Bathroom design in Batumi: tiles, sanitary ware and lighting

What we decide in a bathroom before the first sketch

In a bathroom of four or five square metres, water, drainage, wiring, ventilation and tiling all meet, and almost all of it ends up behind the tiles. In a bedroom you put a mistake right by moving the furniture. In a bathroom you put it right with a hammer drill. So we start bathroom design in Batumi with a survey of the building services, and the tiles are chosen later.

At the survey we mark the riser, the ventilation shaft, the developer's outlets and how far the floor can be raised without a step at the door. This shows where a shower can go, whether a bath will fit and where the washing machine will stand. Then we ask who will be washing in this bathroom: a family with a child, a tenant for a year or guests for three nights. The work itself, from screed laid to a fall to the water test, is described on the page about how we do a bathroom renovation with waterproofing and a floor drain.

The dimensions we work from

In a new build the bathroom usually has to fit into 3–6 m², and a few centimetres decide how comfortable it is. The table shows our practice, not a regulation: we adjust the dimensions to the family's height and the models you choose.

If a dimension doesn't fit, we show it on the plan and suggest a substitute: a wall-hung basin instead of a vanity unit, a sliding door instead of a hinged one, a shower instead of a bath.

Tile layout and wall elevations

A wall elevation shows one whole wall as if it had been taken down and laid flat on a table: every tile and joint, the cuts, the mixer, the niche, the socket, the heated towel rail, the access hatch and the mirror, with dimensions from the corner and from the finished floor. The project has an elevation for every tiled wall and a separate floor layout.

We choose the tile size for the room, not from a photo in a showroom. The bathroom ceiling is lowered to box in the extractor fan, and a 60×120 tile can end up meeting it as a strip ten centimetres wide. In that case we set out the tiles from the ceiling and push the cut row down to the bottom, where the bath or vanity unit will hide it. Boxing and niches are built from plasterboard, and we would rather move the boxing 2–3 cm so that its edge falls on a joint than leave a narrow sliver of tile at the corner.

On the floor, the drain sets the layout. With a linear drain by the wall, the floor falls in one direction, and large porcelain tiles go down with hardly any cuts. Around a point drain the tiles are cut in an envelope pattern, so a smaller size works better there. We count the tiles for each product code with a margin for cuts and order them in a single batch. What you can get in Batumi straight away and what you will have to wait for is covered under materials selection for your renovation.

Water and drain outlets for the chosen models

The plumbing setting-out sheet shows every outlet: water, drain, the concealed mixer body, the installation frame, the floor drain, the washing machine and the water heater. Each one has its distance from the corner, its height above the finished floor and its pipe diameter, and the plumber marks up the walls from the sheet.

We take the outlet heights from the specifications of the chosen model: a wall-hung basin and a vanity unit need the drain at different heights, and each installation frame has its own outlet height. That is why we approve the sanitary ware models together with the layout, not in the last week of the renovation. Where we can, we keep the toilet by the riser, and bring the shut-off valves and the cleanout to an access hatch whose edges line up with the tile joints. If the apartment has a separate toilet or guest WC, its sheets are part of the same set.

Niches and storage

A bathroom holds the bottles of two or three people, spare toilet paper and washing powder, a hair dryer, a first-aid kit and cleaning products. Without a place drawn for them, they all end up on the edge of the bath and on top of the washing machine.

• A shower niche in a partition or in boxing. We don't cut a niche into a cast concrete wall without a structural engineer.
• Boxing over the installation frame gives a shelf 15–20 cm deep.
• Under the basin, drawers instead of a door, with a cut-out in the top drawer to clear the trap.
• A mirror cabinet 12–15 cm deep, if it can be partly recessed into boxing.

Lighting at the mirror, in the shower and at night

We put the mirror light at face level, at the sides or as a frame around the glass, so there are no shadows under your eyes. We use 3000–4000 K and a colour rendering index of 90 or more. A mirror with lighting and demisting needs a cable outlet behind the glass, so this outlet and the hair dryer socket go on the elevation before tiling. Otherwise the wire comes out of a joint at the side.

The shower light has its own circuit, and at night a dim light near the floor comes on from a motion sensor. We try to put the extractor in the corner furthest from the door or by the shower, so that the air coming in under the door crosses the whole bathroom. If the ventilation shaft is somewhere else, a duct runs to it above the ceiling, and we allow for its height in the tile layout. How the bathroom lighting fits into the lighting scenes of the apartment is settled in the apartment lighting design.

A bathroom for yourself and for rental

For your own family we more often keep a bath if there is a small child, and plan more closed storage. A double basin needs a worktop of at least 120 cm, and in a 4 m² bathroom that space usually goes to the washing machine.

A bathroom for short-term rental is designed for quick cleaning between guests and for the listing photo. We separate the shower with a fixed glass panel without a door, because on a door the hinges are the first thing to break. We use mid-grey grout, put up hooks for every guest plus a couple more for wet swimwear, and choose sanitary ware brands whose spare parts are sold in Batumi. Everything else for apartments like this is on the page about designing apartments for short-term rental.

Mistakes you only see on a drawing

• The tiles were bought before the survey, and a narrow strip was left by the ceiling.
• The door opens inwards and hits the basin.
• The heated towel rail hangs behind the open door.
• The basin is centred on the wall and the mirror on the tiles, and the two centre lines are 5 cm apart.

So we check the elevations with the site foreman before work starts, and issue the working drawings for the crew once the sanitary ware and tiles have been approved.

How much bathroom design costs in Batumi

The design of one bathroom or toilet costs from 1,980 to 3,000 ₾ per room. The price covers placing the sanitary ware, the tile layout with wall elevations, 3D, and drawings of the water and drain outlets, the ventilation and the heated towel rail. You are paying for the designer's work: tiles, sanitary ware and the renovation are paid for separately.

A tile layout on its own, with tile quantities, costs from 390 to 600 ₾, and 3D of one room on its own 660–960 ₾. As a guide, a turnkey renovation of a 4–6 m² bathroom costs from 5,880 ₾ for labour and rough-work materials.

The design price goes up if the wet area moves away from the riser, and with a walk-in shower without a tray, made-to-measure furniture and a complex tile layout. It comes out lower for a bathroom where the fixtures go on the developer's outlets. We give a preliminary price from the apartment plan, and the final cost is set after the survey and once the set of sheets is agreed. The number of revision rounds at each stage is written into the contract.