Practical Tips For Waterproofing Your Bathroom
Your bathroom is where you practice personal hygiene like bathing and brushing your teeth, making it an essential place. However, excess moisture can quickly turn your bathroom into a breeding space for mold, mildew, and bacteria, compromising your health. Moreover, extensive water damage can lead to expensive repair costs. Fortunately, waterproofing your bathroom can help you avoid these problems. Here are some practical tips worth considering.
- Get a bathroom exhaust fan
Although an exhaust fan removes stale odors from your bathroom, its function goes beyond that. Not only does it eliminate steam without having to open your windows, but it also prevents water from damaging your bathroom surfaces. Since moisture promotes mold and bacteria growth, an exhaust fan ensures you don’t have to deal with this. Consider your bathroom’s square footage to pick the best fan for enough ventilation when buying one. For instance, smaller fans produce fewer CMFs, making them ideal for smaller bathrooms. Likewise, larger fans can generate enough CMFS to ventilate a bigger bathroom.
Investing in options with features like heaters, motion and humidity sensors, controls, and integrated lighting is also prudent. You also want to ensure that it’s energy efficient and generates little to no noise. Except you have the technical knowledge and skills, you’d find it helpful to work with professional installers to achieve the best results.
- Carefully consider your flooring options
Your flooring can determine if you’ll have a dry and pleasant bathroom or a damp and smelly one. This makes it important to select the right flooring. You want to avoid options that retain water, so keep this in mind. For instance, carpet retains and allows water to seep into the sub-flooring, compromising your support beams and floors. Wooden flooring contracts and expands according to the environment, and consistent water exposure can cause it to warp or crack in a few years. Laminate flooring and linoleum tiles are options you want to avoid. Instead, consider porcelain or ceramic tiles, vinyl flooring, and natural stone. As a tip, consider waterproofing the surface before installing your flooring.
- Protect your walls with the right paint
You should consider painting your bathroom walls with semi-gloss, satin, or high-gloss paints. This is because shinier paints are likelier to resist moisture than their duller counterparts. Moreover, cleaning unpleasant marks from shinier surfaces is easier, so keep this in mind. Velvet and eggshell paint options are also effective waterproof paint options. Consider investing in eco-friendly options to prevent your bathroom from being contaminated by VOCs, so feel free to consider them. It’s prudent to consult with credible house painting companies for a more informed decision, so keep this in mind.
- Seal gaps and cracks
Gaps and cracks in your bathroom are more than an unappealing sight. Your bathroom is more prone to water damage if the caulk pulls away or cracks, leading to loose tiles, flooring damage, and damp rot. Therefore, examining the caulks and fixing the bad ones is essential. Fortunately, this isn’t a complicated project, as several online resources can help you get started. You’ll find it beneficial to invest in silicone caulks for durability and aesthetics.