Warm bathroom flooring?

Maz

Hi, hope someone can give me some advise please.

My bathroom is perishing! Takes all the joy out of lingering in the shower I can tell you.

Situ is this - the only form of heating in there is a fairly old but quite large towel rail. Hot water tank is in there as well in a large cupboard. The flooring is the kind of tiles you would put in a conservatory so they're ceramic type things. The window is double glazed.

I can't afford to rip the tiles up, and do any repairs to the floor underneath/sort out new skirting etc so I was wondering if anybody knew of any type of suitable flooring that would be warmer underfoot that could be laid over the tiles? (Apart from carpet)

I suppose replacing the towel rail with a proper radiator would help too but I'm really skint at the mo. Would a second hand radiator be OK to install?

As you can tell, I'm not exactly a DIY professional and all suggestions would be very gladly received.

andyhop

A vinyl from Polyflor would be Ok, Have plenty of cushion choices

Maz

Had a quick look at the Polyflor website but they seem to be aimed at the business/commercial sector rather than the domestic consumer?

andyhop

Yes but domestic customers can still purchase, We offer this as a option if the customer does not want tiles in there new bathroom

Prices can be £20-£40 per sqm

sunshinetours

A fluffy bathmat? Would seem the cheapest option until you can install a proper radiator/underfloor heating maybe?

morg_monster

We have the same problem in our bathroom, it's downstairs, ceramic tiles, 2 outside walls, we have a newish towel rail that gets v hot, but it has a big bathroom to heat. With a pretty long bathmat and religious use of slippers we manage it. TBH it's ok in "normal" winter weather here (ie, 5-10 C) but not this freezing stuff that's overtaken us this winter.

I would use strategically positioned bathmats for now, and save up for a new radiator, rather than replacing the flooring. As any new flooring you buy would only be laid over the existing cold tiles, I'm not sure you'd get a huge improvement, unless you had some kind of insulation in between them.

Another option which we considered was having a small heater in the bathroom on a timer to come on half an hour before you get in the shower. This obviously has risks though and would only really be sensible if your bathroom is big enough for the heater to definitely not get splashed with water, and you have a power socket near enough, and it doesn't matter to you if you can't close the door properly due to the cord snaking out....