Think Twice Before Hopping On This Expensive Shower Trend

If there is one room in the home more familiar with keeping up with trends than others, it's definitely the bathroom. While some design trends stick around for years, others come and go. And there's one that has particularly started gaining popularity that you should think twice before incorporating into your own home. Full stone slabs for shower walls have become all the rage in recent years. These large, seamless slabs of marble, quartz, and porcelain use continuous pieces of stone to cover the walls of your shower to provide an uninterrupted surface.

Unlike traditional tile showers that are made up of individual pieces, full slabs come with minimal grout lines and an overall look that many homeowners think gives their walk-in showers a deluxe upgrade. But while this design trend may promise a luxurious and modern look, it also comes with a hefty price tag as well as some other downsides, leaving us wondering if it is worth all the hype. From expensive materials to tricky installation and potential repair nightmares, there are several factors you might want to consider before jumping on this bandwagon. When it comes to how much it actually costs to renovate a bathroom, installing a new shower can be a major part of the project. And the expense of the full slab shower trend may just be the thing to put you over budget.

Stone slabs are significantly more expensive than traditional tile or other commonly used bathroom materials, averaging anywhere from $55 to $125 per square foot for just porcelain slabs alone. Once you get into stone materials, it can cost you up to $120 per square foot for something like quartz. For more luxurious stones like marble, you can expect to pay up $250 per square foot for the material alone. None of this includes the cost of transporting and installing these large pieces of stone. Full slabs are massive and require highly trained professionals who know how to deal with pieces that can weigh up to 700 pounds each. 

Everything from transporting them to your home to maneuvering them through tight spaces is challenging, especially since they can be fragile and prone to cracking, chipping, or even breaking during transport. This can all potentially require specialized equipment and additional work, which makes the entire process infinitely more labor-intensive. Hiring a professional may cost you anywhere from $50 to $100 an hour. When you take into consideration the overall size and complexity of the installation, your new full slab shower can set you back $6,000 or more. That's quite a hefty price tag, especially when you find out that a traditional tile job can cost as little as $1800, and materials for acrylic shower walls can range from just $300 to $1500 — depending on the size of your shower.

You can find information on blogs and commercial sites praising full slab showers as easy to care for because of their smooth, grout-free surfaces. That would mean they come with no pesky build up or hard-to-remove mold in the crevices or along the grout lines. But is that enough to make them worth the other maintenance issues? A material like porcelain is fragile and can form small chips or cracks easily from use, especially with thinner slabs. This could lead to pricey repairs in the long run, potentially costing you anywhere from $200 to $500 each time — and in more extreme cases, you could end up having to replace the entire slab. 

Natural stone is known to be more durable, but there are also long-term maintenance issues to consider. Materials like marble and quartz are porous by nature and require careful upkeep. They need to be sealed regularly to prevent water damage, algae development, or general discoloration. How frequently you need to seal stone depends entirely on the type of material. Marble, for example, needs to be sealed every six months to properly protect it. You also need to be careful of the products you are using on these more luxurious materials because acidic cleaners that contain bleach or vinegar can damage or etch the stone's surface. With the concerns like cost and overall maintenance associated with the full slab shower trend, you might be better off sticking to some bathroom decorating ideas you can do on a budget.