Freestanding Tub or Bigger Shower? How to Decide in a Loveland Primary Bath

You keep looking at that tub in the corner of your primary bath and doing the math on how many times you’ve actually used it in the last year. Meanwhile the shower feels cramped, and you’ve started wondering whether the whole footprint would work better if the tub just went away. We’ve stood in a lot of Loveland bathrooms with homeowners having exactly this argument with themselves. So let us walk you through how we think about it, and tell you about a recent rebuild where the tub lost.

Start with how you actually live in the room

The honest first question isn’t design, it’s use. A freestanding tub is a beautiful object and a real soaking experience, and for some homeowners it’s non-negotiable. For others it’s a decoration that eats floor space they’d rather give to the shower. Before you fall in love with a photo, count the soaks. If you genuinely bathe, keep the tub in the plan. If you’re a shower person who thought you’d become a bath person after the remodel, that’s usually the tub talking, not you.

In a primary bath, space is the currency you’re spending. A freestanding tub needs clearance on all sides to read as freestanding, so it’s not just the tub’s length, it’s the air around it. Give that same square footage to the shower and you can move up to a larger enclosure, a bench, a second showerhead, or a curbless zero-degree entry. That trade is the whole decision in one sentence.

Freestanding tub vs. walk-in shower: what each one really costs you

The freestanding tub vs. walk-in shower question is less about which is better and more about which one fits the way your household starts and ends the day. A tub gives you the sculptural centerpiece and a place to actually soak. A bigger walk-in shower gives you daily comfort, easier cleaning, and, if you’re planning to stay in this house long-term, a curbless entry that keeps working as you age. Most of our clients in Loveland, Montgomery, and Madeira are staying put and want to love the house more, not sell it, so the shower often wins on function.

Cost matters here too, and it doesn’t cut the way people assume. A zero-degree entry shower is one of the bigger cost drivers in a bath remodel, right alongside heated floors and changing the room’s footprint. So “just make the shower bigger” isn’t automatically the cheaper path. On a full primary bath redo, we’re typically in the $60,000-$80,000 range, and moving plumbing or going curbless pushes toward the top of that. A freestanding tub adds its own faucet and drain work. Neither choice is the budget option, which is exactly why you want to decide before we build, not after.

What holds a freestanding tub in place, and other real questions

A freestanding tub is anchored through the drain assembly and, on most models, a set of feet or a base that ties into the floor, with the supply and drain lines run up through the subfloor. It isn’t just sitting there under its own weight. That matters because the plumbing has to be roughed into an exact spot before the floor goes down, which is why this decision can’t wait until selections are half finished. Move the tub six inches after the rough-in and you’re opening the floor again.

What are the downsides of a freestanding bath? There are a few worth naming: they’re harder to clean around because you’re reaching behind and under them, filling a deep soaker takes a lot of hot water, and the floor space they claim is gone for anything else. Are freestanding bathtubs worth it? For a homeowner who truly soaks and wants that centerpiece, absolutely; for someone talking themselves into it, that’s an expensive place to be wrong. Which freestanding tub is considered the best quality? That comes down to material and heat retention, since solid surface and cast iron hold heat longer than a thin acrylic shell, and the trade-off is weight, so your floor framing has to be right underneath it.

A recent Loveland rebuild where the tub came out

One of our favorite recent projects was a small primary bath that felt tight the second you walked in. The homeowner had a Jacuzzi-style freestanding tub they’d stopped using and a shower that was too small to enjoy. We moved a wall to make the shower much larger, pulled the old tub out entirely, and rebuilt the room from scratch. New vanity, all-new tile throughout, new lighting, quartz countertops, a zero-degree entry shower, and all-new plumbing. Most of the primary baths we do end up as from-scratch rebuilds like this one, because once you’re moving walls and plumbing, half measures don’t hold up.

What made it work wasn’t just the design, it was the sequencing. Before any tile went in, we spent close to a week to ten days on prep: containing the dust, stripping to studs, fixing what we found behind the old walls, strengthening the shower floor and framing, and waterproofing with a concrete board and Wedi® system so the new shower would never leak. That prep is the part homeowners underestimate, and it’s the part that decides whether a bathroom lasts. This client made selections with our designer Carlie, asked a lot of questions, waited patiently through the build, was kind to the crew, and left us a great review. Now they refer their neighbors. That’s the whole job done right.

How we plan a bathroom remodel around (or without) a tub

Planning your bathroom remodel around a tub starts with the rendering, not the demolition. We won’t hand you an estimate scribbled on a napkin and ask you to sign it. You’ll see a 3D rendering of the finished room before we build anything, tub or no tub, so the wall you’re thinking about moving and the shower you’re thinking about enlarging are decided on screen, not mid-project. That’s also how the pricing stays predictable: we build allowances into the proposal and select every material with you months ahead, so nothing gets ordered in a panic.

Once we start, we’re there Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5, until it’s done, usually about four weeks for a bathroom. There’s not a day when nothing is happening in your bathroom. We’re not waiting on another trade and we’re not waiting on materials, because it was all chosen in advance. Kitchens and baths are 100% in-house here, our own crews, not a rotating cast of subs walking through your home. And the comment we hear most often is about how clean we leave things. We contain the dust and vacuum at the end of every day, so you’re never stepping over tools or debris in your own house.

Where we work

We’re based in Loveland and take on primary bath projects across the eastern side of the Cincinnati area, Montgomery, Mason, Madeira, Hyde Park, and Indian Hill, generally within a 30 to 40 mile radius. If you’re staying in your home long-term and want it to work better for the next stretch of your life, this is the kind of work we do most.

Talk it through before you commit

If you’re stuck between a freestanding tub and a bigger shower, the fastest way out is to walk the room with someone who’s rebuilt a hundred of them. We’ve been doing this since 2015, we’re insured and bonded with a $2M liability policy always in force, and every project carries a one-year labor warranty plus help navigating any material manufacturer warranty. The first in-person consultation is always free, and we’ll be straight with you about what your space can actually hold. Call us at (513) 781-3000 to set up a visit, and let’s figure out whether the tub stays or goes.