BATHROOM ACCESSORIES

What to Look For in Bathroom Accessories

Buy the set, not the piece. Finishes drift between production runs and between brands, so a chrome towel rail bought two years after the ring beside it will usually read as slightly off. Work out the full list for the room first, then order it in one go: towel rings, double towel rails and toilet roll holders and a soap holder together.

Match the bathroom accessories to the tap, not to the tiles. The tap is the piece your eye reads as the reference finish, so if the tap is brushed nickel, the rails and holders should follow it. Mixing finishes can work, but it has to look deliberate, which usually means one finish for everything that carries water and one for everything else. Our bathroom taps and mixers are the place to start.

Material decides how long it lasts. In a wet bathroom the failure point is almost never the visible surface. It is the base metal at the wall fixing, where water wicks in behind the flange and corrodes it from the inside. That is why a rail that still looks perfect can pull out of the wall. Ask what the body and the fixing plate are made of, not just what the coating is.

Then check the lengths. Towel rails come in more than one size, and a rail that is too long for the wall between the door and the basin is one of the most common returns.

Mounting, Heights and Getting the Fixings Right

Plan where the bathroom accessories go before the tiler starts. The fixing holes go through the tile face, so you want them landing in the middle of a tile rather than on a grout line or at an edge, where the tile is most likely to crack. Marking positions on the wall before tiling takes ten minutes and saves a chipped tile.

Heights that work in most homes: a toilet roll holder within easy reach beside the water closet and slightly forward of it; a towel ring next to the basin rather than above it, so drips land on the floor and not on the counter; a bath towel rail on the dry side of the room where it will not get sprayed; a robe hook out of the door swing.

Drill on the slowest setting with hammer action off, through masking tape, using a tile bit. Hammer action on a glazed tile is how the star-shaped crack appears.

Use the right plug for what is behind the tile. Solid brick or concrete takes a standard plug. A dry wall or a false wall over a concealed cistern needs a cavity fixing rated for the load, because a wet towel on a rail weighs more than people assume.

Silicone the top edge of a wall flange so water runs off it instead of sitting behind it. Mirrors and mirror cabinets follow the same rules.