Kirstie Manning, national specification manager at Wilsonart, explores how, through informed wall surface specification in residential bathrooms, architects can help housing developers to deliver against sustainability targets and avoid escalating landfill taxes.
While the rate of increase has slowed compared to the sharp cost inflation seen between 2021 and 2023, build costs for residential new build developments remain notably high right across the UK. Indeed, brick prices alone are typically anywhere between 20% and 40% higher than they were three years ago, while the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) recently forecast that general building costs are set to increase by roughly 13.1% over the next five years. Adding to the ever-growing costs that developers face, property sale prices have fallen by an average of 6.1% compared with January 2023 levels, placing a significant squeeze on their margins. This is all while they face mounting pressure to meet sustainability targets, and avoid escalating landfill taxes. Naturally, every element of residential construction is under intense scrutiny.
Against this backdrop, architects have a vital role to play in specifying materials that will simultaneously help to avoid costs spiralling on residential housing developments, and which will ensure that environmental goals are achieved. Bathrooms, for example, are among the most expensive rooms in a home on a cost-per-square metre basis, with traditional tiling representing a significant part of this cost. As such, bathroom wall surface specification represents a particularly ripe area for savings to be made.
The true costs of traditional tiling
While traditional bathroom tiling has long been a popular choice, it poses a number of significant challenges from both a sustainability and cost standpoint. For example, as the application of this tiling typically requires water-based grout and adhesive mixes, large amounts of water and waste often get created on site.
The situation can often be exacerbated when construction professionals, eager to be efficient on a project, decide that the quickest and simplest solution to dispose of grout and adhesive residue is pouring it down the drain. However, this ranks among the worst possible methods of disposal, with the potential to clog or damage drains and pipes; an issue new build properties are particularly susceptible to as their foundations continue to settle. Therefore, cutting corners in this way can prove costly to developers, not only from a budgetary perspective, but can also set projects back significantly.
While the mixing process itself is incredibly water intensive, large amounts of water are also wasted when taps are left running for washing tools and other materials after use, serving to add considerably to the overall cost of the project.
Meanwhile, the large amounts of single-use plastic waste, including spacers, wedges, and their packaging that’s created during the installation process, can add to the overall waste. This could result in higher waste management costs in the form of skip hire, transport, and landfill fees.
Production of traditional tiling is itself a highly carbon intensive process, involving thermal treatment of tiles, typically though the use of kilns that burn natural gas, a fossil fuel. When this gas combusts, it produces the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide which is why selecting traditional tiling on bathroom installations is likely to contribute substantially to the overall carbon footprint of a housing project.
Furthermore, bathroom fit-outs can often be delayed by the choice of materials used. With traditional bathroom tiling tending to be particularly heavy, handling and transporting the material to site can pose a significant challenge, especially considering the shortage of skilled tilers available to assist in a sector that is experiencing widespread worker shortages. This can have a huge bearing on a project’s overall carbon emissions and logistical costs, particularly considering the amount of fuel required to complete deliveries.
In this sense, the potential issues, costs, and wastage that comes from specifying traditional tiling on residential bathroom projects becomes clear.
How smart surface specification can overcome these challenges
The role that smart wall surface selection can play in mitigating these challenges cannot be overstated. As such, architects should think about which materials to specify that will contribute positively to a project from both a cost and carbon saving perspective. However, they must strike a careful balance in not sacrificing the performance nor the aesthetics of the spaces they design, so choosing a material that blends these elements with sustainable, cost-effective installation is a vital consideration.
In reducing the level of water waste, as well as the amount of adhesive and grout residue and single-use plastic waste created on site, many architects are discovering the benefits of specifying bathroom wall panels that don’t require traditional grout or adhesive mixing. These panels offer thousands of décor patterns and textures in both matt and glossy finishes, produce far less carbon in their production and installation, and also significantly improve the overall finish of a bathroom space, retaining the ‘day one look’ throughout its entire lifespan.
What’s more bathroom wall panels are generally around 75% lighter than traditional tiles, meaning the carbon footprint – and, therefore, the logistical costs, involved in their transportation – are considerably lower.
In giving these considerations to the types of bathroom wall surfaces used in residential new build properties, architects can help to significantly lower the environmental and financial impacts that the projects they specify for incur.