The bathroom you actually want to use
The Venetian Collection. Quiet, considered furniture for the room you start and end every day in.
Fitted bathrooms that don't let you down
A badly fitted bathroom doesn't show its hand straight away. First it's a grout line that won't quite seal. Then a shower head that was never properly fixed to the wall. Six months later there's a water stain spreading across the ceiling below, and the floorboards under the tray are starting to rot. By the time it becomes obvious something went wrong, putting it right costs more than the original bathroom did. We get those calls several times a year, from people who wish they'd made a different choice the first time.
We've been fitting bathrooms across West Yorkshire for over thirty years. In that time we've seen the same problems recur: installers who moved too fast, sealed over an issue instead of fixing it, or chose the wrong components for the space. Our designers visit the room, take proper measurements and specify everything before any work begins. Our fitters do the job correctly the first time. When we leave, wet areas are tanked, tiles are properly bedded, and fittings are secured to the wall the way they're supposed to be. Most of our work comes through recommendation. That's not something you sustain by cutting corners.
The shower that was resting on skirting board
One of those calls came from a house near Otley. The bathroom was eight months old and there was a brown ring on the kitchen ceiling below it, growing. The fitter who did the original job had stopped answering the phone, which told its own story before we lifted a single tile.
When we opened the floor, the shower tray turned out to be bedded on offcuts of skirting board instead of a solid base, so it flexed a fraction every time someone stood in it. Eight months of flexing had cracked the seal, and the water had been finding its way down ever since. Nothing above the floor looked wrong. Everything under it was. We dried the void, replaced two joist ends, set the tray properly, tanked the enclosure and retiled. Two weeks, most of it undoing. The bathroom looked almost identical when we finished, which is the frustrating part of rescue work: the client paid twice for the difference nobody can see.
Our own painted bathroom furniture
The Venetian Collection is Norwood's range of painted bathroom furniture: vanity units, mirror cabinets, tall storage and bath panelling, built in our workshop to your room's exact dimensions and hand-painted rather than sprayed in a factory. The palette stays deliberately quiet. Soft whites, bone, sage, a deep slate blue for the brave. Because each piece is painted to order, it can also be matched to any colour you bring us, and repainted years later when tastes change, which is something a foil-wrapped unit from a catalogue will never allow.
Furniture is where a bathroom succeeds or fails on storage, and storage is where standard sizes fail first. A Venetian vanity is built to the wall it lives on, around the soil pipe boxing, under the window sill, whatever the room insists on. Pieces start at around £1,800 as part of a bathroom project.
What tanked actually means
Tanking is a waterproof membrane, painted or sheeted onto the walls and floor of the wet area before a single tile goes on, turning the shower enclosure into a sealed tank. The tiles and grout on top are decoration, not waterproofing. Grout is cement. Cement absorbs water. Every bathroom that fails slowly, and they nearly all fail slowly, fails because somebody treated tiles as the waterproof layer.
Here is the one-sentence test to put to any bathroom fitter, including us: what goes on the walls before the tiles, and can I see it before you tile over it? A good fitter will name the membrane and invite you to look. A bad one will tell you the tiles handle it. That answer should end the interview.
What a Norwood bathroom costs
Bathrooms vary more than any other room because so much depends on what is hiding under the old one. These ranges hold for most of the work we do.
Every figure is confirmed in writing at the design visit. If we open the floor and find surprises, you hear about them the same day, with options and costs, not at the final invoice.
What people ask us
How much does a fitted bathroom cost?
Bathroom furniture from the Venetian Collection starts at around £7,000. A complete bathroom, stripped back, tanked, tiled, fitted and decorated, typically lands between £12,000 and £30,000 depending on the sanitary ware and the state of what we find under the old floor. You get a written figure at the design visit before anything starts.
How long is the bathroom out of action?
Usually two to three weeks for a full refit. We are honest about this because the alternative is a fitter who promises one week and delivers a fortnight of chaos. If it is your only bathroom, we sequence the work so the toilet is out of commission for the shortest stretch we can manage, and we tell you which days those are in advance.
Can you rescue a bathroom someone else fitted?
Yes, and we take those calls several times a year. Usually it starts with a stain on the ceiling below. We will open it up, find what was actually done, and give you a straight answer about what can be saved. Sometimes it is a repair. Sometimes the only honest advice is to start again, and we would rather tell you that than seal over someone else's shortcut.
Are wall-hung toilets safe?
People worry the first time they see one with no pedestal. The porcelain is not holding you up; a steel frame inside the wall is, bolted to the floor and the studwork, and the frames we install are rated for several times the weight of any adult. The failures you hear about come from frames fixed to plasterboard alone. That is an installation crime, not a design flaw.
What can you do with a small bathroom?
More than you would think, because we build the furniture to the room. A vanity made 60mm shallower than the standard size can be the difference between a door that opens fully and one that does not. Wall-hung fittings clear the floor, which makes a small room read larger, and bespoke storage uses the height most bathrooms waste.
Do you build wet rooms?
Yes. A wet room is the most demanding waterproofing job in domestic building: the whole floor is the shower tray, so the tanking and the falls in the floor have to be right, and there is no cover for guesswork. It is work we enjoy precisely because doing it properly matters so much.
Is the work guaranteed?
Yes. Design, build and installation are all ours, so there is no gap between trades for responsibility to fall into. If anything needs attention afterwards, one call brings back the people who did the work. Terms are set out in your quotation.
A designer will visit your home
At a time that suits you, with no obligation. We measure, we listen, and we draw the room around the way you live in it. The first step toward a beautiful new room.