As with any industry or niche, there are a multitude of options and choices in the bathroom world. There are more basin choices than you could think of, options for your bathroom cabinet that you probably haven’t seen, and then there’s the tiles, flooring, and colours to choose.

The right choices are essential if you’re to have a bathroom that lasts.

You can now buy the cheapest (and poorest quality) bathrooms the market has ever seen, so there are bathrooms out there that don’t last three years, let alone the 15 – 20 years we’d expect from an Alan Heath bathroom!

Here’s Why You Should Avoid Cheap Bathroom Furniture and Suites

Just like any purchase, you’ll be considering the price

Some call it a cost, but that’s a rather negative way to view something that, will over time, become an asset to your life and home, rather than a cost.

A good bathroom comes at a price, and once you start looking, you’re simply inundated with options and deals.

Should you buy budget?

Surely all bathroom products are the same, and it’s daft to pay over the odds just for a brand name?

We don’t think so.

Companies like Villeroy and Boch and Vitra spend a huge amount of time in the research stage to make sure the products they sell are fit for purpose and of the highest quality.

Buy cheap buy twice? It’s certainly the case with moving parts and bathroom products.

We wanted to share a little story from a real-life situation we’re having here at the moment. This story paints a very dim picture for the budget bathroom shopper, and our hope is that you don’t get caught out trying to save a few quid on your bathroom.

 

The leaking shower…

A customer came into our bathroom showroom in Coventry recently after that found that their cheap shower had begun to leak. They were looking for replacement parts for it. This isn’t uncommon, as poor quality parts will fail very early on in their life.

But here begins the problem with budget bathrooms…

When you buy budget, you rarely get that name that so many think they’re paying for. But no name – no brand – makes it very hard for a supplier and fitter or bathrooms like us to replace the parts.

You see, we can’t trace this shower for our customer. We don’t know what it is, and we therefore don’t know what fittings it has/needs.

Then comes the bigger problem…

 

Rip out and start again…

Because we can’t 100% for sure say what the parts are, we can’t for sure say that they will fit. There’s a big question over whether or not we need to start over.

This is because we don’t know the exact connections in the existing wall and it’s difficult to know whether it would be a straight swap for a new shower or whether we will need to take tiles off the walls or not.

 

Removing the tiles means more work, too.

In this instance our budget bathroom shopper’s options aren’t really what he’s looking for. What he thought would be an easy replacement is now looking like a re-fit or retiling of whole shower cubicle as a minimum because all dimensions and fittings vary. In a bathroom it all needs to fit with precision!

To change the shower means the removal of the screen and possibly replacing it, and then retiling and refitting it all.

This is clearly going to cost a lot more than a better-quality shower would have done in the first place. We really feel for him and we’ll do our best to help, of course.

 

It pays to pay first…

The price you pay for quality will reward you over and over again.

A higher priced, better quality product will:

• Last longer.
• Have more upgrade/after-market options.
• Be able to be found and replaced.

Better quality means better design, a better build, and longer life. But it also means that if something were to go wrong, then you could replace it easily from almost any recommended supplier.

Try Googling a non-brand suite and then try and find the part numbers. It’s almost impossible in most cases, as we’re finding out with this one. 

 

Quality bathrooms pay in the long run

Most bathrooms are changed every 12-15 years and that means that what you install today needs to last for over a decade. Cheap parts fail and even the best quality suites will, in time, fail. Most of the top-end parts though will last the lifetime of your bathroom.

We have many customers who have their bathrooms for 20 years plus and only come back to us for a change because they either want something more modern or they need the bath to be taken out and replaced with a shower due to ageing or disabilities.

When we rip out older 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s bathrooms the parts are often still working fine if they were built to last!

Need help designing your bathroom? We never deal with budget suppliers and only fit the best.

This will mean we’re more expensive than budget bathroom fitters, but it does mean that your bathroom look stunning, work beautifully, and last for years.