Walk-in bath or walk-in shower for an older parent?

A walk-in bath has a watertight door in its side and a built-in seat. Your parent steps through the door, sits down, closes it, and the bath fills around them. Afterwards they stay seated while it empties, because the door cannot be opened with water inside. How a walk-in bath works goes through it step by step.

A level-access shower has a tray that sits flush with the floor, or a low tray with a lip of a few centimetres, so your parent walks in rather than stepping up or over anything. It usually comes with a fold-down seat, grab rails and a thermostatic valve that keeps the water at a steady temperature. People also call these walk-in showers. A wet room goes a step further and waterproofs the whole floor, which matters most for wheelchair users. Walk-in showers and wet rooms covers the shower side in more detail, and the complete guide to walk-in baths covers the bath side, including the cheaper steps such as a bath board or bath lift.

Both sit within the wider work of mobility and falls care, because getting in and out of a bath is a moment in the day when an older person can slip and fall.

None of these is a rule on its own. Weigh them together, and ask your parent what they want: someone who has had a bath every evening for sixty years may feel the loss of it more than a family expects. If the wait is the main worry, do you have to sit in a walk-in tub until it drains? explains how long it takes and what shortens it.

Some health conditions point fairly clearly one way. After a stroke, getting down onto a bath seat and back up with one side weaker can be harder than sitting on a shower seat with a rail on the stronger side; transfers with one-sided weakness covers how a carer helps with moves like this. For someone with dementia, a familiar, open space is often easier to accept. With arthritis, it depends on whether warm water helps more than the effort of getting down onto the seat costs.

Water use is a smaller question, but families ask about it. A walk-in bath has to be filled deep enough to cover a seated person every time, so it can use more than a shallow bath, while a shower uses only what runs while they wash. Does a walk-in tub use more water? has the litres and what they mean on a metered bill.

A combination model can suit a parent who still enjoys a bath, can manage the wait, and would like the option of a quicker wash on busy days. It is less suitable where the reason for changing the bathroom is that bathing has become unsafe, because the same door, seat and threshold are still there. If the occupational therapist recommends a shower, a council grant is unlikely to pay for a bath as well: government guidance says that where somebody needs both, they would need to show a medical need for each.

1. 1

   Ask the council for an occupational therapy assessment

   Free

   Ring adult social care and ask for a home assessment. An occupational therapist looks at what your parent finds hard and at the bathroom, and recommends what would help. It costs nothing to ask, whatever their income or savings.
2. 2

   Smaller items come without a grant

   Under £1,000

   If the assessment finds a grab rail, a shower chair or a bath board is enough, the council should provide each adaptation that costs under £1,000 free, and lends many loose items through its community equipment service.
3. 3

   Bigger work goes through a Disabled Facilities Grant

   Up to £30,000 in England

   The council must be satisfied the work is necessary and appropriate for your parent's needs, and reasonable and practicable for the house. The grant is means-tested on household income and savings over £6,000, so it can be less than the maximum.
4. 4

   Wait for approval before work starts

   Up to 6 months to decide

   The council has up to six months from the application to give its decision in writing. Work started before approval may not be paid for at all.
5. 5

   Check the VAT on any part you pay yourself

   0% or 5%

   With a long-term illness or disability, bathroom work done because of the condition is zero-rated. Without that, someone aged 60 or over pays 5% instead of 20% on a walk-in bath with a sealable door, or a shower with a built-in seat, supplied and installed together.

Disabled Facilities Grants are set out in the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, which lists making it possible to use a bath or a shower as one of the purposes. It does not prefer one over the other. The government's guidance to councils names level-access showers and wet rooms among the adaptations the grant can pay for, and says it should aim to meet a person's current and anticipated future needs. That test can favour a shower, because it keeps working if your parent later needs a shower chair or a carer beside them, but the occupational therapist's recommendation is what decides it. The Disabled Facilities Grant guide covers the means test, the limits in Wales and Northern Ireland, and what happens after you apply.

Councils can take time. A research study of bathing adaptations for older people, run in four areas chosen because their waits were longer than four months, described the usual wait for a council-funded walk-in shower there as between four and nine months. Ask your council how long its own list is when you apply.

The two VAT routes are on gov.uk: VAT relief on building work for disabled people, which gives replacing a bath with a shower or walk-in bath as an example, and VAT on mobility aids for people over 60. VAT relief on mobility aids explains the declarations, and local authority funding explains the wider council assessment, which can also lead to help with care.

The cancellation rules are on gov.uk under door to door sales. We do not recommend particular makers or installers. For views on products, look to independent sources rather than a retailer's own reviews: Living Made Easy gives impartial guidance on bathing equipment, the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers (RiDC) publishes consumer research on products for older and disabled people, and the British Healthcare Trades Association code of practice sets the standards its member firms sign up to, so ask any supplier whether they belong. If space is the deciding factor, walk-in baths for small bathrooms covers measuring up, and choosing the best walk-in bath covers which features matter for which needs.

Washing usually fits inside an ordinary morning visit rather than needing one of its own. If you are ready to look for someone, you can search for carers near you and compare their rates. An hourly visit for personal care costs around £18 to £25 an hour on PrimeCarers, with our fee included, against £28 to £35 for a similar visit through an agency.

PrimeCarers is an introductory service: you find and choose a self-employed carer and agree the visits with them. Before a carer's profile appears we check their identity and right to work, confirm they hold an enhanced DBS check (or PVG in Scotland, Access NI in Northern Ireland) issued within the last 2 years, and interview them online. We do not check qualifications, training or references, so ask the carer about their experience of helping with washing; references and reviews on a profile are not verified by us. Carers are insured while they work. Bathing and toileting an elderly parent covers the practical side of helping with a wash yourself.