Most customers who come through the door on Wellington Street still ask for the same thing they’d have asked for five years ago — white tiles, chrome fittings, done. But the trend’s shifted properly this year, and it’s showing up in what people are actually choosing off our display floor: warmer neutrals, clay and terracotta accent tiles, and timber-effect vanity units instead of gloss white everywhere.
The other big shift is wet rooms. We’re fitting a lot more full tanking kits than we were even two years ago — proper liquid membrane over the floor and up the walls, not just a shower tray with a bit of silicone round it. Done properly that means a fall to the drain of at least 1:80, tanked upstands behind any half-height glass, and a TMV3 thermostatic valve on the mixer so the water temperature can’t run away if someone flushes a loo elsewhere in the house.
What’s interesting is that most of our Aldershot and Farnborough customers aren’t ripping the room back to brick to get this look. Keeping the existing footprint — same position for the WC, same run for the waste — is consistently the cheapest way to get a proper finish, because moving a soil pipe is where a bathroom budget disappears fastest. A concealed cistern and a new panel can transform a room without a single pipe run changing.
Lighting’s changed too. We’re selling far more backlit mirrors and LED strip kits for under floating vanity units than we were last year, plus recessed niches built into the tiling itself rather than a shelf stuck on afterwards. It’s a small spec change but it’s the difference between a bathroom that looks like a hotel and one that just looks tiled.
If you’re thinking about updating a bathroom anywhere around Aldershot or Camberley, come and have a look at what’s on our showroom floor or check out grosvenormerchants.co.uk/ — we can talk you through what’s realistic for the space you’ve got.
