The arched shower recess: Interior experts share their thoughts on whether you should take the plunge

And they are truly timeless (well, almost). Architectural arches can be traced back as far as the Bronze Age, but have been prevalent since the Romans mastered the technique. ‘I have always loved arches from my days of studying Classical architecture, and the way they make an entryway feel,’ says Pandora, referring to the bathroom of her own house in south-west London. ‘A normal opening becomes something special, a gateway into somewhere interesting you want to step. It is such a simple change, I don’t know why this subtle curve should have such an effect on me, but it does, every time.’

It is this sense of anticipation, magic even, that no doubt played a part in Emma Ainscough’s curved shower design for Charlotte’s Folly, where the bathroom works in happy harmony with the adjoining blue bedroom that has a theatrical tented bed. Samantha Palmer thinks that an arch can also bring an Art Deco-esque glamour to a bathroom, particularly when combined with a statement use of marble, which we can see in the Blank Slate project.

Sometimes, the arched shower entry doesn’t need to define just the shower area. It can be used as a portal into the bathroom’s wet zone, as shown in this project by Light & Well and Waterworks. The Zellige tiles create a tonal look that is full of depth and texture, and their impact is accentuated by the marble-lined archway.

So we have established that the shower arch is, aesthetically, very much our ally, but what of the practical considerations? If you have existing recessed spaces, it should be fairly straightforward. Georgie’s builders simply fixed timber batons to the alcove walls, used formers to define the arches, and then rendered them. Creating an arch from scratch requires some additional planning, but the process is not as complicated as you might think.

Lucy Williams designed her shower with the intention of “having a big walk-in shower that felt a little bit Mediterranean” and reminded her of “summers in Greece even in the depths of winter in London”.

Christopher Horwood

In fact, when it came to installing Samantha’s bathroom, the arch was not the trickiest part to get right. ‘We had an amazing contractor who built the bathroom singlehandedly, so after some head-scratching calculations to begin with – mostly to space the panelling evenly and centralise the bath, then maintain the largest possible floor area for the shower – he constructed the shell very methodically and from that was able to create the arched recess quite easily,’ she explains. Pandora agrees that ‘an arch is pretty simple to achieve, it is all about how they cut the plasterboard’.