Project
Primary ensuite under a sloped dormer roof
Bookmatched veined porcelain, a frameless glass shower with a recessed niche and bench, a freestanding slipper tub and a floating double vanity with backlit mirrors. Taken from bare studs to finished room.
- Ensuite
- $28k to $45k range
- 5 to 8 weeks
- Location to confirm
Where this one started
The room came back to studs and subfloor before a single decision about tile was made. The photographs below are the middle of that: a sloped ceiling with the dormer window still taped, floor protection across the whole room, a wet saw on sawhorses, and buckets of thinset standing on what is now a finished floor.
The sloped ceiling shaped everything. A dormer ensuite gives you a lovely room and takes away the two things a bathroom layout normally relies on: full-height walls and predictable sight lines. Where the ceiling drops you cannot stand a shower. Where it is full height, you have to earn the space.
The feature wall is the whole room
The vanity wall is bookmatched. The veining on one panel mirrors the panel beside it, so the pattern opens outward from the centre like a butterfly rather than restarting at every joint. It is the most striking thing in the room and the easiest thing to get wrong.
Bookmatching is not a product you order, it is a layout you plan. Panels have to be dry-laid on the floor first and shuffled until the veins meet across the seam, then the wall is set out from the centre of that match rather than from a corner. Tile from the corner in and hope, and the match lands halfway behind a mirror.
A bookmatched layout carries considerably more offcut than a standard running bond, because a panel that does not match cannot simply be cut down and used elsewhere on the same wall. Order the waste in at the start rather than discovering it mid-job.
The shower
Frameless glass, large-format porcelain to the ceiling, a recessed niche and a built-in bench. The drain sits flush and the floor is pitched to it, which is worth pausing on: with large-format tile you cannot build the fall by warping the tile, so the slope is formed in the substrate before anything is set. Get it wrong and water sits in a corner for the life of the room.
The niche is set into the stud cavity rather than bumped out, which is why it reads as part of the wall instead of a shelf stuck to it. It has to be planned before the waterproofing goes on, because a niche is a hole in the wet wall and every edge needs the membrane carried through and lapped correctly.
Frameless glass punishes framing errors. There is no frame to absorb a wall that is out of plumb, so studs, board and tile all have to be true before the glass is measured. That measurement happens after tiling, which is why glass adds two to three weeks at the end of a project rather than the beginning.
Vanity, mirrors and light
A floating double vanity in dark timber with two integrated basins, wall-mounted taps, backlit mirrors and a sconce between them. Four decisions, each doing a job.
Floating the vanity leaves the floor visible underneath, which makes the room read larger and makes cleaning trivial. Wall-mounted taps free the counter depth a deck-mounted tap eats, and they have to be roughed into the wall at the right height before board goes on. That is a week-one decision you cannot revisit in week five.
Backlit mirrors do something a downlight cannot. A ceiling light throws shadow down onto the face, which is the wrong direction for shaving or makeup. Light from behind the mirror edge fills evenly from the front, and the sconces fill from the side. Under a sloped ceiling it also matters that the light sits at eye level, because there is no full-height ceiling above the vanity to hang anything from.
The finished room
A freestanding slipper tub under the dormer window, glass shower to one side, vanity wall opposite, and zebra blinds for privacy without losing light. The tub is where the sloped ceiling stops being a problem and becomes the reason the room works: a freestanding tub needs clearance on every side and no wall behind it, which is exactly what the low side of a dormer gives you.
A tub like this needs the floor checked before it arrives. They are heavy when full and sit on a small footprint, so the joists underneath matter more than they do for a built-in carrying its load across a frame.
Specification
Questions people ask about ensuites
Does a sloped or dormer ceiling make an ensuite more expensive?
Modestly, yes. Tile is cut to the rake, the shower has to sit where there is standing height, and lighting has to work without a full ceiling above the vanity. None of it is difficult, but it is slower than a square room and it rules out buying a stock layout.
Is a bookmatched wall worth the extra cost?
In a large ensuite where one wall is visible from the doorway, it is the highest-impact money in the room. In a small bathroom where no wall is seen whole, it is not, and the same budget does more in glass or a better vanity.
Why does frameless glass come so late in the schedule?
Because it is measured off the finished tile, not the framing. Template, fabricate, install. Two to three weeks is normal, and it is the most common reason a bathroom is otherwise finished but not usable.
Related
Planning an ensuite?
We will come and measure, tell you honestly what the room will and will not allow, and give you a fixed written price before anything is ordered.