Replacing a bathtub with a walk-in shower on the Côte d'Azur

Parents washing a toddler stop kneeling over a hard rim. Anyone who has caught a shin on the edge of a bath, or stepped over it with wet feet, loses that hazard. Some owners make the change in their fifties, while it's still a choice.

French firms sell it as a douche à l'italienne (a tiled walk-in shower). The floor of the shower is tiled like the rest of the room and slopes gently to a drain, usually with one fixed glass panel and no door. A wet room is the fully level version: the whole bathroom floor is waterproofed and you walk into the shower without crossing any edge at all.

If the change is about reduced mobility, our accessible bathroom guide covers grab rails, seats and MaPrimeAdapt' (the state grant for adapting a home to old age or disability). That grant lists the bath-to-shower swap, but only for a principal residence and within income limits.

Your bathroom floor sits on a concrete slab, and in a copropriété (the building's co-ownership) the slab belongs to the building. French law presumes the structure is a common part unless the building's own rules say otherwise. Cutting into it is therefore the other owners' decision, taken by a vote at the AG (the owners' general meeting), usually after an engineer has studied it. The syndic (the building's managing agent) can't authorise it alone.

Above the slab there is often a layer of screed, and that layer is sometimes a private part. A shallow recess might then be possible without touching the structure. It depends on the règlement de copropriété (the building's rulebook) and on how thick the screed really is, so don't take it on trust. Ask the fitter whether the recess cuts only the screed or the slab itself, and who has checked.

The same vote applies if the new shower has to connect to the shared soil stack in a new place. A shower that reuses the bath's waste and stays above the slab normally needs no vote.

The wiring zones move. French rules set safety zones round any bath or shower, and a shower with no tray edge has a wider zone than the bath it replaces. A light, switch, socket or heated towel rail that was fine beside the bath may sit inside the zone afterwards. Ask the electrician to re-check every fitting near the new shower and confirm it in writing. The general rules are on our page about NF C 15-100, the French wiring standard.

Steam spreads further too. An open shower with one glass panel and no roof puts more damp air into the room than a bath with a curtain. The Alpes-Maritimes health rules expect every shower room to be ventilated. One with an opening window needs a vent high on the wall. One without a window needs an air inlet plus extraction through a duct or a fan. Keep the extraction fan or VMC (mechanical ventilation) on the devis.

Then there's the water itself. Tap water on this coast is hard, and limescale shows first on a frameless glass panel and in the grout lines of a tiled floor. An anti-scale coating on the glass and the fittings makes them easier to wipe clean, so ask whether it's included. More on calcaire (limescale) is on our bathroom renovation page.

The signed devis is the contract, so anything you agreed by phone has to appear on it. The floor work should say whether it's a recess or a tray, with the step height in centimetres. The floor and wall membranes should each have a line of their own, as should the glass panel, the electrical re-check and the fan.

On TVA (French VAT), expect 10% for the whole job in a home over two years old, provided the firm supplies and fits everything. Some sellers suggest 5.5% for a "safety" shower; that rate covers a short official list of disability equipment such as stairlifts, and a walk-in shower isn't on it. Ask for the rate on each line, and for the contractor's décennale insurer and policy number before you sign.