A new en-suite, sorted

There are two very different jobs hiding behind the word en-suite. Refitting an existing one is a lot like any bathroom refit: the supplies, waste and fan are already there, so it's about the layout, the finish and fixing whatever the last installer got wrong. That's often a tired shower tray, a fan that never worked, or silicone that's been black for years.

Building a new en-suite from scratch is a bigger project. You're creating a wet room inside a bedroom, so we have to find a route for the waste, bring in hot and cold supplies, build stud walls if the room is being split, and get the extraction outside. It's very doable in most houses. It just needs planning before anyone buys a basin.

The toilet is the fussy one. It needs a large-bore waste pipe with a steady fall all the way to the soil stack, and that pipe can't run uphill or take a long detour. So where your en-suite can go is usually decided by where the soil stack is. In many Southside houses it runs down the outside wall at the back, and in tenements there's usually a shared stack serving several flats. An en-suite on the same wall, or close to it, is straightforward. One on the far side of the house needs more thought.

Where a gravity route really isn't possible, a small pumped system (often called a macerator) can move waste through a narrower pipe. They work, but they're noisier and need looking after, so we treat them as a last resort, not a shortcut. Showers and basins are much more flexible, as their smaller waste pipes can run further. Part of the survey is working out which layout gives you the most space with the simplest drainage.

Most en-suites we're asked about are carved from the corner of a bedroom or from a box room next door. A few layouts crop up again and again. The simplest puts the toilet and basin on one wall and a shower across the end. Where space is really tight, a corner quadrant shower, a short-projection toilet and a compact basin can fit into a surprisingly small footprint. A walk-in shower with a fixed screen can make a narrow room feel far less boxed-in.

Doors matter more than people expect. An inward-opening door can eat a fifth of the floor, so we'll often suggest a sliding pocket door or an outward-opening one. Wall-hung toilets and basins with concealed cisterns free up floor space and make cleaning easier. A mirrored cabinet recessed into a stud wall gives you storage without anything sticking out.

An en-suite opens straight onto the room where you sleep, so moisture and noise matter more than in a main bathroom. A new shower room needs mechanical extraction, meaning a proper extractor fan ducted to the outside, not into the loft. We'll plan the fan and ducting as part of the job, with a quiet model and an overrun timer so it clears the steam after you've gone. Any electrical work, including the fan, lighting and shaver socket, has to meet the wiring regulations for bathrooms and is done by a qualified electrician.

For noise, packing stud walls with acoustic insulation and choosing a quiet-flush cistern makes a real difference to whoever is still asleep. It's a small extra cost at build stage and very hard to add later.

Upstairs en-suites sometimes fall down on pressure, especially in older houses fed from a tank in the roof space. We test your supply at the survey. If you're on a combi boiler we check it can run the en-suite shower while someone else runs a tap. If the pressure is poor, we'll recommend a shower that works well with what you've got, which is sometimes an electric shower and sometimes a pumped system.