AN UGLY, dated or barely-functioning bathroom or shower room can make home life miserable, so how can you improve yours?

If the bathroom suite’s fine, changing the tiles may be all that’s needed to give the room a great new look.

If you’re doing this yourself, the easiest and quickest way to remove tiles (and plaster or render) is with an SDS drill and chisel attachment.

If you’re retiling yourself, an electric tile cutter is essential. Water-cooled diamond-blade tile cutters can be messy – so are best used outside, if at all possible – because the water sprays, but they do make cutting tiles easy. Some of them include a laser line for accuracy.

A budget way to make over tiles is to paint them, although it can look odd to have the tiles and grout the same colour (unless they’re white). Use a specialist primer and a tile paint or conventional wood/metal paint for the topcoat.

Painting the walls a different colour is another quick and easy way to give the room a new look.

It’s a good idea to opt for special kitchen and bathroom emulsions, though, as they are designed to withstand things like steam and mould, unlike other interior paints.

You should never apply paint in wet, damp or steamy conditions, so if you’ve only got one bathroom and want to redecorate it, ventilate it well before starting to paint.

Perhaps you fancy turning your shower room into a wet room?

This is typically a waterproof room where there’s a shower but no shower tray or enclosure, so the whole room effectively becomes the enclosure.

Creating a wet room may work in a really small space, but a wall-to-wall shower tray and a fixed glass screen produce a similar look for less money, and there’s no danger of soggy towels or toilet paper.

It’s advisable to consult a good plumber before making anything more than cosmetic changes to your bathroom or shower room, as there may be issues you hadn’t thought of.

As with all DIY jobs, you should never undertaken anything you don’t have the skills or correct equipment to carry out, or it may end up costing you much more in the long run.

It’s easy to unwittingly buy a shower or tap, for example, that’s not suitable for your home, although some manufacturers make it easy, so as long as you know which system/boiler your home has, choosing one is realtively simple.

Updating your bathroom may enable you to benefit from new technology like digital showers, which can be controlled from a remote control (and often an app too) as well as let you pre-set personal preferences to get the same showering experience every time.

Digital showers can also save water. If a member of your household spends too long in the shower, you could set their shower to shut off after a certain time!

You may also want to ask a plumber/heating engineer or builder about improving the heating in your bathroom.

With the weather getting colder now autumn’s here, underfloor heating (wet or electric) is a luxurious addition to a bathroom or shower room, although it can be disruptive to retrofit.

A heated towel rail (or radiator) is perfect for drying/warming towels, but many models are quite small, which can make it difficult to dry wet towels properly and heat a large room.

Really tall models are relatively rare, but are a great addition to a bathroom or shower room, both practically and aesthetically.

Once you’ve done all the major work, it’s time to add the finishing touches that will bring a bit of character to the room – whatever you want that to be.