DIY Network

Bathrooms: Lighting and Flooring From "Blueprint for Home Building" episode DBHB-207

Figure A

In the previous three segments of this episode, host Jeff Wilson has discussed the sinks, vanities, toilets, cabinets and other features for your new home's bathrooms, and in this final segment he talks about the lighting and flooring, which ensure safety in the bathroom.

Lighting Your Bathroom

One of the pitfalls with lighting is people think they're just illuminating a room. You should think more along the lines of "painting the room with light."

There are a lot of demands on good lighting in the bathroom because of the slippery surfaces, splashing, etc. You need a good level of ambient illumination for safety reasons. Good, effective lighting in the bathroom is broken down into a few different components:

• General illumination is the idea that you're trying to spread light evenly over the room so that no matter where you're standing, it's even. During the planning phase of your home, consider using a skylight (figure A) as an ambient light source in your bathroom.

  The skylight in the bathroom can be an excellent source of light if you've got light colored surfaces.

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Figure B

• Mood lights around the bathtub or vanity can work well. Some homeowners are bringing lamps and other features from the other rooms in the home "into" the bathroom. With a dimmer switch, lamps can be a great enhancement to any bathroom (figure B). You can even use different bulbs and different hues to help set the mood.

• Specific area lighting can bring focus where it's needed most. For example, you can put a center light over a shower area. And it would benefit any homeowners, when designing the lighting for their bathroom, to find a way to illuminate from an independent switch to save energy -- so when you take a shower or bath you only need to turn on that specific light source.

Constructive Advice: Theatrical lighting over the sink and counter is ideal.

Flooring

You want to keep in mind that whatever type of flooring you choose for your bathroom, there will be loads of germs in there -- and there aren't any hiding places for germs. You want to make sure the floor can handle water exposure and is slip resistant.

Ceramic tile (figure C) is a good choice because it's easy to clean -- or sheet vinyl without seams is great. Stay away from vinyl tile that has space between for germs to multiply.

Wall tile (figure D) is different from floor tile. A lot of glossy tile in use now is glossy and is designed that way for a purpose -- to repel soap scum. A floor tile is specifically designed with more of a texture to prevent slippage.

Another good floor choice for bathrooms, believe it or not, is linoleum due to the variety of good choices in today's marketplace. Linoleum works well because of the containment of water. There's little seepage into a lower floor with linoleum.

Another factor to consider with your bathroom flooring is comfort. A radiant-heat flooring system (figure E) warms up your feet. This is a system that pumps hot water via tubes that are installed underneath your finished floor, and it's thermostatically controlled from within the room. This system is easy to deal with, extremely comfortable and a perfect even heat source for the room.

Figure C

Figure D

Figure E

For more information on your home's bathrooms, check out our Home IQ online package.

In the next episode of Blueprint for Home Building the focus is on the finishing touches a homeowners can do to really personalize their homes.

Next: Bathroom Safety

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