You can argue about the purpose of fashion – self-expression or a way to boost sales. One thing is clear, the nature of fashion is that it changes, whether its clothes, furnishings or household appliances. We have all bought clothes that seemed like a good idea at the time but never got worn despite being ‘on trend’. Making the same mistake with designing your home can be a lot more costly. My advice is to look for style and function over fashion.

There will never be a time in your life when you won’t want to bathe or shower. It is possible that water shortages may lead to people reverting to the pre-industrial habit of changing linen undergarments as an alternative to washing their bodies, but I wouldn’t bet on it. So for the foreseeable future, a bath or shower will be an essential fitting in every home.

During the renovation of our home to make it age-friendly we looked at hundreds of products with an eye to how usable they would be in the future and noted that some recent fashions fail the test. There are trends in product design that are nothing to do with how practical the object is. A good example is the free-standing ‘slipper bath’. The original models were produced when hot water plumbing was in its infancy and there were no taps attached to baths. These early versions, one up from a tin bath, had one end lower and often a wide edge providing something to hold on to as you heaved your leg over the side to get in and out.

Slipper baths are all the rage again, possibly replacing the clawfoot, cast iron bath as the latest sanitary ware to have. However many modern versions have dispensed with the low height  (see photo above), presenting hazards to all but the tallest and most athletic of bathers.  Often positioned in the middle of the room  with freestanding taps and some distance from a wall with nothing to hold on to as you get in and out. My suspicion is that once installed these are rarely used and only when someone else is present in the home to provide assistance should an unfortunate bather get into difficulties. It is only a matter of time until a storyline in Casualty features an accident involving such a bath.

So what is the best bathing option for a lifetime home? My conclusion is that an easy access shower is ideal, with overhead and handheld showerheads which can be used by anybody including somebody sitting in a shower chair. If you have space for a bath as well then get one that is shallow and next to a wall, which gives you options for grab rails or retrofitting other equipment.

A shower fitted over the bath may be space-saving but getting in and out if you lose mobility or have poor balance is a challenge. Even short term limitations post-surgery or a broken limb will reveal how impractical these can be. They also come with the need for either a shower curtain around the bath (with their tendency to wrap around  the bather) or a glass shower screen that rarely keeps all the water in the bath.