The comfort trade-off nobody mentions in wet rooms

You notice it in the first week, usually with bare feet. Wet room heating can make a sleek, open shower feel genuinely luxurious, but it also changes how heat behaves in the space - and heat loss is the quiet bill nobody talks about when they’re choosing tiles and drains. If you want comfort that lasts longer than the first “wow”, it’s worth knowing what you’re trading.

The installer finishes, the grout dries, and the room looks like a boutique hotel. Then you step in on a cold morning, water hissing, and the air feels… fine. Not warm. Not cosy. Just a little bigger than it used to be, and somehow harder to heat.

Why wet rooms feel colder than they look

A wet room is basically an invitation for warmth to roam. You’ve removed the barrier of a shower tray and often the enclosure too, which means steam and warm air don’t stay politely in one corner. They spread, hit colder surfaces, and cool down fast.

Then there’s the floor. Tiles are honest: they take heat away from you quickly when they’re cold, and they show you every degree of that truth through your feet. So people add underfloor heating, feel the initial relief, and assume the rest of the room will follow. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn’t.

Air temperature and surface temperature are different kinds of comfort. A wet room can have a warm floor and still feel chilly if the walls, glazing, and the air itself are losing heat faster than your system can replace it.

The comfort trade-off: quick dry-out versus “stay warm”

Wet rooms are brilliant at one thing: drying out. With good ventilation, water clears, humidity drops, and the space stays cleaner. The trade-off is that the same airflow that protects your grout can also steal your warmth.

Here’s the pattern most people bump into:

• You boost extraction so mirrors clear and mould doesn’t start.
• The room dries faster, which is a win.
• But that moving air pulls heat out, especially right after a shower when you’re wet and your skin is doing its own evaporative cooling.

It’s not that ventilation is “bad”. It’s that comfort in a wet room is a three-way negotiation between air movement, surface warmth, and how quickly the space leaks heat to the rest of the house (or straight outdoors).

“The room isn’t cold,” a heating engineer told me. “It’s just losing the argument faster than your heater can talk.”

Where the heat actually goes (and why it matters)

Think of heat loss in a wet room as a set of open tabs. You might only notice one, but you pay for all of them.

The usual culprits:

• External walls and poor insulation: a tiled external wall can feel like a cold drink against your shoulder.
• Big glazing: windows look lovely; they also radiate cold back into the room.
• Extract fans: necessary, but they can move a lot of warmed air out quickly.
• Open doorways: without an enclosure, warm air drifts straight into cooler circulation spaces.
• Uninsulated floors (especially over voids): underfloor heating works, but it works harder when the heat is heading down as well as up.

A wet room asks more of your heating system because the surfaces are often more conductive (tile, stone, glass) and the room is designed to move moisture out. That’s comfort and building health pulling in opposite directions.

A simple way to plan wet room heating without regret

You don’t need to become a thermal engineer. You just need to plan for how you’ll use the room, not how it looks on a mood board.

1. Decide what “comfort” means for you. Warm feet? Warm air? A towel that feels like it’s been hugged?
2. Choose a “fast” heat and a “steady” heat. Underfloor heating is steady. A properly sized towel radiator or panel heater is fast.
3. Treat ventilation as part of the heating design. A good fan is non-negotiable; the trick is control and timing.
4. Warm the surfaces, not just the air. Cold walls and glass will keep stealing comfort even if your thermostat says 22°C.
5. Assume the room needs more output than a standard bathroom. Open showers and external walls change the maths.

Let’s be honest: most people pick the tiles, then squeeze the heating into whatever space is left. It’s backwards, and wet rooms punish that more than most rooms do.

Practical fixes that feel better than turning the thermostat up

• Insulate under the floor heating properly (especially on concrete slabs or suspended floors).
• Add a secondary heat source for the “getting out of the shower” moment.
• Use a timer or smart control so the room is warm before you step in, not while you’re already shivering.
• Pick a fan with humidity sensing and overrun control, so it clears moisture without running at full tilt all day.
• Consider a small screened area (even a partial glass panel) if the room is large; it can reduce drafts without ruining the wet-room feel.

None of this is about making the room tropical. It’s about removing that specific kind of cold that arrives when you’re wet, barefoot, and the air is moving.

The version of “luxury” that actually lasts

A wet room can be a joy if it’s warm in the right ways. The overlooked trade-off is that dryness and openness often increase heat loss, so comfort becomes less about one big heater and more about a system that’s timed, balanced, and surface-aware.

If you want the hotel feeling at home, don’t just ask, “Will it heat the room?”. Ask, “Will it keep me comfortable at the exact moment I need it most - and still dry out properly afterwards?”

Point clé	Détail	Intérêt pour le lecteur
Openness changes comfort	Warm air and steam spread, then cool quickly	Explains why wet rooms feel chilly
Heat loss is multi-source	Walls, glazing, floors, extraction, doorways	Helps you target the real problem
Two-speed heating works best	Steady underfloor + fast top-up heat	Comfort when stepping out of the shower

FAQ:

• Do I need underfloor heating in a wet room? Not always, but it’s one of the best ways to keep tile surfaces comfortable. Many people still add a second heat source for quicker “instant warmth”.
• Does stronger ventilation always make it colder? It can, because it removes warm air. The goal is controlled ventilation (humidity sensing, sensible overrun), not weak ventilation.
• Why does the thermostat say it’s warm but I feel cold? Cold surfaces (tile, glass, external walls) pull heat from your body and can make the room feel cooler than the air temperature suggests.
• Can a towel radiator heat the whole wet room? Sometimes in small, well-insulated spaces. In larger or more exposed wet rooms, it’s better as a fast top-up alongside underfloor heating.
• What’s the most common planning mistake? Treating heating and ventilation as separate choices. In a wet room, they’re a single comfort system whether you like it or not.