by Furnishly | Oct 17, 2025 | Design Inspiration, Style
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independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Zillow just released its 2026 Home Trends Report, which analyzes millions of homes listed for sale over the past year to determine what’s in, what’s out, and what’s new in the world of home buying and selling. As it turns out, more and more people are looking to bring their self-care home — specifically, to their bathroom.
The Biggest Bathroom Trend in 2026, According to Zillow
Zillow’s 2026 Home Trends report reveals that “spa-inspired bathrooms are appearing 22% more often” on listings, and “mentions of wellness features rose 33%.” This isn’t exactly a shock; Zillow’s 2025 Home Trends Report, also covered by Apartment Therapy, has tracked the change in what buyers and sellers want in their bathrooms.
That 2025 report found that “wet rooms” were “featured 19% more often in listings on Zillow” compared with the prior year, and in general, people who list their homes were more 16% inclined to talk about the property’s “wellness features.” The fact that these trends continued to hold strong the following year makes sense, but they haven’t just persisted; they’ve become even more popular. It’s safe to say the pursuit of a luxurious bathroom experience isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
From the name alone, a “wet room” may conjure images of damp countertops and puddles on the floor. Don’t worry, it’s much more luxurious than that. Wet rooms are a more compact style of bathroom historically more popular in other countries like Sweden. If a standard American bathroom setup is a cubicle, a wet room is an open-plan office.
This means instead of a distinct shower/tub combo, or a totally separate shower and tub that have nothing to do with one another, the whole bathroom is kind of like one big shower. “As you are not as confined to the standard sizing requirements of showers and tubs, you can create a much more open, airy, and uncluttered bathroom layout,” interior designer Tamarra Younis told Apartment Therapy in 2023. They can also be easier to clean, since you can just spray everything down. Plus, folks might have a tub in the corner of a wet room, making a luxurious shower/bath combo an entire experience.
Why Spa-Inspired Bathrooms Are on the Rise
It’s not just about wet rooms; Zillow’s newest report mentions the broader category of “spa-inspired bathrooms,” which can mean anything from a wet room to a sleek groutless shower to a bathroom with an upgraded showerhead, candles, and towel warmers.
Choosing a bathroom with an expansive groutless shower instead of a bathtub isn’t just for those seeking extra luxury or making the most of a small space. It can also be more accessible: Since you have to step into a tub, it can be dangerous for people with mobility issues and might not make sense if you’re in the last home you ever plan on owning. With a wet room, you don’t have to maneuver in or out of the shower, and in some smaller rooms (like this one remodeled by Portland-based Hammer & Hand), the toilet can double as a shower seat.
Are Bathtubs Really Disappearing?
For all the people eyeing a wet room or spa-like bathroom remodel, there are plenty of others who are perfectly content with their tub. It can also have its own kind of “wellness features.” As Andrew Hancock, president of Gilman Heating, Cooling & Plumbing told Apartment Therapy in 2024, bathtubs are “evolving into a luxury feature rather than a standard one,” and the right soaking tub can “turn a bathroom into a real retreat.”
Ultimately, you can do whatever you want with your own space. If you want to hold on to your beloved claw-foot tub, please do. But at the same time, if you’ve been considering tearing it all down for the sauna-inspired shower of your dreams (or of the buyer who will buy your house one day’s dreams), now’s a prime time to get your feet wet.
by Furnishly | Sep 11, 2025 | Design Inspiration, Style
They’re a treasure trove of eccentric gems.
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by Furnishly | Sep 5, 2025 | Design Inspiration, Style
Almost two years ago, my husband and I bought our dream home on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia: a 1980s brick house with three bedrooms, two baths, and 2,900-square-foot space. It has all the hallmarks of the era it came from — single-glazed windows, gaps that leaked air, gas appliances, and no insulation in the ceiling or internal walls — but we fell in love with it at first viewing.
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by Furnishly | Sep 5, 2025 | Design Inspiration, Style
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independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Sometimes, older buildings that have been converted into condos or apartments can be oddly shaped and sized. That was the case with this particular Madison, Wisconsin, condo located in Capitol Square. The one-bedroom, one-bath residence featured a generous living, dining, and kitchen area — but also featured a tucked-away, highly angular bonus room that offered a unique challenge in regard to furniture configuration.
“The previous owners had a dining space in there,” explains Chris Bailey, the staging coordinator at The Cozy Home, the company hired to work on this project. “The photos from a previous listing showed a workspace in there, but it wasn’t scaled properly. There was a large desk you had to scooch around.”
When it comes to staging, the goal is to help people see themselves living in the space, which is especially useful with one that’s oddly shaped. Here’s how the pros made the space more functional, and helped the home sell as a result.
They anchored the oddly-shaped space.
When working with a tight and oddly shaped space such as this office, it’s important to consider scale. The size of the furniture will considerably impact how the space appears as well as how it functions. A too-big desk can be a nuisance to have to navigate every day, and furnishing the space efficiently can allow for maximum usable space. “If you put too much or too-big furniture, it becomes less functional,” the stager says.
The designer and her team went about focusing on anchoring the room. In interior decorating, anchor pieces are typically larger and offer a visual focal point that your eyes are drawn to when first looking at the room.
Anchoring is particularly important in open-concept spaces where the bounds of the living room, dining room, or, in this case, the office may be fluid or expandable. To achieve this, The Cozy Home put down an appropriately sized rug to ground the workspace.
They created a reading nook.
But the stagers didn’t just stop at the workspace. They were even able to make this bonus room somewhat multifunctional by adding a chair in the corner to create a reading nook that sort of floats behind the desk.
“A chair works well in that nook in the corner because it’s an acute angle,” Bailey says. “In this space, you’re using that acute corner for the small nook because it sits there and then you can use the open space for the table. You can fit more than if you were to flip it.”
Those working with a similar space might consider embracing those tight corners or small nooks within their home to create a functional retreat, such as a reading nook, or something visually interesting.
“When you have an oddly shaped room, take those acute angles and look for opportunities or a design moment,” Bailey suggests. “Maybe instead of a reading nook it’s a tall plant or lamp; or use that space because it’s inherently cozy for some smaller niche.”
The condo was on the market for $324,000 and is currently under contract.
“Stagers have to work with what’s there,” Bailey says. “We create privacy where there is none and anchor spaces. A lot of open floor plan homes are not well-thought-out and it can be very difficult to create a cozy space. We achieve this with rugs, scale, and lighting.”
by Furnishly | Sep 2, 2025 | Design Inspiration, Style
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independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
Conventional wisdom says you should feel free to decorate and remodel your home as you like. But at the same time, it also says that if you plan to sell your place at some point, you’ll want to make sure it appeals to the majority of homebuyers. The landlord special can be painted over. You can always remove the wallpaper. But remodeling is where it gets tricky. It’s expensive, extensive, and you want to make sure that the changes you make correspond with increasing value in your home.
Bathroom remodeling is a high investment project that can come with a high reward. After all, if a buyer looks at your bathroom and sees something in serious need of repair, they may want to walk away and find something a bit more turnkey. But knowing what to renovate, get rid of, and replace altogether can be challenging, and I’ve been confused by multiple reports that say that bathtubs are out — and people are replacing them with spa-like shower solutions. So I reached out to professionals — and got a clear answer.
Are Bathtubs Disappearing?
I was a kid during the era of the “Calgon, take me away!” bath product commercials. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the gist: A frazzled mom standing in a chaotic household would utter the phrase and be immediately transported to a luxurious bubble bath, where her troubles would simply soak away. That commercial has stuck with me over the years (ugh, I mean decades), but as much as I love a bubble bath, I can count the number of times I have actually filled our bathtub on one hand.
It’s not just a Northeast thing, either. “In Miami Beach, buyers don’t care much about outdated bathtubs you still see in some homes,” says Laura Barrera, luxury real estate advisor at Douglas Elliman David Siddons Group in Miami Beach, Florida. “I’ve shown properties to clients where the reaction was basically, ‘Why is this still here?’”
And multiple reports — like Angi’s 2024 State of Home Spending Report — have found that homeowners are planning on getting rid of their bathtubs for large, groutless showers, like the type you’d see at a nice hotel. Another 2025 report from Zillow found that folks were working to replace their bathtub shower combo with “wet rooms,” a luxurious, spa-like shower space that has a bathtub in the corner, so you can shower freely, without worrying about stepping in and out of the tub.
But that doesn’t mean you should rip out your tub. There are important home value adds to consider.
The One Time You Shouldn’t Get Rid of Your Bathtub
Even though it’s important to consider what potential homebuyers want, homeowners should pause before letting this shift in consumer sentiment convince them to ditch the tub. “You can, in fact, make a pretty compelling argument [that] depending on the type of property you have, you could be shooting yourself in the foot,” Beauchamp says.
For example, if you live in a studio apartment, a space that would most likely be home to a single person or two people at most if you ever move out, it would make sense to swap out your bathtub for something with a smaller footprint. Your assumption would reasonably be that the next occupants would be a single person or a couple without children. Or at least, no human children. But even then, think twice — Beauchamp says that pet owners often like having a tub to wash their fur children.
My husband and I live in a small two-bedroom Cape Cod located in a great school district near a beautiful park. The chances are high that a small family will buy our home — especially since we have two bathrooms, one with a tub and one with a shower, an anomaly for a home our size. For this reason, we wouldn’t think of removing the one bathtub we have. And if we had just the one bathroom, we wouldn’t even be having the tub/no tub conversation.
“If it is a property that conceivably could house some configuration of a family, they’re always going to want a bathtub,” Beauchamp says. Personal preferences are important, but it’s helpful to think of who the buyer pool might be when it’s time to sell, she explains.
This is not to say, of course, that a single person or an older couple looking to downsize wouldn’t be interested in buying our home. But were we to get rid of the tub, we are essentially saying goodbye to a large portion of buyers, Beauchamp says. And it’s important to note that having a walk-in shower is really important from an accessibility standpoint — yes, you can keep the tub, but ensuring that someone with different mobility needs can easily get in and out of the shower is also very important.
With inflation on the rise and mortgage rates not budging (as yet), Beauchamp says that many would-be homebuyers are staying put for now. That means sellers have to make the most of the buyers who are active. “In a market that already has challenges, why would you want to cut off a potential portion of your buyer pool?” she says.
Should You Get Rid of Your Bathtub?
All in all: It depends. If you have multiple bathrooms with bathtubs, you might want to consider swapping one out for a large, walk-in, spa-like shower, for accessibility needs and to appeal to a wide array of buyers. If you live in a property that might not attract families, you can also consider getting rid of your tub.
If you have a small bathroom that seems overpowered by a tub, you might consider making the switch to a shower.
Provided a bathroom renovation includes an accessible shower with a sleek, spa-like aesthetic — think flush entry and double showerheads — homeowners won’t be reducing the value of their property, even if it’s the only bath. “A new shower always makes more of an impact than keeping an old tub,” Barrera explains. But if you like your bathtub, use it, and if you see no use in getting rid of it, then don’t.
Beauchamp notes that kitchen and bath remodels are among the most expensive projects for homeowners. And if you’ve redone a bathroom already, it might be enough for buyers to ditch their “Calgon, take me away!” daydreams. “No one wants to rip apart a perfectly beautiful bathroom to put in a bathtub,” Beauchamp says.
