Like many home appliances and water-related hardware, there are a whole slew of little things to consider while you’re shopping around. Many of these factors are easy to forget when you’re in the midst of a long shopping expedition, so it helps to have someone guide you through the process, and that’s exactly what I want to achieve with this article, covering the few most important things to consider when you’re comparing shower sets. I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed with the decision, so I’m going to break things down into two broad categories, aesthetic and practical.
Before you start, let me potentially save you some time: If you want to avoid lots of careful consideration about issues like style, color, and shape, then by all means skip to the section about practical considerations. If you even want to skip that stuff and go right to my recommendation for “safe” features to look for in a shower set, then go ahead and skip right to the conclusion.
2 Major Aesthetic Considerations
Perhaps the most obvious aesthetic concern is color, a quality that can make or break the look of a bathroom. There’s little use in purchasing a high quality shower set, only to be constantly annoyed at how it clashes with your bathroom’s color scheme. Most of these products feature color schemes which blend pretty well with just about any environment, but some shower sets go outside of the normal comfort zone to explore some truly wacky colors. Try to find some pictures of various products installed in typical bathroom setups so that you can get an idea of how the product will blend with your own surroundings.
The second item on the list of aesthetic choices is shape. Generally, most shower sets will be either angular or rounded. Take a quick look around your bathroom: Are you seeing a pattern which sways heavily toward either sharp angles or flowing curves? If there is no obvious pattern, then simply consider which look would fit most harmoniously in the room. Also, consider playing with contrasting ideas. If there are a lot of dark, sharp angles in the bathroom, you might find a lof of success going with a shower that that is light colored and curvy. On the other side of the token, you might try playing a square shower head again an otherwise curvy room.
Some Practical Considerations
In the realm of practicality, perhaps the most obvious thing to start with is material. Some cheaper shower sets will include plastic hardware, and this can be either good or bad depending on your perspective. On one hand, plastic doesn’t rust, so you will not have to worry about inexpensive metal parts falling prey to the power of oxidation. On the other hand, plastic is fragile and prone to breakage, especially in cheaper products.
One thing to watch out for is a shower set which includes parts that are predominantly made from durable metal, but also including adapters that are made from plastic. Although this may sound like a nice compromise between price and quality, the reality is that these plastic adapters can easily strip after just a few uses, rendering all that fancy hardware completely useless. I’ve read enough reports from unhappy consumers who ran into this issue very shortly after installing their shower sets, forcing them to make compromises like taking a bath instead of a shower, for example. For this reason, I highly recommend purchasing a bath shower set that only includes the highest quality components. This is one of those areas where you really do get what you pay for! Most people will benefit most from a chrome shower set since that material combines high durability with excellent rust resistance.
Another practical issue is whether you will need a hand shower set or one that remains stationary on the bathroom wall. Each design has its advantages. The more typical, static design has the advantage of sturdiness. These shower sets are very unlikely to accidentally shift while you are trying to take a shower. Hand shower sets, on the other hand, are often very prone to accidental movement. However, the advantage to the hand sets is obviously the fact that you can unhook the shower head from the wall in order to have more control over where the water stream is hitting you. This is especially nice when paired with a high pressure shower head, or even a dual shower head, ensuring a very thorough shower!
Lastly, If you plan on using the shower head which comes with the set, then be sure to research what features you will be getting. This applies doubly for people with large families, since more users means that everyone will have different preferences. Ultimately, this means you should be looking for a shower head with multiple spray patterns, covering a wide assortment of coverage areas. Everything from highly focused, pulsating streams of water all the way up to wide fan patterns.
Conclusion
If you want the choice to be easy, I would recommend going with a neutrally colored, chrome bath shower set. Most bathrooms that I’ve been in heavily favor curvy hardware over the angular products, so that’s the way to go if you want to dispense with all the “standing around and looking at your bathroom” stuff. This is ultimately going to come down to your individual personality; some people are extremely sensitive to interior decoration/design decisions, while others just want to get it over with. I have personally fallen into both camps in the past, so I can sympathize with you either way! I hope this guide has helped you frame the basic questions in your mind so that you’re better able to zero in on the perfect shower set for your bathroom. If you want any specific product recommendations, I invite you to use the contact form in the top menu of the site. I’m always happy to help my readers with a little research.
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