Ensuite design

The job the room is hired for

An ensuite is a bathroom with two extra masters: the bedroom it opens from, whose sleep it can wreck, and the two-user morning rush hour it usually serves. Acoustics and light spill are design inputs here, not afterthoughts — a soft-close everything policy, an extractor chosen by decibel, and a light scheme that lets one person shower at 6am without floodlighting the sleeper. Beyond that it follows bathroom rules at typically half the floor area, which makes the shower-over-bath question and the sliding-door question the two biggest wins available.

Clearances that decide the layout

• All bathroom clearances apply, at the compact end: 70cm basin standing, 60cm toilet front.
• A sliding or outward door reclaims the swing — an inward door in a 3m² ensuite sterilises a third of the floor.
• Walk-in shower minimum 80×120cm before it becomes a wet cupboard; 90×140cm to towel off inside.
• The door never opens onto a sightline of the toilet from the bed. Move a fixture or the hinge side.

Lighting it

Two scenes: full face-light for grooming, and a 10% floor-glow scene for the 3am visit that does not detonate either person’s night vision. The extractor light combo unit is the enemy of the second scene; wire them separately.

The mistakes this room attracts

• The toilet as the view from the pillow, every night, forever.
• An inward door that turns the plan into a puzzle nobody solved.
• Gloss tiles and a loud fan in the room that shares a wall with sleep.
• Skipping the niche and the rail because "it’s just the ensuite" — it is the most-used bathroom in the house.

When it is small

The ensuite is already the compact case; below about 2.5m², drop to shower-basin-toilet in a straight run, slide the door, and spend on the two touched surfaces — shower glass and vanity — that decide whether it feels tight or tailored.