Ruth Sleightholme, Decoration Editor
Be careful about shower heights! The best option for a loft conversion shower head will almost certainly be an integrated shower fitting with a vertical shower head that comes down from the ceiling. My personal taste is much more for the exposed shower and in my main bathroom I have an exposed, thermostatic traditional shower set from Lefroy Brooks, and it is honestly one of the most lovely things I ever bought myself. However, when I tried to mimic this (admittedly with a cheaper model) in the loft shower, I realised, after install, that the installers could not install this type of shower head without leaving a clearance of about 10cm from the ceiling. With a ceiling height of only 2m in the little loft shower, this left me with a shower that does not do for even an average-heighted man, let alone a tall one. My scalp skims the shower head! To be honest, I am living with it!, but I wish someone had taken me in hand and just told me to get over myself, and buy a shower which falls from the ceiling rather than projecting from the wall. Besides, if you are building a loft extension, you are probably going to be building the wall and the ceiling in which the shower will be integrated, so it is not technically any more difficult.
I wish I knew how great the pleated-paper integrated blinds from Velux are. I wasted a lot of time trying to find a non-naff window dressing solution for my Velux windows, because I have a more decorative aesthetic, and felt I needed something curtain-y. I was pretty pleased when I discovered Velux’s ‘energy pleated’ paper blinds. The colours are nice, the material paper-y so it doesn’t feel too synthetic, and they are designed in a honeycomb pleated design to be insulating; they are simple to install and lovely and tactile to use when hand-operated (I have a real bug bear about electronically operated things; they always seem designed to frustrate!). To my surprise, I’m sold. We went for Petrol which was more like a bottle green, to go with a colour in my wallpaper; and Light Blue, which worked with a tile scheme in my bathroom.