Small bathroom layouts that actually fit

Most Maltese bathrooms are small. In an apartment or a converted townhouse the bathroom is frequently under six square metres, and the second bathroom — the one carved out of a corridor or a corner of a bedroom — is often under four. If you have just bought in shell form, the room exists as four block walls and a stub of soil pipe, and nothing about it tells you what will fit.

This article sets out the numbers. They are the fixture sizes and clearances used by the Draw your plan tool on this site, which draws layouts to scale and returns three options per room.

The fixture sizes the layout engine uses

These are the footprints the engine places. They are not the only sizes on the market, but they are realistic for the products you will see in a showroom, and if a room cannot take these it will not take much else either.

The clearances

A fixture that fits on paper and cannot be used is not fitted. The engine enforces four rules:

• 600 mm clear in front of the WC and the basin — 700 mm preferred.
• 700 mm clear beside a bath, so you can get into it and clean it.
• The WC must be within 1500 mm of the soil pipe.
• Nothing in the door swing.

The clearance in front of the WC and basin is the one people forget when they measure a room with a tape and mentally arrange it. Six hundred millimetres is not generous. It is the space to stand up, turn around, and dry yourself. Seven hundred is better and, in a room where you have any choice at all, worth spending.

The soil pipe decides the WC, and the WC decides the room

The 1500 mm rule is the strongest constraint on the list, because it is the one you cannot argue with by buying a smaller fixture. The soil pipe is where the builder put it. The WC has to be within 1500 mm of it. That fixes one wall — sometimes one corner — before you have made a single choice, and the bath, shower and basin then have to arrange themselves around what is left.

So before you draw anything, go and find the soil pipe. In a shell it is usually visible: a wide pipe stub, larger than the water supply pipes, coming out of the floor or the wall. Measure from a corner of the room to it and write the number down. If the room is already fitted out and you cannot see it, the existing WC is standing on it.

Why a bath and a separate shower rarely both fit under 5 sqm

This is the single most common disappointment, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.

Take a room 2.0 m by 2.4 m — 4.8 square metres, which is a perfectly ordinary Maltese second bathroom. Put the bath along the 2.0 m wall: 1700 long fits, 700 deep, plus the 700 mm you must leave beside it. That is 1400 mm of the room's 2400 mm depth consumed. You are left with a strip 2000 mm wide and 1000 mm deep.

Now try to fit the rest in that strip. A shower at 900x900 takes 900 of the 2000 mm width. The WC needs an 800 mm wide zone. The basin is 600. That is 900 + 800 + 600 = 2300 mm of wall against 2000 mm of wall, and that is before the 600 mm of clear floor the WC and basin each need in front of them, which the strip's 1000 mm depth has to supply while the shower door also opens into it.

It does not fit. Change the room to 2.2 m by 2.4 m and the width arithmetic still fails. This is why, in most rooms under five square metres, the honest answer is one or the other: a bath (with an overhead shower and a screen), or a shower enclosure. A 1500x700 bath buys you 200 mm of wall length, which sometimes rescues a layout and often does not.

Rooms above six square metres, or long narrow rooms with two usable walls, are a different conversation. The point is to find out which room you have before you buy anything.

Using the Draw your plan tool

There are two ways in:

1. Tap the corners. Draw the outline of the room on screen by placing its corners, then enter the wall lengths. This suits rectangular and L-shaped rooms.
2. Photograph a paper sketch. Draw the room on paper — it does not need to be neat — write the measurements on the walls, mark the door and which way it opens, mark the soil pipe, and photograph it.

Either way you get three options for the room, drawn to scale, with the fixtures at the sizes above and the clearances respected. Three is a useful number: it shows you the trade-offs rather than presenting one answer as the answer. Typically one option keeps the bath, one swaps it for a shower and gains floor space, and one moves the door swing or the basin to make something else possible.

Measure twice. A room entered 100 mm too generously will produce a layout that fails on site, and block walls in Malta are rarely as square as the plan suggests. Measure each wall at floor level and at shoulder height, and use the smaller number.

What the sketch is and is not

It is a feasibility sketch. It answers one question: does this set of fixtures fit this room at these sizes with these clearances? The engine is deterministic — the same room produces the same three options every time, and no judgement is being exercised about how the room should look.

It is not a design. It does not choose products, specify tiling or waterproofing, route pipework, position lighting or extraction, or account for anything the walls are hiding. It does not replace a fitter or a designer standing in the room with a tape measure. Treat it as the thing you take to that conversation, not the thing that ends it.

Taking it to a showroom

The practical value of a scaled sketch is that it converts a vague enquiry into a specific one. "I'm doing a bathroom, what have you got" produces a tour of the showroom. "I have a 2.0 by 2.4 room, the soil pipe is in this corner, I want a 1700x700 bath and a 600 basin, what do you stock that fits" produces a quote.

It also makes it far easier to compare two quotes, or to compare a Maltese showroom against one in Sicily, because both are answering the same brief. If you are buying for Gozo, the sketch is also the document that tells a supplier exactly what is coming off the ferry.

Draw the room first. Choose the taps later.