Tissino's Richard Eaton: The shower tray has evolved – but has the way we specify it?

Richard Eaton, product development category manager at Tissino, believes it's time to place more importance on one of the hardest working products in the bathroom.

There are certain bathroom products we instinctively spend time specifying. We debate the finish of brassware, compare furniture colours, consider the proportions of a bath and look carefully at how surfaces work together across the room.

The shower tray, by comparison, is still too often treated as something to resolve later. That no longer reflects the category.

Shower trays have evolved significantly over the past decade. Surface, colour, texture, profile, drainage and waste design can all influence how a showering space looks and feels, while anti-slip performance, maintenance, durability and installation remain just as important. The products have moved on. The way we specify them has not always kept pace.

We have allowed one of the hardest-working surfaces in the bathroom to become a last-minute decision, and that increasingly feels out of step with the way the rest of the room is designed.

Customers are much more conscious of cohesion now. Furniture, brassware, tiles and sanitaryware are expected to relate to one another rather than feel like a collection of individual choices. The shower floor should sit within that thinking too.

Sometimes a smooth white tray that disappears quietly into the scheme will be exactly right. Elsewhere, a warmer neutral may sit more naturally alongside stone-effect surfaces or tonal furniture. Texture, profile and integrated drainage can also give a larger showering area a more architectural quality.

That does not mean the shower tray needs to become the focal point. Good bathroom design relies just as much on the elements that support the scheme as those that lead it. A tray can be visually quiet and still be very deliberately specified.

The growth of the wet room makes that distinction particularly important. Wet rooms can be an excellent solution and, in the right project, create a beautifully resolved space. But tray-free design has increasingly become associated with a more premium or sophisticated bathroom, when in reality the best solution should be determined by the property, installation and customer.

A modern low-profile tray can create a similarly clean transition while providing a clearly defined showering zone and a solution that is straightforward to specify, install and maintain.

Neither approach is inherently better. The important thing is that the decision is made for the right reasons. That is also where the independent showroom has real value.

Online, customers can compare dozens of trays with identical dimensions in a matter of minutes. What is much harder to understand from a product listing is the difference those products will make once they are installed.

A good specification conversation considers the household, the level of use, maintenance expectations, safety underfoot, the surrounding finishes and the practical requirements of the installation.

That takes the shower tray beyond a dimension on a plan and turns it into part of the complete bathroom specification. It is also why greater product choice needs to be matched by better explanation.

Manufacturers cannot simply add more sizes, surfaces and finishes and expect that complexity to translate automatically into value for retailers or customers. The responsibility is to make those differences meaningful, to provide clear technical information and to develop products around genuine project requirements rather than range expansion for its own sake.

At Tissino, we have increased our own focus on shower trays because we believe the category deserves greater consideration. The goal is not to make the shower tray the most exciting product in the bathroom. It is simply to stop treating it as one of the last.