Cosy Considerations - Your Guide to Bathroom Heating
Now that this late summer has passed and we acclimatise ourselves with the colder months of the year, it’s important to start considering the heating situation in your home before it’s too late. There’s a number of different factors that need to be taken into account when deciding on your bathroom heating. How much space do you have to play with? What is the purpose of your bathroom heating – toasty towels, cosy toes or your very own midwinter ‘Mediterranean’ atmosphere? What is the style of your bathroom? Of course, form and function are equally important, so this handy guide will give you all the information you need to make the right choice, with a splash of design inspiration thrown in for good measure!
Design
One of the first questions you need to ask yourself is one of the more interesting ones to answer: What style of radiator do you want in your bathroom? There is a myriad of designs available these days – spanning from traditional to the contemporary – so let us guide you through our favourites…
Traditional bathroom radiators match perfectly with the more classic bathroom styles. Here, the classy Bisque Balmoral radiator combines both a column radiator and a traditional ball joint style ladder rail – creating the perfect blend of heat output and decadent opulence.
If a sleek and modern design is what you’re going for, then something like Zehnder’s Metropolitan Spa heated ladder rail will likely do the trick. This practical heated towel rail is great for smaller bathrooms as it doesn’t protrude too far from the wall, while providing a sophisticated towel warming solution.
As well as deciding on the style of your radiator, you can also choose from a variety of finishes and materials. Darker colours are very much in at the moment, with matt black, anthracite and volcanic finishes offering stylish additions to neutral bathroom colour schemes. Not only are these radiators beautiful to look at, they also have a higher heat output than polished finishes due to non-reflective surfaces radiating more heat.
The Black Edition range from JIS Europe is a masterclass in how to create stunningly simple, matt black radiators and towel rails that are design statements by their very nature, like the Rye Black Edition heated towel rail seen here:
Function
The most obvious duty of a bathroom radiator is to keep you and your bathroom warm, but when you think about it, they do so much more than just regulate the temperature. The majority of bathrooms these days include heated towel rails or ladder rails, which provide a convenient place for you to hang your towels while simultaneously keeping them, and your bathroom, nice and toasty. Ladder rails are impressively versatile, available in a vast range of sizes, finishes and formats, lending themselves beautifully to any bathroom design.
The Hamlet heated towel rail by Vogue UK is the perfect example of how you can include a stunning radiator in even the smallest of spaces, seen here incorporating the bronze colour scheme used with the mirror and brassware.
With the heating efficacy ultimately being the main point of your bathroom radiator, column radiators consistently offer a suitable solution. These versatile rads can be floor standing – with authentic, welded feet – or wall mounted to save floor space and radiate a more contemporary feel. The choice of size and columns makes these radiators an ideal option for almost any size of bathroom, while the variety of styles, finishes and materials ensure they integrate seamlessly into any décor.
With so many beautiful products on offer, it’s easy to overlook the heat requirement of the room and it’s crucial your chosen product will provide a sufficient amount of heat. The heat output will vary from one product to another and one room to another and is based on a number of factors. There are plenty of simple and free-to-use online calculators on the web, so it’s advisable to match your product to the required output.
Underfloor Heating
A heating solution that is growing in popularity at the moment is underfloor heating. Investing in electric underfloor heating (or behind-the-wall heating) is actually one of the most effective and efficient ways to heat your home, due to the equal convection of heat over the floor area. This makes the system more cost-efficient than a lot of the more conventional bathroom heating solutions, and also frees up wall space.
We’re big fans of Warmup’s innovative 6iE Smart WiFi thermostat – which enables you to remotely control the temperature of your home from a smartphone – and the intuitive 3iE Energy-Monitoring thermostat (pictured below) which comes in a bright array of colours for those who want to add a bit more personality to their heating!
Click here to discover more of our collection of radiators, and don't hesitate to get in touch if there's anything else you'd like to know!
