Here's what the bath looks like now. You enter the room and walk right into the tub; after you turn the corner, you reach the toilet and sink. About 50" wide in this section, so anything will be an improvement!

If the vall next to the vanity is only 22" deep, (vanities are usually 21"), you may want to cheat the toilet over slightly toward the vanity to get 18" on the full wall side. The area where you really need the clearance of 18" on each side minimum is at the front half of the bowl (knee/leg space), and since most toilets are about 28" inches deep, if I am not mistaken, you will clear the wall next to the vanity toward the front of the toilet.

Thanks, good point. I'm planning to do a 24" deep vanity, so the 28" toilet will stick out only about 3" past that wall. I can probably make the toilet area 34" wide without causing any problems, so I hope clearance will be okay. (I should mention that the only reason I'm including a wall between the vanity and toilet is that we are bumping out that left wall; we need the support for when the contractor puts in a beam to replace a wall that is presently load-bearing.)

You want to be able to open the door, reach in, and turn on the shower. That means the controls need to go on one of the shorter walls. And the door swing may need to reverse based on which of the short walls you choose to place the controls on.

I would personally rather have a step in pantry type closet storage between the shower and wall than an entry to the master bedroom if this is the only bath upstairs.

Thanks for that input, hollysprings. Unfortunately, the window get in the way of doing much in that space by the proposed door to the master bedroom.

I showed my son the design today and he wasn't keen on the extra doorway. He said "It looks like a hallway that happens to have bathroom fixtures on either side." Hmmm...

Another thread on this forum linked to a bathroom by Brooke Gianetti, which gave me an idea. I could run a shower all the way along the top wall, where the toilet and extra doorway are. Move the toilet to where the shower is now. If you're interested in how the window would fit into all this, click the link below and see Brooke's clever remodel. Her shower is really neat, with a glass panel instead of door. That would allow my stained glass window to be the centerpiece, as long as I can point the spray away from the glass.

Any more input on the value of the extra door to the master?

Here is a link that might be useful: Velvet and Linen blog

I think you'd get more value from the space by eliminating the door to the MBR and putting the pot in there. Then you could expand the vanity the full width of the left wall or start the left wall with a small linen closet and then put the vanity.

If you do the linen closet that way, you won't get hit in the butt with the bathroom door when you're at the sink (a bugbear for DH).

If you do the full wall vanity you would have room for 2 sinks and some central storage.

The half wall at the end of the shower would provide privacy for the pot and the glass above will allow for a view of the stained glass window.

This arrangement would be similar to our MBR. We also opted to put the tub downstairs as we had more room for it and seldomly use it.

Our bath is somewhat larger than yours, but the basic layout can still work. Here are some pics that might help you.

Standing in the middle of the bath looking at the vanity wall, you can see the pot over my left shoulder, by the window, and the shower over might right shoulder. As I'm standing there, the entry door is to my right.

On the shower wall, (the doorway is the entry door to the room) we left a little bit of wall space and then started the glass door. Door swings both in and out so when you want to reach the controls, you swing it out. After the shower when you want the space to dry out, swing the door in out of the way. Ours is also a steam shower thus the tiled ceiling and the transom door. On the inside of the shower, along that knee wall is a built in seat that runs the full width of the shower. Attached to the outside of that wall is a heated towel bar and then the pot.

(Picture taken from entry door) On the other wall, we have a linen closet first and then the vanity with the central stack for storage.

Your layout would be the reverse with the shower and pot on the right wall as you enter and the vanity on the left.

I like Annie's layout. I don't think there's a big added value of a door from the master bedroom if it's still a shared bathroom.

Consider french doors on your shower: two 2' wide doors that swing both ways. That's what we did on a 3x4 shower we put in. That way the doors take up less floor space when they're swinging.

Place the shower in the upper left and have it end just before the window. The toilet goes across from it, where you currently indicate the door to the bedroom. The vanity goes on the toilet wall, and the rest of the shower wall becomes a sorely needed linen closet.

Thanks so much! This really helps loosen up my thinking. The door-to-master idea came from my contractor, and it's not something I'm particularly attached to. Omitting it would leave better wall space in the master, too, which would allow for a little sofa nook. So....

The common thread in the ideas above is to put the toilet in the upper right corner. I like the arrangement, but was worried about having a toilet right by a window. The toilet would be on a wall that's only 12" back from the edge of the window; the bottom edge of the glass on that window is only 30" off the floor. The glass is obscured, and I wouldn't have any problem with this personally, but do you think future owners/buyers would be having a "what were they thinking?" moment? (I'm not overly concerned with resale, but I don't expect to ever re-do this bathroom again, so I don't want to completely ignore resale.)

weedyacres: I've got 40" in front of the shower for door-swing, but I do like the idea of French doors. I was thinking a fixed/sealed panel of glass would help contain the water better. Do you feel like your shower is more prone to water escaping when you have 2 swinging doors?

annie: love your whole room, and the vanity arrangement is great. I can see how that would work really well in my space, so thanks a bunch for taking the time to post pictures. I was going to change our hallway door to swing out or be a pocket door in order to avoid the challenge you describe of the door hitting the person at the vanity. But maybe with a buffer zone I wouldn't have to.

livewire: on moving the shower - that is where I had it originally, so I'm partial to that idea. Just wondering, how deep does a linen closet need to be? If I do a fairly shallow one (about 12" deep), I can preserve an extra foot of space in the adjacent bedroom, which would be lovely.

Blinds, or a curtain (or a half curtain) would take care of any privacy concerns.

The french doors are on a guest bath, not our master, so I don't have a lot of first-hand knowledge, but we've got sweeps on the bottom of the doors, which is where the bulk of any water escaping would be most likely to come from.