Where the shower drain goes decides everything
Of all the decisions in a bathroom, this is the one that's hardest to see and hardest to undo. The drain is a hole in the floor. Once it's cut, the concrete is poured or the pan is set, and the shower is whatever the drain lets it be for as long as the room exists.
Here's what the drain decides, what to ask for, and the week it closes.
What the drain decides
Whether there's a step. A shower floor has to slope to the drain so water leaves. If the drain sits in the middle of a square pan, the floor slopes in from all four sides, and a curb around the edge holds the water in. That curb is the step. To have no step, the floor has to slope in one direction, from the bathroom toward a drain along the far wall, and the whole shower floor has to sit a little lower than the room, or the room has to be built up to meet it. That's decided by where the drain is and how the floor is framed under it, and it's decided before the plumber arrives.
Where you can sit. A built-in bench or a fold-down seat goes on a wall, and the drain and the slope have to work around it so water doesn't pool under you. Decide the seat and the drain together.
Where the controls go. The valve, the handle you turn, doesn't have to be under the shower head. It can be near the entrance, so you reach in and turn the water on before you step under it, and it can be at a height you can reach seated. The published standard puts shower controls between 38 and 48 inches off the floor (STD). That's a plumbing rough-in decision, the same week as the drain.
What the shower can become later. A center drain with a curb can be retiled, refitted and re-doored, but it can't become step-free without cutting the floor out. A drain along the wall, with the floor sloped toward it, can carry a curb now if you want one, and lose it later without touching the plumbing. One of these keeps the choice open. The other closes it.
What to ask for
If you're rebuilding the shower and there's any chance a body in the house will need to walk or roll straight in, ask for:
A linear drain along the wall opposite the entrance, so the floor slopes one way.
A floor built for no curb, which in an existing house means asking the contractor how the floor under the shower would be lowered or the room raised, and what that costs. In a new build it's a line on the plan.
The valve near the entrance, not under the head, within the 38-to-48-inch range.
A handheld shower head on a slide bar, so the height changes without tools, and it reaches you sitting down.
Wood behind the walls where a seat and a grab bar will go, put in the same week the walls are open.
The week it closes
The plumber roughs in the drain and the valve after the floor is framed and before anything is poured, tiled or closed. It's one visit, usually early in the job. Everything above is a conversation before that visit, and most of it changes the price very little; a linear drain costs more than a center drain, and the floor work is the real variable in an old house.
After that visit, the drain is where it is. Moving it means opening the floor, and in a bathroom on an upper floor, opening the ceiling of the room below.
Same shower. Different week.
If the shower's already built
Then the drain has decided, and the question is what you can still change. A handheld head on a slide bar screws onto the existing pipe. A shower chair goes in without touching anything. A bar goes into wood if there's wood, and into a specialist anchor if there isn't, at a cost. The curb stays, and the honest answer is that a bench over the curb, or a bathroom on another floor, is what you're choosing between. Knowing that now is better than finding out with the tile already on.
The list this belongs to
The drain is one of the fifteen things that disappear behind the drywall, and the free guide, The Decisions Your Renovation Makes Without You, lists the rest by the week they close. Short, large print. Sign up and the download is yours.
