Across thousands of older homes in Los Angeles, the main bathroom measures roughly five feet by eight. A sixty inch tub fills the back wall, and a showerhead and a sliding glass door are usually mounted above it. When a Los Angeles bathroom remodel finally gets underway in a room like that, the first big decision is almost always the same one. Do you keep the tub, or tear it out for a walk-in shower? SoCal Kitchen & Bath Remodeling Inc. has photographed plenty of rooms that went each way. Its galleries show frameless glass showers with tiled benches and recessed niches, along with rooms built around freestanding tubs. The company gives free estimates in English or Spanish, and you can start one by texting a few photos of the room. It works from Whittier through the South Bay and across Los Angeles.
Neither choice is right for every home. The better way to decide is to think about who actually uses the room, and what each of those people needs from it.
The Person Who Showers Every Morning
For most adults, the daily routine is a shower, not a bath. A tub with a shower over it asks them to step over a fourteen inch wall every day. It also gives them a standing area that curves up at the edges and a curtain or slider that never fully keeps the water in.
A walk-in shower built in the same sixty inch alcove feels larger even though it takes up the same footprint. Removing the tub gains room in several ways.
- The full length of the alcove becomes standing space, with no curved tub walls taking up the edges.
- There is room for a built-in bench at one end and a recessed niche for bottles at the other.
- A fixed glass panel or a hinged frameless door can replace the slider and its grimy bottom track.
- A handheld shower on a slide bar can sit next to the main head, which makes rinsing off and cleaning the shower easier.
For the person who never takes baths, this alone usually settles it.
The Kids Who Still Need a Bath
Small children change the decision. Bathing a toddler in a walk-in shower is possible, but anyone who has tried it knows it isn’t easy. If this is the only bathroom in the house and young kids live there, removing the tub can make daily life harder for years.
Planned family growth matters too. A walk-in shower that suits two adults today may feel like a mistake in three years. Families in that position often keep the tub but upgrade everything around it. That means a deeper soaking model or a cast iron tub, a better tile surround, a proper glass panel, and a pressure balancing valve so the water temperature doesn’t spike when someone flushes the toilet.
The Parent Who May Move In Someday
For older adults, the comparison flips. Stepping over a tub wall is one of the most common places for a fall at home. A shower with a low curb or no curb at all, a bench at sitting height and a handheld head can let someone keep bathing on their own for years longer.
Even a homeowner in their forties can plan for this without making the room look clinical. Ask the contractor to add wood blocking inside the shower walls during the remodel. That way, grab bars can be screwed in securely later without opening the tile. Blocking costs very little while the walls are open and a great deal once the tile is finished.
A fully curbless shower takes more work than it looks. The floor under the shower has to be lowered so water drains toward the shower drain instead of spreading across the bathroom. On a house with a raised wood floor, that can mean adjusting the framing. On a slab, it often means cutting into concrete. In most cases, a low curb gets you most of the accessibility for much less construction.
The Next Buyer Walking Through
Resale is where homeowners worry most, and the answer depends on the house. Many real estate agents suggest that a home keep at least one bathtub, because families with young children will look for one. In a house with two or more bathrooms, turning the main bathroom’s tub into a large walk-in shower is usually seen as an upgrade, as long as a tub remains in the hall bathroom. In a house with only one bathroom, removing the only tub can narrow the pool of interested buyers.
Quality counts for more than the fixture choice. Buyers notice tile that is cracked, grout lines that wander, and glass that drips onto the floor. A well built shower or tub surround sells better than a poorly built version of either one.
The Water Bill and the Water Heater
California limits new showerheads to 1.8 gallons per minute. An eight minute shower therefore uses about fifteen gallons of water. Filling a standard tub to a comfortable depth can take more than twice that, and a deep soaking tub can strain an older forty gallon water heater. Choosing a showerhead with the EPA’s WaterSense label gives you a low flow fixture that has been independently tested for spray coverage and force, so the low flow rate doesn’t mean a weak shower.
The Crew Doing the Work
From a construction point of view, the two options differ more than most people expect. Replacing a tub with another tub keeps the drain in the same place and usually reuses the old valve location. Converting to a shower involves more steps. The crew moves or replaces the drain, builds a shower pan sloped toward that drain at about a quarter inch per foot, and waterproofs the floor and walls with a continuous membrane before any tile goes on. That waterproofing is the part of a remodel nobody sees, and it decides whether the bathroom lasts twenty years or starts leaking into the floor in three. In most parts of Los Angeles County, moving plumbing like this requires a permit and an inspection, and a contractor who includes both in the bid is planning to do the job properly.
A Middle Path Worth Considering
Some homeowners split the difference. In a two bathroom house, the main bathroom gets the walk-in shower and the hall bathroom keeps a refreshed tub. In a slightly larger main bathroom, a wet room layout puts a freestanding tub inside the glass enclosure next to the shower, so both share one waterproofed zone and one drain.
In the end, the right choice depends on who will use the bathroom over the next ten years more than on what’s in style. Decide based on that, and either a tub or a walk-in shower will suit the house.
