What is the best flooring for a wet room?

The short answer

For a wet room we would point you to one of two coverings: safety-grade sheet vinyl, or glue-down LVT with a textured surface and a proper slip rating. Both are bonded fully to the base so water cannot travel underneath, and both are warmer and softer than tile if someone slips.

Sheet vinyl is the most forgiving choice, because a typical room can be covered in one piece with no joints at all, and any seam that is needed can be welded into a continuous surface. LVT gives a more convincing stone or timber look, but it has many more joints to keep tight and it depends entirely on a well sealed perimeter.

• Safety sheet vinyl: fewest joints, most watertight, usually the best value
• Glue-down textured LVT: best appearance, needs meticulous sealing
• Never click vinyl, laminate, engineered wood or carpet

Why the base matters more than the covering

Every wet room needs a tanked sub-base laid to falls, so water heads to the drain rather than pooling or creeping towards the door. That construction is specialist work and, as our bathroom guide says, it should never be improvised. The floor covering goes on top of it and cannot correct a base that is flat where it should slope.

Before we fit, the base still has to meet the same standard as any other bonded floor: clean, dry, sound and smooth enough that the covering does not telegraph ridges. On ground floor concrete a moisture test comes first, because an impermeable covering over a damp slab traps the water and the adhesive eventually lets go.

Coving: taking the floor up the wall

The detail that separates a wet room floor from a bathroom floor is the edge. Rather than stopping at the skirting, the covering is turned up the wall by at least 100mm behind the wall finish, which makes the floor and the lower wall one continuous watertight surface. Sheet vinyl formed into a coved skirting like this is the same principle used in commercial kitchens.

Pipe penetrations, the drain surround and the threshold are the other weak points. Each one needs a tight cut and a flexible seal rather than a loose cover plate, because water always finds the edge that was left open.

Grip ratings to ask for

Slip resistance is shown either as an R rating, which runs from R9 to R13, or as a pendulum test value. For a domestic bathroom we treat R10 as a sensible minimum, and in a wet room or family bathroom R11 is worth having. A pendulum value of 36 or more is regarded as low slip potential in the wet.

Surface texture does most of the work in practice. A matt, lightly textured finish grips far better than a gloss one when wet, and it also hides water spots and footprints. If a manufacturer does not publish slip figures for a product, we would not put it in a wet room.

Heating, doors and what it costs

Wet rooms feel cold quickly because the floor is wet so often, and underfloor heating is common. Glue-down vinyl products are well suited to heated floors, provided the heating is commissioned and run up gradually before fitting.

Our published price for sheet vinyl starts at 20 pounds per square metre supplied and fitted, and LVT from 45 pounds, with safety grades and coving adding to that. Subfloor preparation is priced separately from 12 pounds per square metre where it is needed. Because a wet room is small, the edges and preparation often matter more to the total than the material, so we price each one after seeing it.