humidity in the room). The dry heat induces perspiration rapidly and without the enervation of steam bath, after cooling – suddenly, with a plunge in cold water, or gradually, at outside temperature – you experience a feeling of thorough well-being. However,...

A major shortcoming of most bathrooms is insufficient storage space. With the increased number of appliances now being used in the bathroom, storage assumes an even more important role in the average home. How much bathroom storage you need depends on the amount of storage available in other rooms. If your hall closet adequate for storing linens, and cleaning supplies are stored in a central cleaning closet, then a medicine cabinet and perhaps a clothes hamper or nib may meet your needs in a minimal sense. However, it is better to look at storage from the standpoint of what items should be kept in the bathroom for most efficient use. Storage space can be didived into degrees of access. Some items need to be stored close at hand for ready accessibility, while others are used frequently. Some items need to be secured against searching by small children. Items stored for open access are those that are used almost daily, such as towels, soaps, and toiletries. More limited access can be pro...

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