They're the norm in several older Scandinavian buildings, with wooden floors, too (the typical Copenhagen shower, on a switch tap with the sink, can take some getting used to!). But the expectation is that the whole area would be tiled and sloped towards a central drain.

As for standard baths in Europe... Well, I can't speak for all countries (many will be much more shower-orientated anyway) but this would be a standard (and fairly cheap) new bath in the UK:

http://www.bathstore.com/products/po...-700-3079.html

61cm high, 120L.

I wouldn't sacrifice my bathtub. I hate the shower/bathtub combos. I prefer a proper shower (preferably 3 ft. x 3 ft.) and a proper bathtub.

Yes. They have plenty of space without needing enormous time to fill up. At a few hotels in the Middle East, bathtubs - well bathtub is actually incorrect. small pool would be more fitting - are enormous and take ages to fill up.

Id admit I haven't been inside a Scandinavian house to see one but I'd love to know how it's done. It's not done in North America as constant moisture and high humidity results in wood rot and mildew (the houses have enough problems already - though it may not matter as some houses are constructed with a planned life of 50 years before they're replaced with something new. ). Unfortunately tiling (walls in addition to floors) does not create a waterproof barrier and yes, water can still seep through the grout and sealant.

The tub linked above is rare here. Tubs are generally 5' or 6' long and 30-32" wide, and installed walled in on 3 sides (hence bathrooms are often either 5' or 6' deep or wide). Free-standing tubs are rare and pretty much a custom-designed bathroom item in the post-WWII era.

If you go to a newly built HIX in Europe you generally won't find a bath at all. Other than perhaps in a family room.

And in many newly built (not converted properties) you will find pod bathrooms, making wetroom floors practical etc.

That said, every NEW (both new build and converted) property I've stayed in - when it has a bath - has normal (european depth) baths. I've not noticed any reduction in depth.

True, but I often travel with family and get upgraded with status so I do get suites and family rooms. Just had the same thing at a Novotel in France that had a normal tub.

In Danish and Swedish and Norwegian houses, the wet floor bathrooms are indeed usually tile floors or some kind of coated plastic type flooring with the floor designed toward a central or side drain.

Scandinavian residences with tubs most often have rather deep bathtubs -- not all that good for an aging population. But I guess that is why it helps that most such bathtubs are not permanently fixed to the wall and floors.

Mold/mildew is a major problem in many a Scandinavian house -- more frequently than it is in US houses aimed at sort of the same kind of socio-economic demographic range -- but it seems to be more of a problem in relatively younger housing stock than in the oldest housing stock. I'm not sure how much of that is due to a change in construction material and workmanship ability as it is due to the building season getting longer and longer and the rush to go from foundation preparation to final key handover.

I wonder if it's the same phenomenon as in the UK, and a simple lack of ventilation. Newer housing stock is significantly less draughty - great from an environmental/cost point of view in a colder climate, but the ventilation (extractor fans, etc) that gets built in is pathetic - not just in the bathroom, but in the kitchen, and wherever you dry clothes (oh, for the space to put a tumble dryer...)

People are also less willing to air out the house on a regular basis, particularly when it's cold - and the heating is on more than previously. It seems the norm to leave it on overnight - something I wouldn't consider and would have been anathema to my parents, even in a draughty old house where I used to enjoy waking up to the sight of frost on the inside of the windows, and knew the route to walk to the stairs with the hot water pipe running underneath!

A �35, table-top dehumidifier can work wonders. But there still needs to be a certain air flow.

As for the wet rooms - I assume there's some kind of lining? I notice that, at least in the old Danish apartment blocks, they do seem to be all located next to the staircase - perhaps there is some kind of stone base? Certainly in Southern Europe, you often see cold rooms that appear to have concrete or stone floors.

In old Danish apartments, the allowed piping set-up for water is commonly quite restrictive and thus you're often not allowed to have the kitchen and bathroom "out of line" (and wherever you want to have it) from other units in the same building -- no matter how much money you want to spend on a renovation of the apartment. Building codes in Scandinavia are a beast, and yet the problems in term of mold/mildew seem to be worse than ever for newer housing stock than for older housing stock -- despite bathrooms with windows being more common to newer housing stock than older housing stock in the region. Ventilation systems and ventilating practices are definitely part of the issue, but there seems to be more to it than just that.

I've been having some really interesting exposure to renovating/constructing residences in the region, and I must say this: beside the interest rate environment and labor cost environment, regulatory burden is a major reason the housing prices are as high as they are and yet the quantity and quality of the housing stock more questionable. And I include the mold/mildew problem as part of a quality of housing stock issue.

For Danish bathrooms in older apartment blocks, having a concrete/stone/brick base underneath the floor of the wetroom bathrooms wouldn't surprise me. The single bathrooms in many of these places do indeed tend to be close to the stairwell. In older Danish apartments, it's usually the kitchen and bathroom floors that don't squeak as much. Housing on a common budget is often a case of "choose your poison". In this case, it seems to be mold/mildew (in not so old buildings) or squeaky bedroom/living room floors (in old buildings) .

It can go too far the other way... We get brick-and-wood boxes with paper-thin party walls, terrible insulation, and no infrastructure (zero public transport, a few 'strip mall' style shops at best, reactive addition of school places, insufficient parking so cars end up blocking the pavements with nobody to enforce it) - and developers just leaving gardens, common ground, pavements and tarmac unfinished, with councils having little cash to pursue them to get it finished off. Half of the houses are bought as investments.

The location is commonly one that the local authorities don't want to be developed, but they don't have the money or resource to defend legal challenges from developers.

However, deep baths still tend to get included. And we have very restrictive electricity in bathroom regulations!

I imagine that will catch on with budget/lower end hotels in the U.S. and other places to save energy e.g., change all the shower heads to non-tamperable (i.e., no removable flow restrictor - see the hacking the hotel shower thread) to minimize hot water cost.

Is that the same style Ibis uses worldwide? Similar to "cheaper" Japanese hotels?

Could be the way British house are heated which I think is still via hot water radiator? North American houses that have central heating generally use forced air heating which does serve to ventilate the house even if the air doesn't escape. Some places have air exchangers (which also uses heat exchangers to warm up incoming fresh air with warmer outgoing air) to intake new air and exhaust staler air from bathrooms and whenever a certain humidity level is reached.

And extractor fans are said to be designed to be noisy to muffle bathroom noises. I've been criticised by guests for installing more-expensive and effective but deadly-quiet Panasonic fans.

A lot of extractor fans don't work because they don't ... vent outside! Or if they do, they are trying to force air up significant heights and don't have the power to do it.

With in-floor and latent heating, it's said that varying the temperature too much in a given day (or over night) is inefficient. I sort of like the idea of cooling myself as I don't sleep well in warm rooms.

Ah yes, single-pane windows which are very poorly-insulated (as in huge gaps) too.

The trouble with dehumidifiers is that they do suck energy, and become less efficient as ambient air temperature gets colder. They work by cooling a coil (almost like an air conditioner) and humid air drawn through has all the moisture condense on the coil, much like wearing spectacles in a a/c room or car in the tropics and then stepping out into warmer high-humidity environment.

Hopefully built on a plastic or some impermeable pan.

The other consideration is how water is heated.

Not entirely sure how hotel hot water is heated (centrally in a huge boiler/heater, tanks distributed throughout the property, or banks of instant heaters). We've all run into hotels where the water is barely warm if at all and/or take a long time to warm up sufficiently.

Not to mention that Europeans are said to bathe less frequently than North Americans so water usage isn't that much of a cost issue.