There is usually a point in a bathroom remodel when the conversation stops being about what you dislike and starts becoming about what you are willing to change.
For a lot of homeowners, that moment happens when someone looks at the bathtub and asks:
“Do we even need this anymore?”
Maybe you have a large tub that takes up nearly a third of the bathroom and gets used three times a year. Maybe stepping over the side has become more annoying than relaxing. Maybe the shower feels cramped while the tub beside it sits empty most of the time.
Suddenly, removing it feels obvious. Then the questions start.
Will we regret not having a tub? What happens when we sell the house? Should we keep it because we might want it someday? Would a larger shower actually make enough of a difference?
These are good questions because removing a bathtub is not just a design decision. It changes the way the bathroom works, and unlike swapping a faucet or repainting the walls, it is not something you will casually reverse next year.
If you are planning bathroom remodeling in Rockford, IL, our answer is not that every homeowner should keep the tub or that every primary bathroom should replace it with a larger shower.
Start with a much simpler question: Which one would you actually use?
Homeowners get used to working around things just because they have always been there.
The tub is a perfect example.
It may have been part of the bathroom when you bought the house. It may have made sense when your children were young. Maybe twenty years ago, a large soaking or whirlpool tub was exactly what everyone wanted in a primary suite.
Life changes. Now you step around it every morning to get to a shower that feels half the size it should be.
If that sounds familiar, take a minute and think about the last time you actually filled the tub.
Not the last time you cleaned it, but the last time you used it.
If the answer requires some thought, that tells us something.
A bathroom remodel is an opportunity to stop dedicating valuable space to the way someone imagined the room would be used and start designing around the way you really live in it. That does not automatically mean the tub has to go, it just means it has to earn its place.
This is where the conversation gets more interesting.
Homeowners sometimes think removing a bathtub means getting a larger shower. Depending on the bathroom, it can change much more than that.
A shower that once felt like a phone booth may gain enough room for a bench, better storage, a handheld fixture, and a more comfortable entrance. The bathroom may feel more open because a large tub deck or enclosure is gone. There may be room to improve circulation around the vanity or create storage where there was never enough before.
In some bathrooms, removing the tub gives the entire room a different sense of proportion. You stop feeling like every fixture was squeezed into whatever space remained.
This can be especially valuable in an older Rockford home where the primary bathroom may have been remodeled once or twice already. Sometimes an oversized tub was added during a previous renovation because it was popular at the time, even though it consumed space the room never really had to spare.
Once that tub is gone, there may suddenly be room to solve problems you have been living with for years.
The question becomes less about whether you are willing to lose the bathtub and more about what you can gain in its place.
There is another side to this. Bigger is not automatically better.
You can remove a bathtub, build an enormous shower, and still end up wondering whether all that space was really necessary.
The shower should be designed around how you want to use it.
Would a bench make mornings more comfortable? Do you want a handheld shower in addition to a fixed showerhead? Would a lower or zero-threshold entry make the room easier to use now and in the future? Is there enough room for shampoo, soap, and everything else without balancing bottles on the floor?
These are small questions until you use the shower every morning.
A well-designed shower should feel comfortable without feeling empty. Controls should be somewhere you can reach without getting blasted with cold water. Storage should be where it is actually useful. A bench should be positioned where you would realistically sit rather than squeezed into a corner because it looked good in a rendering.
This is exactly why Macktown’s approach to bathroom remodeling starts with how homeowners use the room.
You are not building a shower for a photograph, you are building the place where you will stand half awake tomorrow morning.
That experience matters more.
This is where we would slow the conversation down.
If you have another bathtub elsewhere in the home, removing the one in the primary suite can be a relatively easy decision for homeowners who rarely use it.
If this is the only tub in the house, there is more to consider.
Families with young children often appreciate having a traditional bathtub, and some future buyers may prefer a home with at least one. The National Association of REALTORS® has discussed this exact question and notes that retaining at least one bathtub can broaden a home’s appeal, particularly for households with younger children.
That doesn’t mean you should design your bathroom entirely around a future buyer you have never met.
If you plan to stay in the house for another fifteen years and nobody in your family wants a tub, sacrificing the room you want today purely because somebody might want something different someday deserves some thought.
There is a balance.
If another bathroom already has a tub, you may be able to preserve that flexibility while designing the primary bathroom entirely around your own routine.
If this is the only bathroom with one, we would want to talk through the decision carefully before removing it.
Then this article gets much easier. Keep the tub.
Remodeling does not have to mean stripping away everything that is not currently trendy.
If taking a bath is genuinely part of how you unwind at the end of the day, there is real value in keeping one. Maybe the problem is not the tub itself. Maybe the current one is too large, uncomfortable, dated, or positioned poorly.
A smaller freestanding tub could potentially create more breathing room without eliminating the experience you enjoy. In another bathroom, keeping the tub while changing the shower enclosure or vanity layout might solve enough of the room’s problems that there is no reason to choose between them at all.
This is why we keep coming back to how you actually live. We do not want to remove something you love because large showers are popular. We also do not want to dedicate a huge portion of the room to a beautiful bathtub you will never use because a bathroom photo made it look appealing.
Your habits are more useful than trends.
There is another reason homeowners are choosing larger, easier-to-enter showers.
They are thinking about staying in their homes longer.
You do not have to be planning an “accessible bathroom” to make choices that will make the room easier to use later.
A lower-threshold shower can be comfortable today and easier to navigate as mobility changes. A bench can feel luxurious now and become even more useful later. Handheld shower fixtures give everyone more flexibility.
Even blocking for future grab bars can be planned behind the walls during the remodel without changing the appearance of the finished bathroom.
AARP’s HomeFit bathroom guidance recommends features such as properly installed grab bars and thoughtfully designed shower and tub areas as part of creating safer bathrooms for people of different ages and abilities.
That does not mean your bathroom needs to look clinical. Quite the opposite. The best future-minded design rarely announces itself.
It simply feels easier to use.
If you are already opening the walls during a major remodel, it is worth thinking about the version of yourself who will use the room years from now, not only the version of yourself standing in it today.
For some bathrooms, this is still the most practical answer.
Not every home has room for a separate shower and tub, and not every homeowner wants to devote that much space to bathing.
A well-designed tub-shower combination can preserve a bathtub while improving the shower experience considerably. Better fixtures, thoughtful storage, updated tile, a comfortable tub, and a cleaner enclosure can turn something that once felt like a compromise into a room that works very well.
This can be particularly useful in a hall or family bathroom where children, guests, and different family members may use the room over the years.
Again, there is no rule that every bathroom remodel needs to produce the same result.
The primary suite may have a large walk-in shower with no tub at all, while the hall bathroom keeps a tub-shower combination.
Those two rooms are serving different people for different reasons. They should be allowed to make different decisions.
There is also a construction side to this decision.
A bathtub and shower do not always use the plumbing in exactly the same way, especially when the remodel involves relocating fixtures or substantially changing the wet area.
Changing the layout may involve moving water lines, drains, electrical components, ventilation, or framing. Waterproofing becomes especially important when creating a larger tiled shower because water has a remarkable ability to find the one area that was not handled correctly.
This is not the part of the remodel homeowners usually spend time imagining.
Nobody saves photos of shower waterproofing to an inspiration board.
Years later, it may be one of the most important parts of the entire project.
Depending on the scope of work, remodeling in Rockford can also involve building, electrical, plumbing, or other permit requirements. The City of Rockford Building Services Department provides current information about work that requires permits.
You should not have to become an expert in any of this. But these questions should be answered before demolition, not after the old tub is sitting in the driveway.
That is one reason Macktown’s design-build process spends so much time working through the bathroom before construction begins. Layout, selections, plumbing decisions, lighting, materials, and project costs are much easier to control when the whole room has already been thought through.
Sometimes homeowners walk into the conversation believing they have to choose between a bathtub and a good shower.
Then we start looking at the layout.
Maybe the answer is not removing the tub. Maybe the vanity is consuming space poorly. Maybe a linen closet can be redesigned. Maybe the existing tub is much larger than it needs to be.
This is where measuring the room and looking at it as one complete space becomes valuable.
A bathroom is a collection of relationships.
The distance between the vanity and shower matters. The way the door opens matters. The location of a window matters. The amount of clearance around the toilet matters.
Moving one piece can change what becomes possible somewhere else.
We would rather discover those opportunities during design than begin with a hard rule that something has to stay or go.
Sometimes there really is enough room for both. Sometimes trying to keep both means neither one is particularly comfortable.
The room will usually tell you which direction makes sense once you stop looking at each fixture separately.
The tub-versus-shower decision can also influence the overall investment.
Replacing finishes while leaving plumbing locations largely unchanged is a different project from completely reworking the wet area, moving fixtures, expanding the shower, adding custom glass, building a bench, and changing the plumbing configuration.
Macktown currently publishes bathroom starting points in its Remodeling Investment Guide. Small bathroom projects currently start around $35,000 at the Standard level, medium bathrooms around $50,000, and large bathrooms around $70,000, with Designer and Luxury projects increasing from there depending on customization and selections.
Those ranges are useful because they establish a realistic starting point.
Your actual bathroom still has to be designed.
A large custom shower can involve tile, waterproofing, glass, plumbing fixtures, framing, niches, benches, lighting, and finish details that vary considerably from one bathroom to another.
This is why the budget conversation should happen while the layout is being developed.
You do not want to spend weeks designing the perfect shower only to discover that the project you imagined and the investment you expected never lined up.
Bathroom trends change quickly.
Large whirlpool tubs were once considered almost mandatory in upscale primary suites. Then oversized showers became the feature everyone wanted. Freestanding tubs came back. Wet rooms became popular. Fixture finishes changed. Tile sizes changed.
They will change again.
Your morning probably will not change quite as quickly.
That is why we would rather know whether you take baths than whether freestanding tubs are trending this year.
We would rather know that your current shower makes you feel cramped every morning than whether a particular tile is showing up everywhere online.
Trends can inspire a design. They should not make the important decisions for you.
If the bathroom works beautifully for your routine and you genuinely enjoy using it, you are much less likely to regret the choices you made when the next design trend comes along.
When you are stuck between keeping the tub and creating a larger shower, forget resale for a moment.
Forget the inspiration photos. Picture tomorrow morning. You walk into the bathroom.
Which space are you actually using?
Would having a larger shower make the room noticeably easier or more enjoyable every day? Would you miss having somewhere to take a bath? Is there another tub elsewhere in the home? Are you designing around children who are still young, or are you planning the bathroom for a home you expect to stay in long after they move out?
Those questions tend to make the answer much clearer.
Bathroom remodeling should not be about checking off a list of features a primary suite is supposed to have.
It should be about creating a room that fits the person standing inside it.
If you are considering bathroom remodeling in Rockford, IL, start by paying attention to what you use and what you do not. Look at the space the bathtub occupies. Think about what a better shower could change. Think about how long you plan to stay in the home and whether another bathroom already gives you the flexibility of having a tub.
Then make the decision for your life, not somebody else’s.
You can explore Macktown Construction’s bathroom remodeling services, browse completed bathroom projects, or learn more about the design-first process before deciding what stays and what goes.
The goal is not to build the bathroom everyone else wants, it’s to finally have one that feels right for you.
