A bathroom or wet room floor has a waterproof membrane under the finish, and that changes what protection is for. The finish can be replaced; the membrane cannot be repaired without taking the floor up. Anything that punctures it during fitting is a far bigger problem than a scratched tile.
The membrane is the asset
A tanked wet room relies on a continuous membrane, and a nail, a screw or a dropped tool through it means opening the floor up. That makes impact protection genuinely important in a way it is not on a bedroom floor – and it makes sharp debris, rather than abrasion, the thing to protect against.
First fill always leaks
Plumbing connections leak on first fill. It is normal and it happens onto the finished floor. An impermeable cover with a turned-up edge around the units and the pipe runs contains it; a flat cover lets it travel to the edges and under the skirting, where it does the real damage. The turned-up edge is the whole specification in a wet room.
Silicone and solvent
Silicone, solvent cleaners and some adhesive removers attack lacquer, vinyl and stone. They get used in quantity in a bathroom and they get set down on the floor. Where the floor outside the wet room is a sensitive finish, the junction needs covering, because drips travel.
Small room, concentrated traffic
A bathroom is a few square metres and everything happens in it. The traffic per square metre is high, the working space is tight, and things get set down on the floor because there is nowhere else. That argues for the heaviest cover in the room, in one piece, rather than panels laid to fit.
Where the floor is being tiled after
In a lot of bathrooms the sequence is tank, then fit, then tile – in which case the finished floor does not exist yet and the protection is only about the membrane. That is a different and cheaper job. Ask which sequence is running before specifying, because the two cases need completely different products.
The tray and the first shower
A shower tray gets filled and tested, and water gets splashed over the edge onto the floor. On a tiled wet room that water goes into the grout and, if the tanking is not perfect, under it. Keep the cover with the turned-up edge in place through testing rather than removing it when the fitting is finished – the testing phase is when the water happens.
The doorway and the wet room threshold
A wet room usually has a level-access threshold or a very low one, and it is the point where water leaves the room. Covering it stops the water leaving, which is the opposite of what the detail is for. Keep the threshold clear and put a sacrificial absorbent strip just outside it instead – the water should get out and be caught, not held in.
Ventilation during fitting
A small room with wet trades and a cover on the floor dries slowly, and silicone and grout cure badly in a damp enclosed space. Keeping a window open or a fan running costs nothing and it improves the standard of the finished work as well as protecting the floor. Worth specifying alongside the protection rather than separately.
A PP honeycomb panel takes the impact on the membrane, and an impermeable cover with a turned-up edge takes the water – they are two jobs and one product rarely does both. The wider room is covered in protecting floors during kitchen and bathroom fitting. Corrugated PP sheet is the right answer only where the floor is already tiled.
What we can do
We supply impermeable PP protection with a turned-up edge for wet rooms and rigid honeycomb panels where the membrane needs impact protection. Tell us the sequence and what is being fitted, and we will specify for the membrane rather than for the finish – those are not the same job.