This Risqué Shower Trend Is Making Houses FLY Off the Market
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The above shower was designed by Linda Hayslett of LH.Designs.
I live in a northern New Jersey suburb where houses routinely sell for 135 percent over asking. (I know, it’s crazy.) My husband and I managed to buy a house that was for sale by owner in late 2020 and got an interest rate that means we’ll never ever move, but we’re still obsessed with seeing what we could get on Zillow. We’ve noticed a few features that always seem to start a bidding war. Chief among them is a shower with two shower heads—something we have jokingly started to refer to as a “risqué shower.”
I’m not talking about showers that have a regular shower head on the wall, a rainfall shower head on the ceiling, and a handheld on a bar (i.e., your typical luxury walk-in shower). No, I mean a shower with two full sets of these fixtures, so that two people can enjoy a comfortable (and perhaps romantic) shower at the same time. When I heard about a system called Boona that lets you retrofit your existing shower to have two shower heads, I thought we were really onto something.
You have to have a pretty big and recently renovated primary bathroom to have a risqué shower. So I wondered: Is this the kind of shower that people actually want?
The Risqué Shower Package
To find out, I called Pierce Conway, a local real estate agent with Compass and my buddy from open houses. I’ve noticed he doesn’t just share his listings on social media; he also offers analysis about what makes them so marketable. Plus, he represents many of the smartly renovated homes I see on Zillow in our area.
“I think it’s more of a correlation than a causation,” Conway says, laughing, when I ask if he’s also noticed a link between double showers and high offers. “Buyers always get a kick out of seeing those because they’re like, ‘I love my husband, but I’m not showering with him.’”
He points out that if you have space to put two shower heads, you probably have a pretty large space to make a bigger bathroom in general. You’re also probably putting in other “deluxe” features, like double vanities and separate his and hers closets, that buyers definitely do want. The house may also have a new kitchen. “I think it trickles down to other design decisions at the house,” he says.
Asked if anyone has ever told him they wanted a double shower, Conway said no. “I’ve never had a buyer say, ‘I need to be walking distance to the train, and I need two shower heads.’” He has had people look at a single sink and vanity—or, worse, a pedestal sink (which is what I have)—in the primary bath and say absolutely no. “People hate those.”
The Split Double Vanity
The thing Conway does say is take off lately is practically the opposite of an risqué shower. Several new builds he’s seen have two vanities flanking the shower in the primary bathroom. “They’re so far away from each other,” he says. “It’s kind of funny. Instead of the double shower head, it’s like, how far can I get away from you?” I’m calling it a split double vanity—and I think it’s brilliant. I’d love to never wipe anyone else’s toothpaste spit off my bathroom mirror again.
If you’re resolute in your desire for double shower heads or you see a shower like this in a listing and find it appealing, just be sure the water heater can support it. A quick or cheap renovation might put in double shower heads without the backup system to provide enough hot water to make it enjoyable. (This goes for any shower with multiple shower heads or jets.) If there’s one thing a risqué shower needs to be, it’s hot.
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